I told you it would grow back...

As I mentioned in Yardwork..., I knew the grass would grow back and the pruned trees would actually fill out and grow more. It is now a little less than 2 months since the yard was cleared and a little over a month since our first Monsoooooooon! rain. This is what the land now looks like. I didn't shoot from every similar angle, but you can get the general idea.

This is just east of the driveway as you approach the house.

This is the same area after you turn into the driveway.

And this the the west side of the driveway, i.e. the house side.

Here we've gone to the end of the driveway and turned around facing south.

This is the ditch on the south side of the property. We are facing west.

This is from the road.

This is farther west on the road. Some areas don't grow back as profusely as others.

This is from the road and a little west of the house.

This is the dividing line between the Natural Open Space on the left (west) and what we can manage on the right. You can't see the stake anymore due to all the growth.

This is the area just east of that, closer to the house with the drain field to the right side of the picture.

This is the mesquite tree with all the action. You will see some of that at the end of this posting.

The infamouse rockpile with the west edge of the drainfield.

The rain barrels from the east side of the house.

And from the west side.

The area between us and the north neighbors. We're facing west here and standing close to the rain barrels.

The courtyard. We gotta get this graveled, paved or something as soon as the monsoon is over this year.

The Mexican garden area.

Now for a few close ups. This is that barrel cactus in the right of the Mexican garden area. Lots of things are blooming for the first time this year and some for the 2nd. This is an example of a 2nd bloomer.

This prickly pear now has fruit on it. I like them just as much with the fruit as with the blossoms. The ocotillo is growing up through the prickly pear. It's the only one we have now, but we really like them and have more on our landscape plan. Most of the year they look like dead thorny sticks, but when it rains they are covered with tiny leaves.

Now for a bird diversion:

About 2 weeks ago, I was out walking Cisco around 4 in the afternoon and saw this Turkey buzzard in a tree snag close by. They are usually up and flying when it's hot, but maybe it was too hot that day.

After we passed him, I figured he would fly away, but when we got back to the house I discovered he hadn't, so I took lots of pictures through our windows.

He spent only a minimal amount of time closed up and then he decided to spread his wings.

From the time I first saw him do this until he closed up again was about 5 minutes. That sure seemed like a long time for him to hold his wings out.

A few days later, late in the afternoon, this female cardinal flew from that action mesquite right into one of our windows. She didn't hurt herselft too badly and I got these pictures after she went back to the tree.

So that's the latest from LMMM. Trout came home to a very green landscape due to the rains. We've had dark skies, lightning and thunder since he got back but not a lot of rain. Still our rain barrels are totally full, so if the monsoon stops soon as predicted, we will have some rain water to use for awhile on our few plants.

Monsoooooooon!

I was whining about not getting much rain at LMMM. I wanted the rain because we need it and because we needed to see how well the latest round of grading was going to work at moving the water around the house. Yesterday, I got my chance in a classic example of "be careful what you wish for".

It rained very hard for very long. Typically this time of year the rain is heavy in scattered storms around the area. Yesterday our area was the main event, complete with flash flood warnings. Of course I had to take some pictures.

The storm started about 4:30 or so. It had wind and some thunder along with the rain, but not the huge number of lightning flashes we'd had in the weeks earlier, all of which produced no measurable precipitation here. Yesterday it was definitely measurable.

I went out about noon today to take some dry pictures to contrast with the wet ones, and to see the way the water flowed on the land and in the street.

This is looking out the front door at the house to the east. Clicking on the pictures will help you see the actual rain and the water flowing in many of these pics.

This is our normal puddle place in front of the garage and shop doors. It came so hard and so fast that you'd swear we never had any additional grading done.

Here the water is coming from the sky and down our driveway. Some of it is from the road and some is coming off the slight hill to the east.

This shows it running off from the east. We got no water coming over the retaining wall, so we may need to extend it toward the road.

This is the driveway with the water rushing into the bypass area on the south side of the house. Those little stakes and tape define a planting area.

Now we shift to the back of the house. There are 5 runoff crickets on this part of the house roof. They take the water to the top of the back porch roof. Then it shoots off into the west yard. We are seriously thinking about guttering this roof and taking the water into another rain barrel. It probably would've almost filled up just from yesterday. Here you can see 2 of the runoff areas, one on either side of the post.

This is a shot of the one on the right in the picture above and the 2 others to the north.

Here you can see what's already on the ground and where these streams of water are hitting.

I took this picture just to get a good shot of the sky.

These are some of the places where that water digs into the ground and erodes it. If we do nothing else with our landscaping, we will have to do something about this. It's eroding back to the edge of the porch and compromising it.

These pictures were taken today. You can see the partly cloudy sky with a downpour in the distance.

This flow is into the Mexican garden.

Now back to the front driveway. I was wondering if the trench our neighbor dug was helping or not. In this area, it did until it filled up. This is running down the side of the retaining wall.

We weren't supposed to get this puddling anymore. Maybe we will need the Ark next door.

This shows water coming out of the trench and into the runoff area on the north side of the house. Our Ark neighbors also have some water flowing through a shallower trench on their property.

This is coming off their land into the trench, but most of the water that goes into it comes from the land to the east.

This is a picture looking from the open east shop door to the south.

Here's what it looked like by noon today. It's mostly dry, but wouldn't be if we had more rain. These are issues that will have to be dealt with more delicately if we have the driveway graveled or paved.

Here you can see where water flowed into the driveway from the east.

This shows another pathway of water from the east.

This was the best shot I could get from inside of the water flowing down the street. It's mostly on our side. This is at our driveway.

Here's what that looked like today. When we first signed up for the house, we were told we would have to put a culvert here. Then the county decided we didn't need it. I think we may after all.

This is the mesquite on the east side of the driveway. You can see how the water pooled there.

This is looking west along the street. The water took the path next to our property.

I had to step over to the other side of the road to take a picture. It is totally torn up. I'm sure the county will be around soon...

The water cuts in a bit here at this prickly pear. We may be losing some of our lot.

This is from that prickly pear looking back east. The erosion is pretty bad.

This is back on our land south west of the house. This is actually right where the landscaper has a half-circle seating area with a fire pit. I don't think so.

This is the same area somewhat dry today.

Now we go back to the rain barrels on the north side of the house. The grading did help the water to channel through here quite well. We will need to line this with rock to slow it down a bit.

Here it is from the west side of the house. As you can see, some of the runoff is from our Ark neighbor.

The pop-up valve on the west rain barrel is working well. It must be full. The other one didn't pop up at all.

This is the water flow between our houses. A couple of years ago it was much worse than this, so the channeling must be helping. I need to plant some water loving trees here -- willows or mesquites.

This is the west driveway from the shop.

This is about where the natural open space begins.

This is the pop-up valve and the channel today.

And this is the area between the houses.

We usually get damage at the end of the west driveway when it rains, and yesterday was no exception.

This may not look like much, but it's a rut at least 6" deep.

I took lots of pictures through the windows with water on them. This was my favorite. It's the only one that has the wall color reflecting in the drops.

So this is not the dry heat part of the year. I think we can expect water like this once a year. It's not as bad as cows on hills near Centralia or midwest flooding, but I noticed our across the street neighbor got home at least 1/2 later than normal on Friday. She must've had to wait for a wash to clear.