Despite getting soaked by rain all morning, we had a great hike in the desert yesterday. We noted a few more downed Saguaros. In this case as well as many others, the water logged ground became too soft to hold the rain swelled Saguaros in the strong winds and they were just pushed over.
Fallen Saguaro on Trail 4 – State Trust Land
Here’s another gigantic specimen spotted at Rock Knob last weekend. So sad 🙁
Before implementing my new landscaping skills, rain water would collect on one side of the house because the grading wasn’t done correctly. My solution was to create a large mound close to the house which would direct water away and then dig a long trench about two feet deep and fill it with medium sized rocks and then smaller rocks on top. The small rocks fell in all the spaces resulting in a nice path for walking. It’s working really well so far so I’m patting myself on my back. Thank you Landscaping School 🙂
Storm update: Tornado warnings last night! Talk about rare! We made it through the night with only one tree half way down but two possible tornadoes touched down in the Valley….about 10 miles from our house. It picked up one of the tents at a popular car auction held every year at this time. Lots of car owners crying over losing million and multimillion dollar collector cars 🙁
Wowie wow! What a night! When the thunder and lightning started, I ran upstairs and pressed
my camera against the window (too tired to find tripod). It was so dark, I had to guess at the focus.
30 seconds later, I have this! Another storm is forecast so the tripod/camera are upstairs read to go.
For inquiring minds: Canon 5DMK2, Canon 24-70mm, ISO 800, f9.5, 30 seconds
Since more rain is forecast, I thought there would be a red sky this morning but it was orange.
Besides staying familiar with my cameras, shooting a photo (almost daily) helps me learn “stuff”. Because I like to include some little tidbit with a photo, I will google the subject which usually leads to lots of reading. Most of us kind of understand what causes rainbows but did you know about their religious and mythological history? A search in Wikipedia revealed tons of information including the scientific history which was very interesting but reading that section made my head hurt 🙂
Another tone mapped image but this time only one shot and with a little grunge look.
We had a spectacular lightning storm last night but I didn’t grab my camera until it was almost over. Darn. This shot is from an upstairs window. I braced the camera against the frame of an open window while holding down the shutter. (recently lost my cable release)
(ISO 400, f/8, 21 sec)
We had a powerful storm move through last night. I didn’t get any lightening shots but did capture the morning after. Now to go out and repair the landscape.