The granddaughters are on their way home and the hilltop has gotten quiet. I’m never sure these days what is normal and what is not. Currently the weather feels pretty normal for early August. North County San Diego (including this hilltop) in August typically runs with highs around 82–87°F, lows near 60–63°F. In the slightly higher elevation/mesa areas like Hidden Meadows (~1,175–1,500 ft with this hilltop at 1,630) typically runs a few degrees cooler than the valley floor at peak heat, but can still see mid-80s on warm afternoons. There is generally very little to no rainfall (we actually had a sprinkling late last week) since August is one of the driest months of the year in San Diego County. There is still some morning marine layer/overcast (“May gray/June gloom” lingers into summer some years) that burns off by late morning, especially closer to the coast. But it’s mostly about warm, dry afternoons with a small chance of thunderstorms. Wildfire weather season is also active with dry vegetation, occasional Santa Ana-adjacent wind events, though the more classic Santa Anas are more of a fall/winter phenomenon. After a warmer than usual weekend, I see that this week should be more normal with highs around 86 and lows around 64 in the evening…and it will pretty much stay that way for the next several weeks.
As far as our routine goes, that too will slide back into normal very quickly. I have three training sessions (just finished the first one) this week, one Gyrotonics session tomorrow and two stretch sessions. it should be pleasant enough to allow me to walk Buddy with good regularity this week, and I suspect that a motorcycle ride might be in order as well. Kim has one particularly important medical appointment this week which is a procedure to help fend off glaucoma in her left eye. That will require me to drive her to Encinitas and back on Wednesday and then that evening, while she recuperates, I will fulfill my obligation to my friends and neighbors who are joining us on our Greek Odyssey cruise in late February to go see The Odyssey (for a second time for me) at our local IMAX. This time I will sit further back and try and gain some perspective to raise its score in my rankings from a 4 to something a bit higher. It turns out I am the abnormal one in the viewing world who did not think highly of Christopher Nolan’s latest epic.
I have a healthy amount of work these days with four active cases, several of which will have depositions this month if things stay on schedule. I have a total of six other cases “on the hoof” in various stages of considering me for those assignments, so things could get quite busy this fall. That’s all good from my standpoint since I’m fundamentally enjoying a life that’s a relatively calm and quiet life of work and fitness routine with the occasional travel. The in-between moments are spent playing with Buddy and doing light socializing with the neighbors. The big social event is our planned fiesta that we are giving for some 50 or so people on August 22nd. We have the Mexican dancers and mariachi music on order. We have the Mexican taco/burrito truck and Margarita trucks on order. I’ve received all of the decorations. Now I just have to start putting those decorations together for easy set-up when the time comes and we will be good to go.
In terms of the garden, things are pretty normal there as well. It has been a warm, but not oppressively hot or dry summer, so the succulents are doing fine though I notice that the aeoniums are looking a bit dry and leggy like they do most years at this time. This is when I usually start wondering if I should pull some or most of them out and replace them in an amongst the boulders across from the driveway. I am hesitant to do that because it really is a lot of work and I’m not altogether certain what would work better than them in that spot. If I let things be and allow the autumnal rains revitalize them, I will probably happier, but it is totally normal for me to start wondering about them at this point in the summer. I have noticed in the past few weeks that some of my recent pot plantings that I sprinkled in and amongst the aeoniums (I guess that was my way of rehabilitating them visually a bit this year) have prospered and some have not. Gardening remains one big experiment to me and I fully expect such mixed results. So, I will probably run by my friends at Oasis and pick up a few replacement items to fill in what hasn’t worked. That’s all pretty normal for me.
Before the granddaughters left, they wanted to revisit the Hobbit House and climbing wall, so we did that yesterday. The climbing wall is working just fine and none of the foot and hand holds have come off, so its still a good event for the kids…at least up to an certain age. The Hobbit House is one of my personal victories in that it has held up well for the almost five years since I built it from scratch. Everything from the boulder carving to the stucco walls to the tree trunk pillars and curved roof line have all withstood the test of time. The interior, besides getting its share of spider webs, has also held up and still looks magical to visitors. About the only thing that has been a bit of a disappointment is the planted roof. With only 3-4 inches of soil, it was never destined to be too prolific as a garden, but I thought with the installed pray irrigation that it would support ice plants. That has been a marginal success at best with most of the ice plants looking pretty sparse and dry for the most part. I haven’t decided if its worthwhile to attack it or to consider the sparseness the normal condition. I suspect that putting some shallow pots up there and making sure they got good watering on a regular basis might be a better solution than trying to replenish the rood soil, which probably has compacted down to about an inch at this point. As for the rest of the garden, my biggest challenge of the moment is to get the basalt fountain to stop clogging up every few weeks, requiring me to spend an hour cleaning it out. Before resorting to more drastic measures, I am trying out a new algae killer concoction. I figure if Donald Trump can’t keep the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool from going green, who am I to think I can do better. Maybe algae is the normal state of being for that fountain, in which case I just need a bigger pump that is bothered less by having its filter get clogged with algae.
I am finding that backing into normal is a pretty comfortable place for me.