The rain and the 365 Days blog put a small dent on posting here but having two beautiful clear days it was time to pour tea and get into walking the yard to check it out.

Southern California had an abundance of rain last week.  We haven’t seen this in years.  I think we are officially out of drought but I hear different stories.  Aside from getting pounded by rain, strong winds,  and small bits of hail, we survived. The photo below of the water rushing was taken from across the roadway when the rain was just letting up a few days ago.  The dried up creek had a  good river flow for a few days.  Water is barely there now and it has been less than a week.   As soon as the rain left, the greens in the canyon glowed.  Today it was almost 80 degrees here.

Hangman Gate 1-22-2017

Hangman Gate 1-23-2017

The River. Santiago Canyon

Santiago Canyon 1-23-17

I do love the rain and it brought positive results in the yard and my labour of digging and transplanting last Summer are showing signs of paying off.  Where those rewards are showing is at the burn site that had to be cut down last summer.  There was a pretty bad fire in 2009 and the burn was never cut away.  The smell of the fire was still apparent when cutting them down.  Having left the roots in place was a good idea for hill stability and growth leaving the plants to flourish with a natural landscape.  The growth is starting to show in the photos below.  I burned through a chainsaw easily with this hill and now will need a new one.

The Heavy Metal flower patch faired well in the downpour too. I’d like to have a whole hillside of metal flowers.  Hundreds.  I just love them.

…and Agapanthus Hill is starting to come alive after being transplanted near the cable bridge.

I always end my walks picking something.  This rose got the shears this time.  Last week it was lemons and loads of them.  I didn’t think they were any good until I cut one open and yum.  I made lemon curd with some of them and lemonade too.

With the political unrest in the country,  I am happy to have my yard to hang out in.  I am not surprised with the happenings in America right now with this vote, but I am hoping it will calm down, including the President,  and hopefully, he makes better decisions for the whole of this country instead of a few.  We can only hope as a nation that this man sees that.  In the meantime….we wait for the lawyers to figure it out.

I leave you with Murray checking out the rustling of the bird in the tree. A true zen get away from the mess of politics or whatever’s.

Thanks for stopping in.

Til next time…