Acequias

I got acequia water yesterday. I thought it was over for the year. This 'wild and worthless' place was settled by people who saw a creek running from the mountains and sinking into the desert. They channeled the water into a system of ditches and settled into a fortified village. Twenty years later, persons seeking relief from the zeal of the law found the place quite suitable to their life style and joined the more peacable earlier settlers. The ditch water still floods our properties and enables great cottonwoods and poplars to grow along the ditches. There have been many law suits and speculation scams over the precious water. I am at the end of the line so I am at the mercy of people above me. I get 'left over' water, which means I don't have to open and close the gates. It is a community operation, overseen by a water master, and god knows why the system works as well as it does. If you shoot someone for cutting off your water I think it's considered justifiable homicide.
I awoke this morning to the smoke alarm. I borrowed a ladder to get up to it and replace the battery. Since I had the ladder I got on the roof and closed the vents to the swamp cooler and swept two years' worth of dead leaves and pecans off the roof. Then I had to rake up all the stuff I'd swept off and get rid of it. Took most of the day.
Today the Tibetan holy man gave me a stone on which he had written 'Om Mane Padma Hom' in Tibetan script. I told him I would like to copy the script. He told me I couldn't because it had to be 'perfect'. Hmm.