As I watch Aces get crushed one more time, ugh, no my view isn’t about poker because if it was right now in the current state that I seem to be holding cards and getting trounced, I’d have to contemplate suicide.  Since I’m not in the mood to contemplate suicide and I can’t control a frigging deck of cards – *note, I couldn’t control a deck when I dealt poker for a living in B&M either.* – I’d rather focus on the things that make me smile.

My one most important landmate has been giving me a bit of grief because my son and I trimmed all the dead branches, suckers, and excess branches (that were laying on the back side of some of the shingles of the shed roof) from some of the salt cedars on one side of the property.  Not to mention that it was a horrible overgrown mess of human ugliness since there were rusted saw blades, dead tools, pieces of chicken wire, part of a gate, two old car batteries, three tires on rims stacked next to a tree about 80 years ago (slight exaggeration), and pieces of this and that coming from someone being too lazy to find a garbage can or the local dump.  Everything was co-mingled into spiders and webs adorning the thick carpet of tree shed and leaves and branches, centipedes, lizards (big and small), and I spent quite a bit of time raking the debris out from under the trees – before, during, and long after – my son cut the deadwood.

The most important landmate?  Sis, the truck driving queen.  She’s adamant about not cutting down any trees.  Who cut down a tree?  I trimmed a few.

I then enlisted the aid of all-around-handyman Jamie to haul to the local dump for me.  He loaded too.  If you need any kind of maintenance, electrical, plumbing, deck building, yard work, call James Dunn in Pahrump.  He’s definitely a hard worker and very reasonable in his rates.  To date he has hauled three huge loads of el-junk-o-roony out of the property and is coming back tomorrow to do one last load.  Don’t ask me why people pound metal pipes and plastic conduit into the ground in different spots leaving them to dot the property like broken flagpoles – or why they have pieces of fence that go nowhere or surround nothing – or why they throw things out behind the shed – or why they keep three or four old shitty hoses that turned black from the scorching sun years ago all curled up in a spot like they are going to use them again…I simply have no answers as to why mankind figures to survive its own destruction.

We’ve had four dump truck loads of #2 crushed rock hauled in so far for building our walkways and patio areas – mainly to keep us out of the silt/mud when it rains but also because we will have our community areas and have chimeneas and seating in different parts of the property.  So far I’m the shovel master.  I have to wonder, between here and the old digs, how many tons of crushed rock I’ve actually moved with a shovel over the last 10 years – that wouldn’t even count the dirt I’ve moved in digging out the back yard for a retaining wall and planting trees and vines at the old digs…seriously curious about the crushed rock.

The view of the shed and some of patio/walking paths to date – after the trees had been sheared and cleaned around the back of the shed:

Our walkways and patios will widen and grow.  We have a lot of mutual plans.  The funny part of it is that I do not want to cut down a tree.  I do want to see some maintenance done.  We have a chain saw.  I knocked the blade off the other day as I salvaged bigger pieces of wood for our fire pots.  Yes, I put the damn blade back on. When I told her about the blade, she retorted, “Stop cutting down trees!”  Too funny!

Jamie and his helper found a 2 inch scorpion last night as they raked and loaded debris for the dump.  Keep that bad boy away from me please.  He was perfectly color coded to match the dirt and his environment – the guys put him in a jar to take home…ugh!  Wayne and I found this one when we hiked the Anniversary Narrows some years ago.  So…another landmate to go with all the other ones discovered while cleaning around the shed, barbed tails, mucho painful.

I’ve seen desert quail, lots of them cross the property all the time, rabbits are everywhere, and I discovered another landmate the other morning.  These guys catch and eat rattlesnakes.  Let’s hear it for these guys.

I’m sending out fair warning to the Card Fairy right now, she could be a permanent landmate and be buried on the back of the property if she doesn’t take a long vacation somewhere far away from me.