First Rain, pt.2

7:30 this morning: 1.5" in the rain gauge and the fishponds were at maximum fullness. The fish seemed to love it!

The New Rain Year Has Begun!

About a week earlier than past years I can remember, our first rain of the season fell this morning as a light rain. Real rain, not "heavy mist" or even "drizzle" but actual drops that splashed and caused water to run down Channel Drive. I join everyone in the burn areas around SoCal in hoping it doesn't come down too hard and fast, but actual rain in the third year of an officially declared drought is great!
It is just beginning, but as of 8:30am, we already had .20 inch in the rain gauge.

Koi & Goldfish 6 - Raccoons 0

I am so happy to have seen seven different raccoons in our backyard the past several weeks and none of them has caught a fish in our pond! Before I deepened and enlarged our fish ponds, I had gotten used to losing fish once they got to "good eating" size. As we begin to say goodbye to summer and look ahead to early fall (when raccoon raids have been the most destructive) it has been a pleasure to sit and watch the fish at their most active time. It has also been fun to have walked outside just as different raccoons have been crossing our pond bridge without trying to catch our fish! (By the time I had run inside for the camera, the raccoons were already in the tree or over the wall. I did get this lone 'coon as well as two of a group of four visiors.)

A Weekend of Celebrations

Friday was our wedding anniversary and today is Sam's birthday so I decided to scan our old photos in order to preserve them. Here is a slide show of our wedding back in 1971:

And here are some pictures of Sam:

This anniversary, we (the two of us with Richard & Nancy) had dinner at the Tam O'Shanter in Glendale and then saw Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal at the Greek Theater. It was nice to go home after the concert and wake up without having to pack up in the morning. Saturday was spent resting and recovering from all the great food and drink of the night before!

An Unexplained (Google) Phenomenon

I'm a great fan of Google's holiday and special event logos but today's is creating lots of comment because no one knows why they put it up. If you click on it, it automatically searches for "unexplained phenomenon" - however, the top result is this article in the British online news site, the Telegraph. Best of all are the comments and conjectures - click on the title to read them or google it yourself!
(Google has no better explanation on their Google-Logos blog.)