spray in one place

Summer is here.

Now, I know the pedantic will point to the calendar.  Proudly counting that I am five weeks too early.

But we all have our own ways of declaring the start of summer here in Melaque.  For some it is the arrival of the land crab migration.  For others, the start of the rainy season.

For me, summer has begun when the heat and humidity combine to make it too uncomfortable to sit on the patio without a floor fan.  Thursday afternoon was summer for me.

I have no idea what the temperature was nor how high the humidity climbed, but I could not read about one more Plantagenet tragedy without schlepping the fan outside.  Even Gomez the Foster Dog abandoned his shady corner to join me in the electronic breeze.

The start of summer means it is time for another tradition in my little casa.  The water in my shower is gravity-fed from a storage tank on the roof.  That water is pumped from a cistern on the property.  The cistern water comes from the pipes in the street.  Before that, I have no idea where it comes from.

But whatever the source, by the time it gets to my shower head, it starts gumming up the works.  Once a year, I take the screen off of the shower head and clean it out.  I will spare you the description of the large hunks of debris I find.  What interests me most is the calcification.

In just one year, the holes in the screen are almost completely closed by mineral deposits.  Almost as if I were showering in Carlsbad Caverns.  It takes me about 15 minutes with a brush and solvents to strip the crust and clear the holes.  I suspect the screen looked a good deal like my teeth as the dentist cleaned them earlier this week.

But that task is done.  The cleaning does not increase the water pressure, but, at least, the water does not spray everywhere other than where it should.

And I can now get ready for the land crabs and the rain.  They cannot be too far behind.

After all, it's summer.