Rain and Flowers

Thursday evening we had quite a dramatic display of weather — thunderstorms, lightning crashing all around us, and several periods of very intense rainfall. Downpours are very uncommon here, so when it started really coming down hard on Thursday, we interrupted our activities to watch the show. Lea (our oldest field spaniel) is terrified of thunder, so the poor thing spent an hour or so trembling in fear. We humans, though, were just delighted! My weather station recorded 7mm — just over a quarter inch — of rain in a single 14 minute period. That’s a rate of 29mm (over one inch) per hour — a veritable sky-gusher by our normal standards. I cannot recall such an intense rainstorm in our entire history living in Lawson Valley.

This morning the skies are clear, the temperatures are very pleasant, and the humidity is a very pleasant 30%. Jim Barnick, our friend and neighbor, stopped by for coffee and to ask for some help unloading his gigantic new gas grill. His property abuts ours, and is directly uphill from us. I decided to bring my camera along and to walk back to our house by walking through the chaparral that lies between us. His property is cleared up to (and slightly across) the border with ours. Years ago, I cut a rough road in the upper part of our property; it gets to within 60 or 70 feet of Jim’s cleared section. So “all” I had to do was bushwhack through 60 or 70 feet of chaparral. That took me an hour! Still, it’s always interesting to see what the condition of the chaparral is, and I can’t imagine better weather to do it in (bushwhacking in the summer heat is nearly unbearable).

These three photos are taken from just about the highest point on our property. The rightmost one catches an interesting phenomenon quite nicely. See that bright patch near the center (click on it to get a larger version)? That’s a manzanita, but it’s no different than the other manzanitas all around it. It is bright because those particular manzanitas are where my shadow fell — meaning that the sun, me, and the manzanitas were all aligned. The manzanitas, like many plants, constantly move their leaves so that they expose themselves best to the sun. When things are all lined up like this, that means they reflect a lot more light back toward me than other manzanitas would (because I’m not lined up with them and the sun). This morning the effect was enhanced because we had some dew overnight, and the little beads of water on the leaves also acted like retro-reflectors. The blue flower is a ceanothus that was lit up, but right beside a shadowed rock that made a nice black background. The white flower is a lemonadeberry, which is a kind of sumac. This plant is most notable for always having luxurious green foliage, no matter how severe the summer droughts are.

These photos are all of the same ceanothus that’s in the upper part of our cleared yard. This individual is particularly beautiful this year, and here I’ve caught it from several directions and distances…