That would be me, alas, the result of summer travels.
Let’s see, we’re well into our summer pattern of afternoon thundershowers now. Nine days ago (Thursday 7/15), as we were preparing to head out of town, there was an excellent afternoon downpour. I didn’t have the time to check the rain gauge then, but I’d estimate it was at least 0.2 inch of rain.
When we returned from the airport last Sunday evening it had clearly stormed at some point that day, and there was 0.15 inch of rain in the gauge.
It has rained negligible amounts several afternoons this week. Then yesterday afternoon we had quite an excellent thunderstorm (the cats ran to hide under the bed, so you know it was a real one) and received 0.3 inch of rain. Overnight it rained again, leaving another 0.2 inch in the gauge. And it’s clouded up and starting to thunder now, even though it’s only 11:30 am.
There may well have been rain on the days we were out of town. So I cannot give an accurate total for the week. That always happens to me in the summer; just when the raining gets good, we’re out of town and miss some of it.
I haven’t watered the garden since sometime in early June, although we do water trees in order to dump the cached rain from the barrels, so they won’t overflow when the next rainfall hits.
Tibs hasn’t been around this week. We were into a very good schedule with Tibs before our trip and then we humans disappeared for several days, so he got out of the habit of looking for us. That’s okay: I know he’ll be back at some point and he’s most skillful at extracting peanuts from the over-generous people who live here, so he must have quite a stash by now.
We are about to fledge our second batch of baby phoebes. This is the first year the Say’s phoebes who nest on our house have had time to get two broods out. I wonder if that is because the winter was wet, so there was a lot of food when they first got here.
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy!