Zinnias

I'm having to water them sometimes twice a day so they survive the heat, but four of them are blooming with more to come. Three pink and one scrawny orange one. The largest one looks like it's sprouting an arm, which I didn't think they did. I'm also wondering if I dead head the blooms once they're spent, whether I can get more blooms out of it, or whether each one is a one trick pony? The bloom on the first one that opened has been there about four days now and shows no signs of fading.

Yard Happenings And Whatnot

The zinnias right off the back porch are starting to bloom. Here's the first one.

I had about a dozen come up in the same area, but three of them didn't make it through the June heat. I have two others on the other side of my eucalyptus that have survived thanks to the shade from that tree, and have two more that have just sprouted at the base of the tree (from dirt I moved around when starting to build the extension on our deck).

Speaking of said deck, here's the latest on it. I've ran out of lumber from the old arbor I tore down off the back of the house. I'm thinking about resurrecting my planter that I had built on the arbor about a year ago to fill in part of the void, leaving a narrow strip left to cover. Doing this would cut the lumber I need in half to finish the job, and leave me a nice place to plant a few more things. We'll see if this idea is approved by the building inspector (Emily).

The calomonden is taking off in this humidity, and in the next two pictures you'll see that it's covered in hundreds (thousands?) of new blooms. I don't remember it ever blooming this heavily during the summer, but watered and fertilized it heavily today so the tree can support as many of these new fruit as possible. You can smell this tree as soon as you walk out the back door, it's blooming so heavily right now. I love ever bearing citrus trees, I wish our orange and lemon trees did this (with them you get one chance a year to make the growing conditions optimal, or else you lose your fruit and get nothing off the tree until the following season).

Microburst

The pictures I posted from my cell phone yesterday are of a now confirmed microburst that squashed East Mesa last night.

The article on the damage from the nasty bugger can be found here:

http://www.azcentral.com/community/mesa/articles/2008/07/22/20080722weather0722.html

There's also a nice picture of the storm from a distance, taken by a professional using something other than a cell phone with 1 megapixel.

We lost a few trees at the church, and the brunt of the storm missed there. As I was driving west on Crismon, the storm was to the north of the road, and you could see walls of rain blowing south across it, pretty incredible. Reminded me vaguely of the movie Twister, except I didn't see any flying cows or barns roll across the road in front of me.

Lots of clouds to our east this afternoon, they've been looming out there since noon, getting darker and darker. Will it actually move west, hard to tell, at least the sun is going away at the moment, and not too soon, it's 105 outside with 40% humidity, absolutely gross.

Another Near Miss

While at Wal Mart tonight, I walked across the parking lot to my car and looked west to see this column of rain. Like any Arizonan, I decided to drive towards it, rather than the opposite direction towards home.

And what a gully washer it was. It got close to our house, almost following me there, but it never rained. In east Mesa they got about two inches from this downpour.

I took these pictures on my cell phone camera, it literally looks like a hole opened in the cloud to dump the rain below. And through it all the sun was setting behind it, an eery orange orb.

Quickie

Not much to report on the yard, too bloody hot for anything of interest to be blooming, other than a stray sunflower, yellow bell, or orange jubilee, which I've posted here a zillion times before.

My zinnias that I planted back in the spring are coming on strong, now, however, and should be blooming pretty soon. The humidity and recent rains have helped them quite a bit. They're also nestled between my 20 foot tall eucalyptus and the house, so they're in the shade for much of the day.



My latest project in the back yard involves recycling the wood from our arbor that we replaced with the pergola, and extending our back deck. I've started framing it, but digging post holes in 100 heat with the humidity is a slow process. This past Saturday I swear I had broken a sweat by the time I had gotten my shoes on.

I'm using Brenna's water table to protect a bag of concrete mix from any rain that might come up (yeah, optimistic I continue to be). This morning I had a running conversation with my daughter while pushing her in her swing about why her water table was on the other side of the yard. I don't think she was terribly pleased by the tone of her voice. Notice the wood block placed strategically on the top where the umbrella for the stand usually goes, to block any rain from sneaking through the table. That's what a college degree will get you, ladies and gentlemen, brilliant ingenuity.

Sunset

Here are a few sunset pictures from our back yard. One nice benefit of the monsoon is that you get a lot of these.

More Crazy Weather

It hasn't rained much more since Thursday night, at least not at our house. Phoenix has gotten socked two nights this weekend with over two inches of rain, the airport has had almost five inches, nearly 75% of their annual rainfall, crazy.

Here is a shot of a thuderhead south of us a few nights ago.



And for those interested, here are tonight's rainfall totals, we've missed it to the west.

Not Your Typical Monsoon



Below is the latest 24 hour rainfall totals around our area. We're at 1.20 inches so far here, and it's still raining this morning. Matter of fact, I don't know if I can remember the last time that the sky was this black from one horizon to the next. Typically in the monsoon season the storms will build up overnight, it might or might not rain, and the clouds break apart at sunrise. Not the case with this disturbance that's pushed up from the south. It's supposed to rain all day today, and we have a good chance of continued rain through Tuesday.


At this point all four of my rain barrels are completely full (approx. 120 gallons) and the last one is overflowing since I never took the time to drill an overflow valve. Goes to show the potential amount of rainwater I could actually collect if I had more gutters and barrels on the north side of the house.

Rain Update

The rain has picked up again here at the house, we're nestled between two nasty storms, lots of thunder, but a gentle rain with no wind. Perfect.

Here's an updated screen shot of rainfall totals, an amazing amount considering it's supposed to rain all day tomorrow (supposedly).

My second rain barrel is almost full, the overflow from the first one is working well, although I think I'll drill a secondary hole, if it were raining harder my first barrel would be spilling out the top faster than the overflow valve can empty into the second one. It's hard to tell if the second barrel is leaking out of the spigot or not since it's so wet out, but I'll cross my fingers that it'll hold like the first one.

The spotted frogs are out hopping around the yard, they surface with the first good monsoon of the season. I just saw one cross the back deck that was about the size of a racquetball.

At about four tenths of an inch, I have probably fifty gallons or rainwater collected at this point with two more barrels to go.

Rain!

As promised on the regular blog, here are the rainfall totals so far from today. Mesa and North Phoenix are the winners so far, but I'll take anything we get out here. I have been holding off on watering all week, knowing this was coming, and the quarter of an inch that we got here this afternoon should help until more comes along tomorrow.

I went to Home Depot this afternoon and got brackets for my downspout, just in the nick of time. The top barrel pictured here filled up with just the rain we had earlier (about 30 gallons). And it's not leaking out of the spigot, best I can tell. So far, so good. We'll see with more rain tomorrow how the overflow works with the lower barrel.

While I was pushing Brenna in her swing, I took this picture of the clouds just starting to move in.

And here's a random picture of my shamrock that I bought back in March. It's starting to bloom again. It didn't pick up terribly well, but I like how the leaves lean towards the window during the day and close up at night. The undersides of the leaves are also neat, almost completely purple.

Poor Mouthing

As is typically the case on the 4th of July, we had some storms roll through the valley today. This thunderhead you see pictured here got to within 20 miles of the house and broke into a million pieces. I know better than to get my hopes up when I see these things forming on the horizon, because nine times out of ten they don't come over our house. It's just the nature of the monsoon.

Last night we had a line of storms heading right for us from the north that veered off and missed us to the west. South Phoenix had about an inch of rain, so good for them. Nature of the monsoon.

Here's a shot of the monsoon rolling in from the north at sunset. I was in the right place at the right time.

A thunderhead off to the southwest. We were surrounded, but no rain.