March Update

Spring Greetings!

I wish you a wonderful spring. Although, watching some Facebook postings from cousins living in New York and I’m wondering if I shouldn’t delay that greeting a few weeks. Their first day of spring started with 6 inches of new snow, makes me glad I live in California, We greeted spring with a hearty round of allergies. Our pine trees produce copious amounts of pollen which can turn a white car yellow in about two hours. Another wonderful sign of spring is that I pull out the ride on lawn mower and start cutting weeds/grass, the horses help, but don’t cover the entire area. I recall talking with a work associate years ago about his summer past time of mowing grass, he would literally be mowing grass several days a week. Fortunately, our cutting season only runs about 2 months, then it’s all nice and brown.

I did get out this weekend for a horseback ride in Harvey Bear county park and saw several nice wildflower spreads. From the looks of things the California poppies should be blossoming out over the next few weeks adding even more color.

Last week our grandson turned six, and for his birthday dinner we went on a horseback picnic to the park. Mom stopped and picked up Subway sandwiches, we then loaded food, horses, three kids and three adults into the truck and trailer and proceeded on an adventure. One kid rode on her own, the other two were led by adults and off we went about 1/2 a mile up the trail to a nice grassy picnic spot. Stopped had some lunch then went on up the hill to see more flowers, and a big gopher snake before heading back to the truck and home for cake and presents. Grandson’s comment, “it just doesn’t get any better than this.” I had another instance last week while horseback riding at the local park. Someone had their Doberman off leash (in a park that is NOT an off leash park), and when I asked them to put the dog on leash to go past them on a narrow trail, the dog decided to run toward me, ignoring the owners entirely. Fortunately I had time to get off, and scare the dog back to it’s owners. But it could have ended much worse. The sad part is that if the owner’s had kept the dog on leash as required by the park rules, this would not have been an issue. There are parks where dogs are allowed to roam off leash, and that’s fine, I can choose to not ride in those parks, or take my chances. These owner’s were very offended that I “threatened and scared” their dog, but it was their decision, and their lack of ability to control their animal that caused the situation. Unfortunately I think it’s time to start carrying pepper spray when I go riding.

Trivia for the month:

Today’s Question – Triskaidekaphobia is the fear of the number 13.  If you are not afraid perhaps you can think of 2 integers (whole numbers, not fractions) which can be multiplied to yield 13.  Do you know what these numbers are?  (Hint: they are two different numbers.)

Last month’s question: What’s the temperature – We all get goofy hearing weather folk quote temps in Fahrenheit or Celsius (centigrade).  What temperature would it have to be to get the same reading on either scale?

Answer – “minus 40 degrees, you can use the formula Farenheit = (1.8X Celsius) + 32”

We are watching home prices rise in most areas. Let’s hope it doesn’t get too crazy, a nice 5-7% annual appreciation would be sustainable.

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Gilroy CA, March 2015

• 99 homes on the market vs. 89 a month ago
• 34 median days on market compared to 39 a month ago
• Gilroy median price: $799,000 vs $759.900 a month earlier
• Gilroy median size: 2,602sq. ft.

This includes condo’s and single family homes. Data pulled from Movoto.com

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Mortgage Interest rates are back down and at six week lows. Long term expect some market pressure to move rates up a bit, but most likely the 30yr fixed is going to remain in the 4% range as long as we don’t see inflation in the economy.