A Wendy's rendezvous

Unsettled morning weather prevented us from getting a jump on spraying weeds yesterday. By and by, I discovered the new 4-gallon back sprayer was missing a key part.  So, it had to go back to Cottonwood Home Depot anyway.

Meanwhile, Susun was coordinating a meeting with her daughters and grandsons at the Camp Verde Wendy's.  Most of the day revolved around the sprayer and the rendezvous.  After a lengthy return process and some renegade guerrilla shopping techniques, I was able to get the vital piece and left Home Depot with a nice new feng shui sprayer.

We went to Food City and I scored over four pounds of fresh green chiles for a mere 33 cents a pounds! WOW! That's newsworthy. We traveled off to Dead Horse Ranch State Park, hoping to see Max C. No luck. We did see some familiar faces and therein lies several stories we hope to tell on our Arizona Volunteers! blog.

Finally, the girls called and we aimed for our rendezvous at Wendy's It came off without a glitch and young Gage frolicked in the parking lot. Baby Van even reached out and touched me. They are both sweet baby boys and it was great to see the girls and Peter again. They had a fine time at The Hogans.

The Big Deal for me was getting my .22 single shot back in my hands. My Dad gave it to me way back in 1956. It has no monetary value whatsoever--just sentimental. It was marooned at The Hogans back in 2006 and we forgot to pick it up last fall when we went there. Whew, now it's home again.

Got the new sprayer assembled and enjoyed a real nice all mesquite campfire. The evening light on The Mogollon Rim is spectacular this time of year.

We can still hear Wet Beaver Creek rumbling on the other side of the National Monument. It's a familiar, comforting sound, almost like the pulse of the earth purring.

We wrote a blog post a couple of days ago about the peak of the Verde River flow. Click on the Snowbird blog to read it. Anyway, the river came up good again yesterday but didn't come close to its March 19 peak. We continue to feel confident that the Verde is "past its peak." It's still a fabulous level, fluffy and plumb with melted snow water--but it's almost certainly in a downtrend of daily flow peaks from here on out.

Today is a mixed bag. We hope to spray weeds. We also MUST go to Mesa so Susun can catch her flight to San Diego early tomorrow morning. We awoke this morning to a fairly heavy frost so we are once again doubtful about whether we can spray. Sure, we could spray in the afternoon, but we will be long gone to Mesa by then.
This whole spray gig is turning out to be a real delicately-balanced chess game.
I've never used lawn chemicals before--especially of this magnitude. Messing with 41% glyphosate isn't something anyone takes lightly, especially when we're sitting on five gallons of the stuff. There are all sorts of terms and conditions and technical issues to be aware of. If it's "right" we will spray. If it's not, we won't. Simple as that.

Cheers! jp