Getting Ready for the Storm!

At last!  The storm we've been longing for has appeared on the horizon and should be here by this coming Thursday. We haven't had a storm of this magnitude come our way in several years.  If all goes as predicted, we can hope for five or more inches of rain.  Happy day!

Our plans for our Sunday took a radical shift when we learned about the amount of rain and wind that is scheduled to hit our area.  So instead of grocery shopping and getting Cornelius ready for his annual Christmas photo shoot, we spent the day readying Frogpond for the storm.

Fortunately the twin boys who come over to help with chores came today.  They are only 13 years old, but are hard workers and eager to earn money for the sports programs they participate in.  So they spent four hours working to help us clean out the culvert that leads to the pond (willow roots and branches had it clogged) and then muck out the gutters.

They are good at working, but also good at playing.  In between digging out the culvert and cleaning out gutters, they hopped up on the duck raft and there was actually enough water in the pond for them to pole around with sticks.  I'm not sure who had more fun:  the boys scooting around the pond and trying to unbalance each other, the dogs plunging after them and searching for underwater sticks or Bruce and I watching them and laughing at the water circus.






What is so wonderful about these boys is that they DO things.  They know how to play.  Mark Twain could easily have used them as prototypes for characters in his books.

In addition to their skill at working and playing, they also have extremely hearty appetites.  I mistakenly thought I'd boiled up too many hotdogs when I put in the entire package.  Hah!  With only a little help from Bruce and I, they made short work of them.  They also are mighty cookie eaters.  It's fun to feed teenage boys.  Who knew?

We are so fortunate to have these fine young people as neighbors.

Rebirth of the Frogpond Pond

We've had off and on rains (to be honest, more off than on...but still) this week so water is finally beginning to collect in the pond.  However, I've come home just as the sun was setting each evening so couldn't get much more than a tantalizing glimpse of reflected sky before the light was gone.






Today is Saturday so I indulged in reading in bed while sipping coffee.  Suddenly a golden light washed in and I looked up to find the sun had broken through the clouds.

Happy geese flapping around the yard after being let out of the barn

Naturally, I had to run outside in my red bathrobe to take pictures of the radiance that set all of Frogpond glowing.


















Behold!  Our pond is gradually coming into being again.  We still have a long way to go, but even that modest shimmer of water transforms everything.

Here is a view from the heap of rock and mud that will be an island when the water finally surrounds it.  Until then, I'm working on building it up.  In my red bathrobe, I chucked a few clods of muck up to the top.  Life in the country.

We're expecting another, bigger storm towards the end of next week.  Keep 'em coming!

The Island, Dried Mud and a Little Rain

At last we've had some measurable rain; not much by most standards, but after three years of drought, our bar is set rather low.  It's time to take a look at that sorry depression in the earth that used to hold our pond.

In late August it looked like this.  The water had disappeared several months earlier and the willows on my island had finally given up and died.  The cottonwoods and willows along the dam were also going brown and fading out. The fish, frogs, dragonflies, egrets, grebes and other wildlife were long gone.  A dead pond is a sad thing.

The dried muck on the bottom was fascinating though.  At almost a foot thick and baked brick-hard, it cracked into a million crazy puzzle pieces.












After the first small October rains, the weather had cooled enough that we decided to clean up the island.  We cut down and removed all of the dead willows.

Then Bruce got on his Kubota and began scooping some of the dried pond mud up against the island in order to add some mass to it.  I worked with a shovel, lard bucket and my bare hands to haul dirt to the top.

There is something oddly satisfying about creating an island.

The mud "bricks" lift right off the rock.  The broken pieces went into the lard bucket, while I carried the larger pieces up to the top one at a time.  Good exercise, island building!

Even after several gentle rains, the mud was completely dry except for the very surface.  I think we have our own natural adobe bricks.  I neatly stacked some of them on top of the island.  Others I just hurled up to land where they would.  As I said, great fun.

The last few days have given us about an inch of rain.  We are celebrating even this modest amount and hope that this is the beginning of a very wet winter.


It's still only a tiny bit of water, but it's so good to see  glimmer and shine begin to creep over all that dried mud.

Thanksgiving Visit

For the second Thanksgiving in a row, Unkel Mike has come to visit us all the way from Phoenix, Arizona.  Yay!  Coming from such a small family, it's a delight having such a kindred spirit to love.

The Yosemite Field Trip

Wow!  Wow!  Wow!  Today was our 4th grade Yosemite field trip and "Wow!" was the word of the day.  I'd worried that the trip had to be put off until mid-November -- short days, threat of rain and cold days.  We did have the short day (nothing could change that), but the rain came yesterday (and freshened and fragranced the air) and today was a perfect autumn day.  Golden leaves drifted down against a backdrop of granite cliffs and evergreens and the sun was warm even as the air was brisk.

The children were mesmerized by just about everything.  So was I.  It doesn't matter how many times I've been to this place, the magic astounds me every time.  However, today's autumn splendor pushed the experience to a new level.  The loveliness made it difficult to blink -- I didn't want to miss a second of it and scarcely knew where to look.  It was all so beautiful.

There is something so grand about a valley carved out by glaciers.  The place is magnificent, sweetly melancholy and spiritual all at once.

Yesterday's rain actually put a thin stream of water into Yosemite Falls.  Two days earlier, the cliff was dry, so we felt blessed.


Such a lovely day.

Pumpkin Wednesday

It was back to school today.  After four whole days away, returning wasn't so easy.  The children were tired and not yet ready to be students again -- chatty, distracted and needy.  I was pretty much in the same state (although I think I hid this a bit more successfully than they did).  

When I bought the class into the cafeteria for lunch, a student came to me and announced, "The office wants me to tell you that your pumpkin is here."  Happy news!  Happy day!  I hurried to the office and there was my friend Dorothea with a lovely home-grown pumpkin that she personally delivered to me.

It's not really a looking-at pumpkin -- it's an eating pumpkin.  Nonetheless, I think that it's exquisite -- deep-ribbed, heavy, and skin of a burnished orange with a silver sheen.  Lovely, lovely pumpkin!



I will enjoy looking at it and then tucking in to eat it -- pie, casserole, muffins...  I love autumn.

Break

Two baby cantaloupes that surprised me.  May they ripen!

So I had a LOT of schoolwork to do over my four-day break.  I dreamt about it three out of four nights.  I did none of it.  Instead, I hunkered down and began sorting out my kitchen.  And organizing the garage.  And getting my weaving stuff in order.  And bringing in the plants from the deck for the winter.  And reading a book (that nothing to do with teaching).  And enjoyed evenings of TV and cooking and relaxing.

This afternoon, as I continued on with my garage-cleaning, a car pulled into the driveway.  It was Becky -- my beloved but not often seen daughter!  We had such a lovely time -- even though we see each other so infrequently, when we're together, we just go on like no time has passed.  That is love.  I'm so very happy that she came.  :)

Tonight I'm getting my teacher hat on again and have lesson plans down and report card grades are next.  It all will get done.  And the universe will continue on its course.

A Good Sort of Saturday

It was a very pretty autumn Saturday -- possibly the last really mild one we'll be having this year.  I woke up early wanting to work.  The difficulty is that there is so much to do around here that fixing on any one, two or three things is very difficult.  I try very hard not to flit from task to task when surrounded by so much that needs to be done.  I decided to focus my abundance of energy and tackle one corner of our utterly filthy garage.  It took most of the day, but I swept, washed, and organized that one small corner.  Bruce took a load of junk to the dump and I felt physically lighter after it left.

I did take breaks from the garage and did loads of laundry, pruned some bushes, picked pomegranates  and even read several chapters of a book.  Tomorrow we'll either go shopping, drive up to Yosemite, work on the island building project, rearrange furniture...or possibly do none of these things.  I love these kinds of weekends.

I also must correct papers and get grades together for report cards, but school has been put in the back seat for a short time

.

Island Building

While looking at the ephemeral puddle down in the dried mud of our pond, I had a chance to take a long look at our "island".

A sorry sort of island, to be sure, with only a shallow puddle along one edge of it.  Still, once those magnificent winter storms arrive, it will be a true island once again.

So Bruce, I, the dogs and Max the Cat spent Saturday and Sunday afternoon sprucing up the rocky pimple that is our island.  All of the top-growth of the willows and cottonwoods that took root over the years has died over the summer.  So we began cutting it down and removing the dead branches.  Much better.

Bruce then hopped on the Kubota and began scraping the dried muck from the pond bottom to the base of the island.  The plan is to both widen and heighten the entire area.  Originally, we built the island from a load of large rocks that we bought and had hauled in.  We added some soil, but much of the rock was still exposed, with spaces between the individual boulders.  This weekend, we worked on adding soil to the top and sides.  Hopefully this will help the future trees survive more drought.

Island building is a lot of fun.  It's like being a kid and constructing a fort or a tree house or a house under a table with a sheet draped over it.
















It's creating a new world.  I love this!

Ta-da

Ask for a puddle and this is what you get.  A puddle.  What half an inch of rain looks like when the ground is bone dry.

Still, I'm not complaining -- we did end up with standing water in the pond.  A wish fulfilled.  An hour later it was gone.

This was just a warm-up storm.  The next will give us more.