Arizona - Nancy visits Diane

Looking good after a stellar drive on a hole I’ve never parred at Rancho Mañana.

The infamous Diane Wills, my host for the hottest (literally, not figuratively) week of my life.

Well, look who got a birdie on the last hole.

Nancy writes: I had vacation time saved up that I had to use by the end of June, so I decided to fly down to Phoenix to see my friend Diane. It should have been a short flight out of Reno, but a lightning storm moved in and we had to sit on the tarmac for three hours before the storm passed and they could refuel.

Diane had a full schedule of activities waiting for me. It was only 102° the first day, so we went to the driving range to hit a few balls. Then Diane decided that my feet needed help, so she got out the Dremel and spent a couple of days grinding the first four layers of skin off my feet. Boy, are my toes sexy now!

Then we were off to play golf at Rancho Mañana, voted the most scenic golf course in Arizona. We had a 7:00 a.m. tee time to beat the heat. However, it wasn't too hot this day—just 110°, with a stiff breeze.

Rancho Mañana is an awesome course. I especially liked the errant golf balls stuck in all the saguaros.

How a Tahoe girl deals with 110°.

We spent the next day in the pool. By this time, we were through Dremeling.

The boulders at the Boulders are in the background.

The next day we played golf again, this time at the Boulders, a nationally known golf resort and spa. It's a hard course, but playable, It wasn't my best day, but at least I didn't lose any balls to the ball-sucking saguaros. The temperature was a sultry 112°. So, back to the pool.

The Arizona Diamondbacks home, Bank One Ballpark.

Diane took me shopping on my last full day, and then to a Diamondbacks baseball game. We watched them get trounced by the Giants 11-3.

The Diamondbacks have an awesome stadium that is air-conditioned. The roof retracts, but only when the temperature gets below 100. We had good seats, slightly left of home plate, eight rows up.

I had a good time, but it was too short, too hot, and I won’t go back until winter.

Landscaping - Sodding the Nelsons

Sodding in the rain...

A work in progress.

Diary of a mad sod pig.

Nancy has been working her butt off installing a new back yard for a client on Donner Lake, and it’s finally nearing completion. We put in the sod yesterday and today. Yesterday, there were a few flakes of snow coming down. Today, it rained the entire day. Fun.

Nancy did all the cutting and fitting, which meant I got to be her sod pig, ferrying the rolls of sod from the alley to the yard.

The amount of work involved moving the sod into place depends entirely on the quality of the sod. Sometimes the rolls are cut thin and they are relatively light, sometimes they are embedded with nylon mesh to keep them from tearing, and sometimes—like today—they are both very heavy and very fragile.

Getting the rolls off the palette, into the wheelbarrow, out of the wheelbarrow and onto the ground in one piece gets pretty tricky, like picking up a premature baby that weighs fifty pounds.

We didn’t finish until 8:00, and by then we were both soaked and getting the chills as the temperature dropped below 40. However, it means the hard part of the installation is over, with only planting and tweaking the irrigation remaining.