The Great Leap Forward

Boy, howdy, was I sure wrong about that!

Our sidewalk construction took a quantum leap forward this week. The warning sawhorses suddenly appeared all the way down the road past us just before the weekend, although I still couldn't see any other signs of actual work on the horizon. Someone did stack a load of paving tiles by a driveway made of paving tiles (again, also past our street) in preparation for altering that home's access approach. But that was it.

Today, I woke up to find the verge along our property already scraped. The scraping does not yet cross the street onto Neighbor Dan's property and should not be confused with either the leveling necessary or the trench that will hold the concrete forms. This is just a ripping of the sod in anticipation of leveling and trenching and is necessary because the crab grass and Mexican clover, among other things, form long, tough tendrils that snake across the ground. That's a strip we'll never have to mow again, although we'll have to see how much green they leave on the street side of the sidewalk. And it looks as if they're going to be able to work around the pineapple palm at the corner of our property. (For some strange reason, there is a pineapple palm almost exactly at each of the corners of our territory and, yet, no one has ever admitted to planting any of them.)

At least some of the machinery has moved in, as well. I'm not sure what they used for a scraper since it was all done before 8 a.m. and I neither saw nor heard them while they were at it. There's a backhoe just up the road, now, but that may be the trencher and, in any event, has not been used since I've been watching. There are also a couple of pieces of heavy equipment parked in the open field across the road. I can see personal trucks used by the workers to get to and from the job site parked in the median way back up the road but no people are in evidence anywhere.

It's amazing how much can get done with nobody around.

Dry Run, With Scenic Benefits

I went for a drive this morning, testing the timing and directions in case I really do have to show up at the county courthouse next Tuesday for jury duty. The instructions say to call Monday evening after 5p.m. to find out if my number's been called, and it may not be in which case I'm apparently off the hook, but if it is I'm supposed to be there at 8a.m. and I sure don't want to get lost or be delayed by rush hour traffic on the way.

I left the house later than I'd intended and without the written directions on the notice itself and missed a turn I know I should have taken, although the route I took seemed not to take any longer and may, in fact, be a viable alternative, and still managed to get there with time to spare. Frankly, I expected a lot more traffic for the middle of rush hour. The only really annoying part of the trip was driving directly into the sunrise.

On the return trip, of course, I had the road pretty much all to myself. The sun was at my back, the temperature was rising through the seventies on its way to a predicted 86F (eat your hearts out everyone else in the continental deepfreeze), the Mexican clover is in full bloom, coating fields and lawns in its pale purple imitation snowfall, the construction guys have moved noticeably along in their sidewalk building although I remain confident in my prediction we will not see them at our place until well after New Year's, and the local construction-related speed trap is up and running (fines are double for speeding in a work zone when workers are working, which is all the incentive the city cops need). It's a good day.

And the fact that I took the time to ensure my readiness for jury duty probably means I won't be called after all.

Sub-tropical December

I finally found out the name of the small pale purple star-shaped flowers that are growing wild across lawns and highway medians all over town. They're a weed, growing in low mats of hundreds and thousands of blooms as only big as a thumbnail and two inches (at most) tall. They look like nothing so much as a light dusting of snow, the kind of early flurries common up north that occur while the grass is still green.

It's a pusley, of which there are three varieties. The one we have here, I believe, is also known as Mexican clover. They stay low enough that the mowers tend to go over them. Anyway, that's as close to snow as we're going to get. All of our windows are open and the fans are on.

On a semi-related note, the tomatoes look to be producing a very healthy second crop. There are several large fruits ripening even now.