The New Monsoon Season

I am outraged to read that the National Weather Service has decided to mess with our sacred monsoon season again.

Our dramatic summer thunder and lightning storms are one of the best reasons to live in the Sonoran Desert. Desert rats endure the ever-increasing humidity and heat (it was 111 today!) until one magical summer afternoon, the air gets cool, the wind blows hard and we all happily get drenched by the rain goddess who pours water from her ancient clay jug. If we're lucky, we'll also get some hail. The flashes of lightning over the Catalina Mountains are better than fireworks. Flooded streets are to be expected. It's just a matter of time before some clown drives his car around the road closure barriers into six feet of water in the Sixth Avenue underpass and gets cited under the "Stupid Motorist Law".

Those who inexplicably don't appreciate all this excitement go to San Diego.

Until last year, the start date for the monsoon season was determined by watching the dew point. On the first of three days on which the average dew point was 54 degrees or above, the monsoon season was said to start, according to those persickity people at the National Weather Service. No rain is required by this method, and we never knew the glorious monsoon season had begun until three days later. By this reckoning, the earliest recorded monsoon season started on June 17, 2000, and the latest started July 25, 1987. Through the 1990s, the average start date was July 3 and in the aughts, it has been July 7.

Obviously, this method has a lot of problems, the biggest one being its lack of correlation to actual rainfall. Most desert rats think this methodology is a joke, and rely on their own definitions of monsoon.

Steve says the monsoon starts when the first drop of rain falls in our yard. I say it starts when I personally witness a down pour with street flooding somewhere in Tucson, regardless of what the weather is doing at our house, which very likely is nothing.

What these definitions lack in the scientific method, they make up in the satisfaction of knowing with conviction that the monsoons have arrived.

Believe it or not, according to those meddlers at the NWS, today is the first day of the monsoon season. Henceforth, or until the NWS comes to its senses, the monsoon season will be from June 15 to September 30, every year! Have you ever heard anything so lame?

May Residential Sales Statistics

The Tucson Association of Realtors has released the Residential Sales Statistics for May.

The median sale price increased 3.07% from April to May, and the average sale price decreased 1.15%. From May 2007 to May 2008, median sale price decreased 9.98% and average sale price decreased 9.86%.

The best new is that over 1,000 housing units were sold in May for the first time since the mortgage industry meltdown last August. With the number of active listings at 8,257 and the number of sales at 1,025, we have a listings-to-sales ratio of 8.06. This is equivalent to an eight month supply of listings. A six month supply is considered a balanced market. We are rapidly getting closer to a stable market. The listing-to-sales ratio was 15.43 in January 2008.

I am seeing lots of bargains. Sadly for the former owners, they involve foreclosures, but I am impressed with what's available now for a person who wants to invest a little sweat equity.

Interest rates are still incredibly low at 6.25%, and money is available for qualified buyers. FHA is doing a lot to make housing affordable, but no one can predict how long their new programs will be available. This is a great time to buy a home.

Solar Energy

Tucson should be the solar energy capital of the world. We won't speculate on the frustrating reasons why it's not. But if you have been thinking of adding solar panels to your home, as I have, it might be a good idea to do it sooner rather than later. Tax incentives that make the installation more economically feasible may be expiring soon.

Mulies!

Yesterday I was enjoying lunch with my friend Linda at my Tucson Mountain home, Desert's Edge. Suddenly, I noticed a mule deer in the back yard, then two more! I was so excited. I had never seen deer there before.

I knew my neighbor, who has a gigantic non-native mesquite tree and a waterfall, used to have a family of deer who came to drink and relax in the shade of his back yard every day. I was jealous, and wanted some deer of my own. I plan to install a waterfall to lure them to my yard.

These most welcome guests hung around for several hours, chomping the bushes, striking beautiful poses, and lying under my less shady, native mesquite.

I felt so honored. They renewed my resolve to install a waterfall and vegetation that will attract more wildlife to my desert paradise.

Good Bye Bypass

We went to a party in Cascabel last weekend to celebrate the defeat of the incredibly stupid idea of building an I-10 bypass through the San Pedro River Valley. The San Pedro is the only undammed river left in the Southwest, and it is a magnet for birders from all over the world. Not too many years ago, it flowed freely and was lined with magnificent cottonwood trees. Thanks to the burgeoning development upstream in Sierra Vista and the immunity from environmental concerns enjoyed by Ft Huachuca, the river is dry and most likely doomed. Putting another nail in its coffin by building an interstate bypass through here is an idea that could only originate in the evil mind of a developer or a politician.

Cascabel is a magical little community of gentle folks living simply. It's about 90 minutes east of Tucson, and 20 miles north of Benson. Tucson friends of ours recently bought some land along the river. They had two nasty old trailers and a considerable amount of junk hauled away. They built a sweet little 8' by 12' shed with a corrogated metal roof for their home away from home and they have a composting toilet. The well has been cleaned out, but its water is too rusty to drink. We parked our VW camper among their mesquites and had a delightful getaway.

The locals tell us that sightings of vermillion flycatchers, western tanagers and hooded orioles are routine. We still got a thrill every time we saw a brilliant flash of fiery feathers zoom by us at close range.

After the sun went down, we heard an owl or some sort of night bird barking nearby. It wasn't the who who kind of owl.

As we were leaving our camp site to go to the party, we encountered a pink coachwhip snake asleep in our friends' driveway. He was about two feet long, and had bands across his back, with a very slender, solid pink tail. We wanted a photo, but didn't want to wake him with the camera flash. We didn't think he would be able to bite us because the evening had cooled off, but if a coachwhip does bite, he bites repeatedly, so we didn't want to harass him. By the time we got up in the morning, he had slithered away.

The party was down the road at Barbara Clark's Cascabel Clay Works. Her home is a completely enchanting work of art, made out of found parts. It seems to have grown organically out of the ground, and my first thought on seeing it was "hobbit house".

Wayback Machine provided the entertainment and our pal Gary Mackender sat in on the drums and cookware. I wasn't going to tell you that Gary forgot to bring his cymbals and he had to raid Barbara's kitchen for some pots that he clamped to his cymbal stands. Since Gary fesses up in his blog, I guess it's okay to show you his unique drum kit. The pots actually sounded pretty good.

You can go experience Cascabel the first weekend in December when Cascabel Clay Works hosts their annual winter crafts fair. Candles, leather goods, tie dye clothing, food and of course Barbara's clay creations will be for sale. Wayback Machine will probably play, and there will be peace and love, like in the old days.

Why fences are bad. This poor guy can't figure out how to join his family on the other side of the fence.

Night Blooming Cereus

We have a fabulous night blooming cereus growing inconspicuously in our wood pile at our Central Tucson home. Most of the year, it looks like a wimpy, half-dead cactus languishing on the ground. Last winter, some javelina chewed up quite a bit of it, and we wondered whether it would survive. The damaged stems grew scabs, and new branches have sprouted out of them.

Maybe the plant is in survival mode, but last night, it put on a show like we'd never seen before.

Forty-five blossoms! WOW! I think the most we have seen on one night prior to this was 23. It smelled like a church filled with Easter lilies. The bats couldn't have missed this extravaganza. Even with our puny human senses, we could smell the feathery blossoms from 20 feet away.
Steve has a theory that the cereus bloom during the full moon. The full moon was actually the day before the big show. When they were fully opened around 9 PM, most of the blossoms were facing the rising moon in the east.

By this morning, the show was over, and the gorgeous blossoms were wilting. What a wonderful world.

Our night blooming cereus keeps blooming all summer, one or two blossoms at a time. Last year there was another big bloom in August. We'll pay attention to whether it is during the full moon.

Licensing for Mortgage Loan Originators

Arizona requires real estate agents to be licensed. We take licensing classes, have to pass a test, we are finger printed and we have to take continuing education courses. There is a system in place to discipline real estate agents who break the law or behave unethically. An agent will lose his license if the Arizona Association of Realtors determines he is a menace to consumers and the real estate industry. This system helps limit the problems caused by incompetent and unscrupulous real estate agents.

Home inspectors, architects, engineers, and surveyors are licensed by the Arizona Board of Technical Registration.

Did you know that the weakest link in the real estate industry is the mortage business? We are all aware of the home loans that were made to people who were not qualified or properly informed of the terms of their loans. It's obvious that some of the blame for the current high rate of foreclosures can attributed to mortgage loan originators who either didn't know what they were doing, or knew what they were doing, but didn't care about the tragedy they were creating for their home buying customers.

Arizona regulates mortgage brokers (the people who find the loan for the borrower) and mortgage bankers (the companies that have the money to loan to to the borrower), but mortgage loan originators, the 10,000 people on the front lines advising the borrower, are not regulated.

Recently the Arizona House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a bill that would enable Arizona to join 30 other states in requiring licenses for mortgage loan originators. Background checks, continuing education requirements and testing would eliminate many of the rotten apples in this business. The Arizona Assocation of Mortgage Brokers supports licensing.

Licensing of loan originators should be a slam dunk, but State Senator Pamela Gorman, a Republican who heads the Financial Institutions, Insurance and Retirement Committe, will not let the State Senate vote on the measure. Gorman prefers voluntary registration. She calls a license "a slip of paper" that won't prevent fraud. She has no plausible explanation for why she opposes licensing, and she can't explain how voluntary registration will help consumers.