I have often wondered if I would have liked Tucson better if we had bought a house with a pool at the start. I was always worried about Ben, and later, Maya, drowning in a pool so I adamantly refused to even look at properties that had pools when we first moved here. Seven years and seven dreadful summers later, I wonder, “What was I thinking?” Of course we should have bought a house with a pool! Ben and Maya love to swim, and so do I. Water makes the heat bearable, and we spend a lot of time at public pools in the summertime.
This “pool” happened because I tried to make a garden in the backyard next to the guesthouse. And tried. And tried. The soil in my backyard was mostly dead when we moved here, the result of backyard mechanics dumping oil and other pollutants on the ground, along with a clever realtor who had the previous owner hire a backhoe and take off all the topsoil, making the backyard nice and smooth — and full of trash and other paraphernalia just under the surface. We spent several years digging up car parts and the occasional stereo speaker whenever we planted a tree, and I’ve been composting for six of the seven years we’ve been here. 
This particular spot doesn’t grow garden vegetables, even after years of trying and adding soil amendments, but it’s soft and the dirt is nice now. In fact, it’s a perfect place for Saffron to dig, and she had dug it out to make a nice round depression there, where she likes to lay in the sun. Ben and Maya, with the wisdom of children, found out it made a nice hole for a mud puddle too. Not exactly a pool, but with temps reaching 101 degrees here already, at least it’s wet.
