I’m going to head over to Oasis Nursery this morning and buy a few plants to spruce up a few of the stragglers in my garden. We have guests coming to stay for a few days from Las Vegas. This is my nephew Jason and his partner and most recent baby mama, Nicky, with their new baby, Carson and Jason’s grown daughter Katie. We don’t see our Las Vegas kin very often, but are very pleased that they are making the trek, ostensibly to go to the Safari Park on Monday. Jason has left a distinctive mark on our home and we are constantly reminded of his artistic flair in the mosaic backsplash of our kitchen, on out front door with its lovely California mosaic and on the side of our house over in the Cecil Garden, where he put a huge Otomi mural depicting the various flora and fauna of the hillside, with quail, humming birds and succulents galore. Jason is the son of my sister Barbara, who I wish would come for a long overdue visit, but who prefers instead to stay close to home. I am sure Jason’s visit will be replete with stories of his most recent adventures in the desert wilderness around Las Vegas. He is a Nevada western history buff of the highest order. For all of my interest in ancient archeology, anthropology and artifacts, Jason has the same interests except focused on the past 150 years when modern man has roamed the wilds of the Mojave Desert leaving bottlecaps and matchbooks to be found in old abandoned miners sheds and wayside gas stations. There is a charm and allure to western antiquity to be sure and Jason takes that interest to new heights and loves picking up discarded detritus and researching its origins among the people that made Las Vegas happen. I always enjoy my time with Jason, who is as genuine and kind a person as I know. One of the things we share in common is a deep affection for my mother, who Jason spent a great deal of time with in her last quarter century as she lived out her life in Sin City.
Besides freshening the place up for Jason’s visit, it also occurs to me that in only two weeks from today we will be hosting 50 people for our summer fiesta on the hilltop. He have traditional Mexican mariachi dancers, a Mexican food truck and Margarita truck, an ordered Tres Leche cake and festive decorations of all sorts ordered through Amazon Prime. Today, in addition to sprucing up the plants in the garden, I plan to start organizing those decorations so that I can get them prepared to put up around the garden before our event. We have a whole array of colorful paper hanging decor and I’ve bought a set of 10-foot temporary poles to string them from. In the heat of the summer day on this hilltop, I am most grateful for our massive caliente red sail shade which stretches across our upper driveway attached to the two garage corners, to the upper corner of the house by the kitchen and reaching up into the boulders across the parking area of the drive. That shade sail is easily the best investment I ever made in this house since it keeps our cars from frying on any given summer day and it makes our upper driveway a logical outdoor party spot for the many gatherings we like to have. How the past year it has also formed the frame of an outdoor lighting string which started as a Christmas lighting adornment and has ended up being our regular nighttime entry lighting. It makes for a festive base on which to build whatever decorations suit us for our evening gatherings.
The centerpiece of this fiesta will be the level platform of the upper driveway, under the shade sail for the mariachi dancers, which will number about a dozen from what the head of the troupe has informed me. My intention is to put up the dozen temporary 10-foot poles I have purchased and string decorations all across and around the upper driveway and then down both sides of the driveway and along the path to the patio. The plan is to have the Mexican food truck park at the bottom of the driveway, so lining the driveway with decorations should look very festive. With the seating on the patio and around the upper driveway. I have bought a few spools of fishing line and plan on using it to string these decorations all along the path of those poles covering some several hundred feet of defined party zone. I have already purchased and prepared a bunch of those decorations, but as I write this I am starting to worry about whether I have purchased enough of the decorations, so I will probably go back online and reorder more just to be safe and extra festive when the time comes. You can never have too many decorations for a fiesta I figure.
I am also, at Kim’s specific request, buying a large canvas drape to hang at one point between the house and garage to block the sun as it sets to the West. There is perhaps only a few hours be-sure the sun will go down far enough to be mostly blocked by the house, except for if people go out on the de3ck to see the sunset itself, but its a pretty crucial time in the party when the dancers will be performing and to be safe, I will do as Kim asks and hang the drape to form a shade block for that upper driveway. I will go out on the driveway tonight and reconnoiter the exact placement of the sun between 5:00 – 6:00pm just to be as sure as I can be that my shade will do the job. I will then go to Harbor Freight and buy the required size of canvas drape and figure out how to hang it at the appropriate height. I expect ladders to be involved in this exercise, so stay tuned and close to the phone in case a 911 call will be required. The trickiest part about all this is leaving myself enough time on the days right before the party to get all this decoration in place without killing myself in the process. I am preparing the decorations in any way I can in advance and therein lies the biggest challenge. What is life and partying without some challenge, right?