Yesterday's Rain

I still can't get all my little videos on here so I just have the one. Yesterday it rained almost 3 inches in a couple hours after a long, grey, day. Our river appeared again and sent debris down down down near the fence line. The neighbors chain link fence borders the two properties and we are/were on the "up" side but they think digging it out is a good plan so it gets deeper and the water moves faster and one of these days the fence will fall over. It is unbelievable how fast and furious the water moves and then in an hour it is completely gone. I have been planting gingers and trees and all kinds of things I dig up and move from one place to another down there. I have some bamboo started and the plan is to plant that down there to stabilize things but I don't want to do it when it might get washed away! The house and "creek" have been here for 30 years so we know the house isn't going anywhere and the erosion is gradual I guess. I plan on planting vetiver in the path of the water every 10 feet or so when the wash out danger is past but it will probably only divert it somewhere else! If I can grow enough vetiver I can use it to terrace things with a trail on the upside and the vetiver as a dam sporadically across the hill. What I WILL NOT be doing is digging it deeper! It doesn't rain all that much here but when it does....it really does!

Damn chickens...Holy *!*!****....or Gift from Above?

Easter started with us going to our place of worship - las cuevas - for a really nice dive and capture of a nice lobster for dinner. We got home and it had been raining a little bit and continued a little after we got home. I looked in the yard and something was not quite right. One of our plants was leaning and some of the purple plants were torn up - "damn chickens" I figured - they like to take a dirt bath there.

As I looked at the damage I noticed one of the blocks had been misplaced - hard for a chicken to do unless they used pulleys and made a little chicken tug of war game or something.

On closer inspection it appears that a block was kind of crushed. Confused, I looked to my left and saw it...

What the #$(*&(@#%&@*/. I looked to make sure there weren't any smashed cats (all accounted for) and then trudged up the hill to see where it came from.

Way up top near a Flamboyant (that I planted from seed - look how big it is) I see a hole.

When I get up there I confirmed that yes, that rock came from all the way up top!

It is a good thing it was not a round rock - it is flat on all sides. It still managed to go down the hillside in a little runway, hop my flat path with built up sticks, roll over the vetiver (which popped back up into place) and then catapulted down the drop taking out a couple plants, dislocating a couple and settling just inches away from the newly painted walkway outside the kitchen! (Look at the nice clean, newly sealed roof.) Imagine solar panels up there...

Here's the view from up at the vetiver - the hillside is taller than the roof of the house.

As always the cats decided this new arrival was a new toy - they mobbed around it like meercats and played king of the rock for a while.