And Then It Was Summer
I have always liked the weather here in San Diego. What’s not to like, right? Well, that may be even more so now in the era a Climate Change. As I watch the news of heat domes and derechos, tornados and tsunamis, early hurricane seasons and rising coastal surges, I am liking my hilltop more and more. While we have lived here (basically 5 years now), we have never had the normal California afflictions of earthquakes, mudslides, droughts, wildfires or even untoward suspicious activity (the San Andreas fault takes a strong eastward turn into the Central Valley north of here). We’ve had one rare Pacific hurricane stray up the Baja, but that was a non-event. I watched a 6-acre wildfire across the freeway get doused in an hour by Cal Fire planes. I felt some shaking from ordinance release at Camp Pendleton. I’ve even swallowed 14 Atmospheric Rivers that came at us from across the Pacific. But otherwise, you might never know Climate Change existed around here. It’s like everyone thinking we are overrun by the migrant crisis because we’re on the border, but the problem just doesn’t seem to infect us here. You have to go to Texas to get upset about immigrants…though, strangely enough, El Paso on the border seems also to get “el Hall Pass” and coexistence with immigrants goes on quite smoothly, despite Greg Abbott’s efforts to the contrary.
We had our summer solstice the other day and I know I have always wondered why official summer always comes so late on the calendar when it really seems to start around Memorial Day, the weekend when beaches open and everyone celebrates being able to wear white again. We had a Memorial Day party this year and it was chilly. And then we had our weekend neighborhood party the day after the Solstice and it was suddenly blazing. Summer had appeared on the hilltop very suddenly. If I hadn’t noticed due to the heat of the party, I would have known anyway because Mike was out hand watering some plants. The only thing Mike hates more than wasting money on landscape watering is wasting a good bullet on a bunny for eating his plants. So Mike waters when plants are at risk and tries to get the bunnies with an air pellet rifle. So far, Kim is especially happy to report that the score is Bunnies 100 / Mike 0. His pellet gun poops out before any bunnies can be harmed for this story. But summer has shot its own pellet in Mike’s ass as he is compelled by the sudden onslaught of summer to throw perfectly good water on the ground for the sake of some of his discount bargain plants.
Summer has jumped out from behind a bush during the last week on the hilltop. Right now I am sitting here in the middle of the night and can hear the new A/C compressor outside my north side of the house, running. heartally to keep the temperature inside at 75 degrees (even though the outside temperature only shows as 68 degrees). This is when Mike gets even with me by reminding me that he leaves his windows open and the A/C off almost without exception throughout the year. I can’t figure out how to do that and not be uncomfortable, so more power to you, Mike.
I use a simple tool to determine when summer is upon the hilltop. Every morning I peer out the bathroom window to see my wildflower garden down below. It is on an appropriate irrigation cycle as established by Andre, my sprinkler guy. I like Andre, He’s a hard-working bearded guy who could easily pass for the local chapter Proud Boys Grand Wizard, but he is as liberal as Kamala Harris. He even participates locally in the Democratic Party machinery, so that makes him a better and less hypocritical citizen than most of us. Anyway, that wildflower garden is my summer tell. Actually, given its watering cycle, it’s really the hillside just below it that acts as my summer meter. It gets no watering and given the thirst of my wildflowers, it doesn’t even get much irrigation runoff. When spring arrives, that dirt patch of hillside bursts into life like a desert awakening after a rainstorm. It flourishes so vibrantly that Joventino has to weed-whack it into submission. But at this moment it is a rock-strewn dirt patch between boulders and cacti, so I know it’s summer on the hilltop.
Most of my hilltop is covered by my 25 zones of irrigation coverage. One more zone added and I get a free hose nozzle from Harbor Freight or something. It’s easier for me to identify the areas of my property NOT irrigated artificially than to remember which zone is which. I have these little pictures on the irrigation app map, but they are too small and too succulent heavy for me to recognize One zone from another.. even the zone descriptions don’t help much. How is “Games Area and Along Drive Lower” differ from “Between Games Area and River Rock” versus “Games Area Up to Spa Equipment”? I could wander through the garden for days like a kid running through a summer lawn sprinkler without figuring out all that Andre knows about my 25 zones.
We know that spring can get sprung and fall can fell and that summer comes and it’s hot as hell. But I like feeling the morning warmth of the summer sun up here on the hilltop. By afternoon it can surely sizzle out on the Tortilla Flats of my upper driveway just outside the range of my shade sail, but that’s why I air condition the house do well, so I can enjoy coming in from the heat I have wised for six months to come back home. We went to our favorite Sunday Summer concert in Spreckles Park on Coronado the other day. It was 90 here and 80 there and Kim was glad to thumb her nose at me for suggesting she didn’t need a jacket as the evening cooled at the beach and the Dreamboats just kept on playing Oldies But Goodies. That’s what’s do great about a San Diego summer. Warming the morning, hot in the afternoon, and cool in the evening. Pretty perfect summer weather.
So, just as we reach summer perfection here on the Hilltop, naturally, we are heading east for 5 days to gather with the kids at Virginia Beach. I see it’s summer weather there as well, but I’m waiting to be able to say, “it’s not so much the heat as it is the humidity” to one of the Gods of eastern summer. I may be pleasantly surprised but I think it’s gonna be like Tobin William’s Good Morning Vietnam with the weather being defined as “hot and shitty followed by some more hot and shitty”. I’m ready for it, but I’m more ready to get back to my San Diego summer.