Rain Update

We finally have had enough rain to display above the bottom of the chart.

The amount of rain and its timing are fairly random, but....

Here comes the rain again

Falling on my head like a memory

Falling on my head like a new emotion

I want to walk in the open wind

—Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart

This probably isn’t interesting to anyone except Suna and me. After an inch of rain over the last two nights, our ponds are finally full again.

The top chart shows we have had enough actual rain this year to climb onto the chart. Based on a completely unreliable model, we should have a fairly wet year this year. Last year, we finished with an slightly better than average year. But we had enough rain to meet that milestone by the end of June when the taps turned off for a couple of months.

The bottom chart shows when we get rain each year since I’ve been living on the Hermit’s Rest Ranch. While monthly distributions are fairly chaotic, it’s starting to feel more like a tropical pattern. That is, we get heavier rains early in the year, almost nothing through the summer, and light rains in the fall. Unless a tropical storm or hurricane brings a flood.

The pattern of rains, their scarcity, and the melting of the permafrost have been causing me nightmares of late. The climate is always changing, but is this the beginning of the apocalypse climate scientists are warning of? As my dad used to say, “We’ll see.”

Brown Grass and No Water

The view from the back porch shows the pond is starting to show the effects of a string of dry months.

It’s been spitting rain off-and-on for a couple of days now—never raining, never being dry. We’ve had fog almost all day today. We could actually use a little rain.

January has been really dry. We’ve only had about 1.3 inches, and that follows a fairly dry December. The average for January is just over three inches. I hope we’re not seeing the start of another drought.

As Dad would say, “We’ll see….”

 

It Rained

Once again, the rain chains were overpowered. Need more chains or a different solution. I forgot to mention that Jaime installed the mesquite mantle. Suna has it decorated for Halloween.

I need more pallets and a better way to get to the garage. The front pond is full and cleaner after the deluge.

But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

—Bob Dylan

I don't really know how much rain we got since the rain gauges overfilled, but we have at least 7 inches over the last two days, and it's still raining. If it had come earlier, we might not have had the cigarette induced grass fire earlier this month. But it is what it is.

Once again our climate model held up: mainly drought broken by flood. The front pond was low enough to capture all the runoff, so the dam wasn’t breached this time. But the ground is very soggy. I spread a bunch of pallets between the garage and the front porch. I could use a couple more. At the height of the rain, they were just tall enough to keep our feet out of the water.

The ponds are all full again. The cattle will like that. The flow of fresh water also cleaned out most of the pond scum growing in the front pond.

 

Seeking Shelter From the Storm

The new pond crested the dam that doubles as the entrance to the property. Where the water spills into the arroyo, it is at least eight feet deep.

That X sticking up above the water is the top of the fence. The creek bed is a quarter-mile away.

  Try imagining a place where it’s always safe and warm

  Come in, she said

  I’ll give ya shelter from the storm

—Bob Dylan

We found out why we have a storm room this afternoon—the one I have always joked is our “zombie apocalypse room.”

A severe storm blew up—heavy rains, gusting winds, tornados. It dumped almost three inches of rain in less than an hour. Given that the ground was already saturated and the ponds were already full to capacity, there wasn’t much hope to avoid a serious flood.

The house is on one of the highest points of the ranch. So I wasn’t worried about the flooding. The tornados were another matter. We all—Suna, me, Jaime’s family, Grillo, and Stella—all crowded into the storm room and locked the metal doors. Rose insisted on running upstairs to hide, but she and the house came through without a scratch.

The winds were strong enough to blow Jaime’s wet saw off the front porch. We also found a 4x8 sheet of metal siding buried six inches in the ground just on the other side of the gate. The siding was the wrong color to have come from any of our buildings or any of Ralph’s.

Ralph stood on his back porch taking pictures until he realized pieces of his hay barn were flying over the house. He was uninjured. In fact, the only injury sustained on either property was a small cut on one of the horses.

Our neighbors in Pettibone weren’t so lucky. The tornado touched down in that area several times. It destroyed a huge swath of trees and phone lines. It also took out at least two houses. And, yes, there were fatalities reported there. I don’t have the details.

As bad as the storm was, I’m glad we, our neighbors, and most of the country came out fairly well.

 

The creek hardly ever floods the bridge, but it did this time. Suna is fast enough to be on both ends of the picture.

Storms always make for the best sunsets—when they don’t occult the sunset.

It’s Still Raining at the Ranch

Jaime is very creative. He wants to build a mantle out of a mesquite log he brought. I think it will be awesome.

All the rains make for some stupendous sunsets. Here’s another one. Our creek paddock is now a creek.

We’ve had almost six inches of rain since the first of the month. To put that into perspective, we got just over eight inches in 2012, but that was at the height of the drought.

Since I’ve been keeping records here, we’ve averaged around four inches in May, including this year. But the rains do make for some spectacular sunsets.

Construction Update

We got another inch of rain last night, which made getting workers and materials into the house…interesting. The ground is soft and slick, all the tanks are completely full, and the arroyo is flowing briskly again. But we got done what we needed to.

With the tile all up on the fireplace wall, Jaime started working on the mantle. He has a mesquite log he wants to sand down. I said we should leave the exposed edge tree-shaped, even if we do have to flatten the other three sides.

Ruben also got the washer and dryer installed temporarily. We’ll have to uninstall and reinstall them once the cabinets are done. It turned out cheaper, more useful, and better looking to have custom cabinets made to stand them on rather than buying the prefab drawers that match the appliances.

 

Ranch House Update

Something didn’t work right.

Stella remains nonplussed by the construction and the rain so long as she has her water bottle to chew on.

Here comes the rain again

Falling on my head like a memory

Falling on my head like a new emotion

—Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart

Time for another construction update on our house at The Hermits’ Rest Ranch. We’ve made good progress, if not as much as I’d like. Still, progress is progress.

• The house has been weather sealed, and the exterior siding is starting to go up.
• I’ve started piling sand up where the HVAC heat exchangers will go.
• Jaime has just about finished tiling the master bathroom.
• The drywall has been taped and floated, but there are still huge piles of the waste on the back porch.
• The second layer of subfloor is going down upstairs.

But in the middle of all that, we got another big rain: 1.6 inches over the last couple of days. The ponds are full to capacity again, and everything is soggy. The arroyo in the front is flowing briskly.

At least the rain is good for the little trees we planted last fall. The peaches continue to develop, and the fig shows signs of fruiting.

It’s Not a Parking Lot

Now if I can just convince Ruben to park on the driveway instead of in the middle of the yard. Photo by: Suna

Well dark clouds are rollin’ in

Man, I’m standin’ out in the rain

—Larry Davis and Joseph Scott

Well, there’s more rain in the forecast…actually in the front yard. This will play billy hell with construction.

Rain

The sun is visible through the clouds above the ranch house Photo by: Sue Ann

I wanna know

Have you ever seen the rain?

—John Fogerty

I think I can say the drought is breaking, if it hasn’t already broken. So far, we’ve had the wettest January and March since I’ve been keeping records at the Hermits’ Rest.

You can see the effects in the greening of the weeds around the house. They are growing in where construction has disturbed the ground for the last couple of years.

Speaking of construction, I’ve also laid some PVC pipe to carry rainwater away from the house. After a failed attempt to use chains I could buy locally, I ordered some decorative rain chains from Amazon. Let’s see how they work.

It Was My Birthday

Once Dad would have been on his feet, pacing around the fire. I’m just glad he’s feeling good enough to be out watching it. Photo by: Chris

This will be my third attempt to post a birthday blog. Blogger ate the first attempt for an improperly closed HTML—which X2 used to pronounce “hate mail”— tag. The Blogger editor used to a little more forgiving than that, but I guess they’ve made it so easy to use that it’s extremely destructive.

Other than disgruntlement with Blogger, this has been one of the best birthdays I can remember. Unfortunately, since it’s taken so many times to get this post done, I don’t remember all of the things I was going to list. Here are some of them:

• Quality time spent with loved ones
• Good health
• Word that Dad’s radiation is done with and he’s starting to get his health back
• Enough rain for burning the brush pile at the farm to be thinkable

Patio Furniture

This is the new patio furniture that has been wet since I finished putting it together.

Suna and I celebrated Valentine’s Day early this year. We went to Z-Tejas, a restaurant that has some of the best food and deafening acoustics. Hopefully, the next time we go there, it will be warm enough to sit outside.

The other part of our Valentine’s Day celebration was to go to the Home Depot and buy some new patio furniture for our new patio. While we were deciding which set we wanted, we ran into the guy who built it for us. That was kind of a cool irony.

So I spent a good part of the weekend assembling the furniture. Even Ikea could learn something about packaging from Home Depot’s Hamilton Bay brand. Not only did they package all the tools required (as does Ikea), the shrink wrapped the nuts, bolts, washers, and spacers to cardboard backing that was labeled with the part reference from the assembly instructions. I was astounded.

This week, I am grateful for my special Valentine, Suna. Not to mention that I am also grateful for the new patio furniture and the patio to put it on. I’m looking forward to sitting out on the patio and sipping some cold beverages while getting to know the neighbors better.

Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that we got a healthy rain last night. It wasn’t enough to break the drought, but I appreciate every drop.

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10 February Update: Added the picture I didn’t get to take when I was putting the furniture together.

Grateful Monday

This is one of my favorite scenes in the garden. I know I have posted it before. Just showing progress.

This is the last Monday of my current contract, and I have a lot to be grateful for. Forgive me if I ramble on.

Suna and the boys

It is so wonderful to have a place of refuge where I can find peace and support. Suna and the boys give me more than I can hope to return. I am grateful for this.

Nature at home

Yesterday, Beccano took Suna and I upstairs to show us a nest of cardinals just outside the guest room window. The cardinals incorporated dog-chewed plastic bottles, dog hair, and more traditional items into the nest. This is like having a science museum at home. Unfortunately, I think the screens will keep us from getting good pictures from that perspective.

We also got about 7/8” of rain last night. It was a gentle, soaking rain—very unusual for this time of year. When we get any rain at all, it usually comes as a quick deluge that runs off before it can do any good. The cloud cover has also kept the temperatures reasonable today. You can go outside without feeling like you’re stepping into a convection oven.

I am grateful to be able to enjoy nature at home without having to worry about how to extract a living from it.

This assignment

Not only has the money from this assignment been good, the support of the people with whom I have worked has been very healing. I had developed a very negative attitude toward ALE in my tenure there. Now I am grateful for this team, who has helped be regain the equilibrium that ALE originally destroyed.

I came here nine months ago—time passes so quickly!—on a 90-day contract. I have enjoyed my stay and been productive, earning what I have been paid. Now I am going without regrets. Thanks to this team and ALE. I look forward to the potential of coming back again.