Rain, beautiful rain

We got about an inch.

That will make everything "pop".

A couple of differences between irrigation and rain are that irrigation rarely puts on as much water as a good rain and that the rain is more evenly distributed.  You may think you are laying an inch on your garden but you probably are just wetting the surface.  I calibrate my sprinkler setups by putting two or three, five gallon buckets in the pattern and I time how long it takes to put an inch in them.  Often it takes 6-to-8 HOURS when using impulse sprinklers.

Spot watering (as in trickle) will supply water but as Loren noted, that technology tends to create deep, narrow wet spots.  It will keep the trees alive and the trees/bushes will even keep photosynthesizing.  But they rarely push new growth.  Most of the fertility in the soil is in the top couple of inches.  The trees cannot extract those nutrients when 90% of the surface is dry.

At this point, I am not smart enough to inject fertilizer into my irrigation.  Maybe someday.

An unanticipated upside of trickle irrigation

Flushing the line.

It is easy to add more runs.

While repairing the kink reported yesterday, I inserted a "Tee" and added another run to water the filbert bushes.

I used  Figure 8 piece to terminate the run.  This is the same end as shown above and is under pressure.  It is not leaking a drop.

Loren, thanks for the tip you left in the comments!

Raccoons

Tearing up my hummingbird feeders.  I switched them over to a line suspended between a couple of high points....a bit like hanging a grub-bag in bear country.

They ripped the yellow "flowers" off the base of this one and drained it.

Precocious Oak Trees

Acorns.  I don't know if this is a fluke but I intend to keep an eye on this tree.

Forensics

A broken window in the garage.

You can see the projectile between the two panes of glass.  It penetrated the inside pane and cracked the outer pane.  It looks bigger than .177" and has a flat spot on it.

Heroic dog protecting his owner from a huge snake

Well, kind of.

 

"And don't come back!"

Raspberries are ripe