heavy rain

we had about 3 1/2 hours of very heavy rainfall yesterday afternoon/early evening.  staal and i were out in it cutting trenches with shovel and hoe to divert water away from the back of the mill office and house.  the corner of the slab in the back room is a little damp inside this morning but that's about it.  our property is flanked by creeks on the east and west sides and both of them exceeded the drainage capacity of their 3ft diameter culverts and overflowed onto triangle rd for a little while.  happy our house is on high ground and happy the rain stopped when it did.

got a few photos and a short video...

creek on west side overflowing onto triangle rd

taken this morning from roughly the same view as above photo

triangle rd from the end our driveway looking southwest

taken this morning from roughly the same view as above photo

taken this morning standing in west creek looking south to triangle rd.  this is the "pond" from first photo

taken this morning in west creek looking south to triangle rd.  3ft diameter culvert, creek bottom is roughly 8ft below triangle rd

video taken during the storm (apologies for shakiness of image...was walking pretty quickly while shooting).

things are nice and calm today and we may even get a little sunshine later on.

a life together

we wrote a poem
together
about a life we'd live
now we write a life
living the poetry of it
together
day by day

for my brother

message

a message
left on the front step
written in ice
we both wonder
what it could mean

snow melt

last night's snow is melting fast in the morning sun, making rain under all the trees.

short video:

snowy morning

snowy morning
watching hands lace boot strings
marveling at the knowledge of the body

slushy day

36 degrees F today with a mix of rain and snow.

neat little world in this water droplet sliding off some manzanita blossoms

the ducks enjoyed some supervised forage time splashing and drilling in the water that has collected in the fig orchard swales. 

click image to play video:

expected to snow overnight.

many mushrooms

harvested 4 pounds of oyster mushrooms from the greenhouse today.  although they have proven to keep quite well in the refrigerator it's still probably a few too many for us to eat before they start losing freshness.  to preserve some of the harvest i decided to try out a little electric food dehydrator we picked up at a yard sale a couple weeks ago.  

today's haul, 4 lb of king oyster mushrooms

i filled the four trays of the dehydrator and was still left with plenty of mushrooms for immediate usage.

the dehydrator is running on the lowest temperature setting in hopes of preserving as much of the nutritional value as possible.  not sure how long it will take to get the desired dryness so i've been peeking inside now and then to check the progress.  i'll probably post some pictures of the finished product when they've finished drying.

homegrown breakfast

greenhouse, gardens, and ducks provided a lovely breakfast this rainy morning.

and for a nice bright finish to the meal i went out to the kitchen garden and ate a kumquat in the rain.