It is officialy fall in Arizona

I know that for the other parts of our country having a daytime temperature of 97 degrees isn't considered fall, but in Arizona it is a little bit of heaven.. This week we have night time temps. in the 60's and late afternoon temps. in the mid 90's. Such a beautiful time of year to be able to spend time outside. I have a red Lantana by my front walk that last winter froze down to the ground and I thought I had lost it. I love it because it gives a splash of bright color to the front of my house.. Well..I have to trim it every 3 to 4 weeks, because it takes over that corner of the sidewalk and people can't get by it easily.. maybe that freeze we had in January was good for theArizona plants.

It seems that all of my plants and lawn are doing great.. The other morning after I finished running errands, I opened my front door as I usually do to check and see if the brown truck left anything on my doorstep and noticed that the bubblers in my front flowerbed were still running. They are set to go on at 3am and shut off 8 minutes later, problem ... I went into the garage to the "mystery box" that houses my sprinkler system and stared at it, like it was going to tell me what the problem was. (kind of like when I would raise the hood of my car and look at the engine). I flipped the switch for the flowerbed zone to off and checked to see if it shut off and NO it didn't . The water was up to the top of the brick border around the beds and I was at a quandary as to what to do.. I called my son Jason and he told me to turn off a valve in the front of my house.. Well, maybe a man could just turn off this valve, but to me it was STUCK..so I did what any woman would do I got a hammer and "gently" tapped it off.. and the water stopped flowing. So for 2 days I have had to go out with my hammer and persuade the valve to the on position and then run each zone area of the yard sprinkler system by hand.. When I called my yard guru guy to set up an appointment to come fix my problem, he had a heart attack when I told him how I was able to shut the valve off.. He made me promise "No more hammers on pipes".. Not good he said.. so tomorrow he is coming to fix it.

I visited my condo on Saturday to get pictures of my new counter tops and they are so beautiful. it is scary when I was sitting in the showroom of the interior designer picking out my surfaces and they looked beautiful together and then to see my choices put into place is so refreshing.. I am loving the choices I made. I have been searching for a large rug for the living room area of the great room. Since my tile is neutral and my furniture is dark brown leather I wanted to get a rug with some color in it.. Still looking, I'm not the flowery or traditional ornate rug type, I have been looking at contemporary styles and have found some that I need to look at and ponder over.. the tendinitis in my Achilles has flared up again and it really burns.. OUCH..not fun. So I elected to stay home the next couple of days and rest it and ice it..so while I am home I am putting together some more door prizes for the Armstrong fundraiser we are sponsoring for the Tracy Armstrong family. it is really helping me clear out my scrapbook room and I love being able to give service to such a deserving family. The event is on Oct. 19th.. from 5 pm to midnight and we will have Lance Anderson one of the owners of Rusty Pickle teaching "2" classes and will have a silent auction (great items to bid on), a Mexican buffet provided by Manuals restaurant and lots of fun.. I have put together about 225 door prizes so far and want to do more. So back to bagging.