In The Desert

So I'm outside this weekend, reading and sipping my tea on my balcony, and this sweet little lady comes out of her townhome across the way. And she sweeps up in front of her townhouse, and comes out with a dustpan and clears up whatever she found out there.

Then she gets the hose.

She hosed down her blacktop for twenty minutes, scrubbed it with a broom, and then hosed it down again. I want to be clear, there's nothing in front of our townhomes. There's an asphalt parking lot occasionally interrupted by a tiny gesture that says "we could landscape here, but as you can see, it's blacktop." All the tiny landscaped bits are watered with an automatic system. Behind the townhomes, it's spectacular--grass and trees and shrubs and water and ducks and fish and turtles. But in front, it's blacktop, and that's all she wrote.

So here are my questions.

Did someone die in my parking lot, or is this just general maintenance? Since this is Mesa, land of the retired, I'm going to assume that there was no drive-by (although the idea of a crochety old dear on one of those runaround scooter things just losing it over some squabble with our HOA, Falling Down style, has a distinct appeal). Does she know why it's called blacktop? I mean, she does understand it's not going to look like a sidewalk, right? Does she know she's in the desert? Woman, seriously, I know you probably moved here from Iowa or someplace where water falls from the sky and then things grow, but in case you hadn't noticed, it takes some serious work to get that water here. And why does she care? Will I care what my blacktop looks like when I'm 80?

Yeah, I agree. It seems unlikely.