The red birds are doing great in the courtyard. I took this photo a couple of days ago when the sun was shining. Now, however, the clouds are overhead and there is a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms. The flowers in the courtyard like the rain. Click on the image to enlarge.
Last week, we sent our granddaughter a baby care package. Verna picked out things that a new mother would need after giving birth plus some little outfits for our first great grandson. The granddaughter, in return, sent us a wonderful gift: a framed 3D ultrasound image of his little face with a colorful card.
I just hanged up the picture in our office today where I can see his little face as I sit at the computer. Click on the image and the picture link to enlarge.
Last evening, we were bringing the dogs back from walking when I noticed the sun rays among the cloud build ups over the house. I call this effect a “glory,” but it does have a technical name, crepuscular rays.
Wikipedia has this about crepuscular rays:
Crepuscular rays (also known as God rays) in atmospheric optics, are rays of sunlight that appear to radiate from the point in the sky where the sun is located. These rays, which stream through gaps in clouds (particularly stratocumulus) or between other objects, are columns of sunlit air separated by darker cloud-shadowed regions. Despite seeming to converge at a point, the rays are in fact near-parallel shafts of sunlight and their apparent convergence is a perspective effect (similar, for example, to the way that parallel railway lines seem to converge at a point in the distance).
The name comes from their frequent occurrences during crepuscular hours (those around dawn and dusk), when the contrasts between light and dark are the most obvious. Crepuscular comes from the Latin word “crepusculum”, meaning twilight
This is an image of lower Casandro wash just before it flows into the aqueduct under Mariposa Drive. If it were not for Casandro Dam located 1000 feet upstream, the entire property zone where we built our house would be flooded rather than just this trickle.
The dam’s catch basin stores most of the water flowing down upper Casandro wash when the monsoons come. There is a regulated pipeline that originates in the basin and ends with the pipe that slowly releases the trapped water at a point below the dam.
Just last Friday, Verna and I were down in this part of the wash picking up bottles, cans and other unsightly debris to be recycled rather than be an eyesore to us and anyone else that likes to see our desert clean from debris like that. Click on Verna’s image to enlarge.
One hell of a gully-washer this afternoon. The skies opened up, the thunder and lightning came and after the sheets of rain let up a bit, we went out to see the road flowing like a little river. Click on the image to enlarge.
We had been grilling hamburgers earlier and managed to get our trailer awning retracted and the gear put away before the monsoon showers came. Putting the stuff away in time was a combination of luck and intuition.
I decorate our mailbox stand with flowers for every season. I just updated it to show red, white and blue colors for the Fourth of July holiday.
At Christmas time, there will be poinsettias, on Halloween, there will be orange, yellow and brown flowers and in the springtime, there will be bright spring flower colors.
Other times of the year, I will take a notion to just put something cheerful and pretty around the stand (which is a painted old milk can). There is always something I can put there.
I know we don’t get a lot of traffic on our dead-end road, but for those that do pass by, there will be something pretty.
