Mosquito Abatement, Volunteer Watermelons and Monsoon

It’s September 1^st tomorrow, thank God, because August seemed to crawl by at a snail’s pace. I thought it would never end. Finally it’s ending. August was too humid and rainy and then too hot and miserable. The mosquitoes were out in force, and the little buggers are so small that you don’t even know you’ve been bitten until hours later the giant welts appear on your leg and then they commence to itch something fierce. I can’t tell if the bug repellent is working because I don’t have two of me to do a double-blind study but it doesn’t seem to be working because I have too many itchy welts. My solution has been to wear a painter coverall when I go outside but I can stand that only so long because the coverall doesn’t breathe and it’s like wearing a sauna. As a mosquito abatement it’s working great because I’m now not being bit to smithereens.

Again, this year I have the O’odham Soam Miliñ watermelons volunteering in the horse paddock. Last year I didn’t get to harvest any because Scout, our Navajo pony who is a free range survivor, ate them until not even a leaf was left. Eat ‘em up, yum yum, Navajo pony who can subsist on any type of pasturage. Now we’ve sold Scout to a new home very near his old digs on the rez and there’s only Lucky who doesn’t seem to care for watermelons. I hope he doesn’t discover them because they are the best flavored watermelons I’ve ever eaten. The Tohono O’odham people know their watermelons!

It’s been a good monsoon this year. Everything is green, green, green but now the rains seem to be abating and within days it will die back and turn light brown. We measured 8 inches so far this year which is less than the first two years when we got 11 inches. You’d think we’d have more rain the way it comes down when it does come down but, no, it fools you. It dumps so fiercely that you think you’ve gotten inches when you’ve only gotten a half inch. The most we’ve gotten this year is one storm that gave us an inch and a half. That is why they call it Arid-Zona.