A little at a time, we’re going to decorate our little desert house for the Christmas Holiday. Today, I started out by trimming our little mailbox with poinsettia flowers. They are the plastic kind, but look very nice around the rim of the milk can that serves as an anchor for the post. Click on the image to enlarge.

Last week, we brought home several stems of Asian lilies that were on sale on the flower stand at the supermarket. This week, they have started to open and display their vivid colors. Click on the image to enlarge

Now that the lemons are ripe, we went to the “orchard” next to the RV drive and pruned off all the lemons. These are the “Lisbon” variety of lemons. There were about forty on the tree before we picked them today.

The bucket in the image to the left measures about a foot in diameter and is fifteen inches deep. Click on the image to enlarge.

Most of the lemons are quite large. We’re planning on giving some to the neighbors and keeping a few in our fruit bowl for our Friday fish meal.

One year ago the house looked like this. Mouse over the image to see our home today.

The Cimarron sage bushes that we installed last June are starting to bloom. The tiny purple flowers look very nice next to the greenish gray leaves on the bush. Click on the image to enlarge.

We went grocery shopping today. I bought Asian lilies for the vase on my desk and yellow roses for the vase on the sofa table in the great room. I took one of the roses and put it in a bud vase in the guest bathroom. I love the variegated edges on the petals. Click on the image to enlarge.

This is Beethoven (whom we call “Bay Bay”) atop the spa cover. He likes to jump up there to watch the desert critters in the wash next to our house. He sees quail, cottontails, squirrels and jackrabbits. He barks at them and acts like he wants to jump through the screen enclosure to run after them.

Jumping up on the roughly three foot high spa cover is no problem for him. He uses the steps to get up but I’m sure that he could jump on top without them. Our bed is about the same height and he has no problem jumping up there with us when we retire for the evening.

Earlier this week we used the spa and were out drying off when we let the little dogs come out on the patio. Bay Bay decided he would jump up to see what critters were out there and did a splashdown right in the middle of the spa. I quickly fetched him out and had him in a towel within a few seconds. Poor little guy.

I thought that he would be reluctant to jump on the spa cover after the water incident, but he was back at his usual lookout post later the same day. We will now wait until the cover is on before letting him out on the patio from now on.

Here is a comparison of the appearance of our retirement home one year ago versus today. It is very gratifying to look back at where we were one year ago and compare it to Damsel’s dream retirement home of today. Click on each image to enlarge.

There is a mesquite tree between the RV entrance and the courtyard. I had the landscaping crew trim this tree a bit so I could have a place for wind chimes and mobiles. I got a sunburst mobile at Big Lots last week. I think it adds a little fall color to the yard. Click on the image to enlarge.

Now that Summer is over, we expect to see some changes to the shrubs. The flowering plum (barely visible at the lower right) and the red birds will lose their leaves. The Cleveland sage bushes will keep their leaves and (hopefully) will come into bloom with fragrant little purple flowers. I will be getting some more statuary, a chiminea and a decorative southwest style bench. Click on the image to enlarge.