Wondering when this stretch of windy weeks is going to end – I’ve never seen such a period of time where there’s so much dust in the air blowing around every day. The other day out of the blue this massive gust of wind came out of nowhere, toppling a bunch of our metal art and destroying one of the wind chimes. It ripped our American flag right off the pole, snapping the fixtures that held the flag in place. I didn’t realize that had happened until Mohammed’s wife from across the street came knocking on my door and gave it to me nice and all folded up. She said it landed in one of her trees.

Wind aside, the back yard and patio area is looking mighty colorful this year, dontcha think?

All of our petunias in pots both front and back were served notice yesterday that they have a week to live: the long-term forecast is a string of triple-digit days to kick off Arizona summer here in Gilbert starting next week. This is how it all starts:

Over the weekend, the mercury will rise to the upper 90s with dry weather and abundant sunshine expected.

Triple digits are likely to start next week.

They were lovely while they lasted!

Still lots of bird action around here – actually, I think the most I’ve seen in all the years we’ve been here. Yesterday morning I saw a foo-foo bird (I don’t know what they’re called, they look like grackles with very long tails but I call them foo-foo birds because of their comical nature and array of sounds) scrounging around for nesting material under the lime tree today. Unlike the mourning dove of a couple of weeks ago who would gather nesting material one stick at a time, this bird crams as much dead grass as it can fit into its mouth before heading off. I think from the direction it took off that Mohammed’s mesquite tree across the street for its future nursery.