I think that what we need to do is learn to eat squirrel and rabbit. Logically, when we get a couple of barn cats, some of our rodent and related species problems should go down. Someone told me that the smartest, fastest, hunting-est dogs can be outwitted by ground squirrels. He has boundless admiration for these creatures.  They are admirable, ( Read more... )

Not that it's been a bad day. On the home front things have been nice. Some of the grown kids were around, one granddaughter was here, too.  Good eats, good company, good coffee. Drove to town to watch some fireworks, heard from an out of state friend.

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For some reason, our newspaper hasn't been delivered most of this week (hopefully the deliverer hasn't been sick) but it did come today. We've got some lovely cottonwood for the woodstove thanks to 
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Just heard that the nearby mountains are having gusts up to 80 mph, with rain turning to snow at just under 6000'. Snow would be better, of course, but people up there are saying that the drainage channels are running full blast and maybe they are looking at some road washouts. We are getting rain and it's about 5 degrees warmer than up there, so ( Read more... )

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Glorious rain. It started last night and continued all day. Seems to have stopped now so the kids' hope of snow this time may be dashed.  The mountains have been socked in so we can't tell if they had snow and if they did how far down towards us it came. AFAIK this desert storm came out of the blue.  Showers were predicted for the LA basin but not ( Read more... )

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Last night the eastern Mojave was doing its end-of-August thing - big thunderheads and lightening at night - a real light show.  Sometime during the night it rained a bit here in the western Mojave. Usually the rain wakes me up, but not last night.  This morning there were puddles in the dirt roads. Puts me in a good mood to see that.

Today has been ( Read more... )

It's hot.  It's humid. Weird.  The usual high desert nighttime cooling is absent. Cloud cover but no rain.  Had lunch with C today and as we were emerging into the afternoon light (from a pretty dark local dive), we saw lightening in the east. But tonight, I can find no traces.  I may go and sit in the back and watch the night sky for a while after ( Read more... )

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