Dragonfly Ranch

I’ve seen large birds bathing in the channel of the water feature, but it’s too deep, and the flow is too strong, for small birds. So I rigged up this birdbath using a rainspout trough. The water supply comes from an existing pump and tube that used to feed water through a bamboo pipe into the basin. The rocks help keep it in place and break up the incoming stream.

We have to monitor the main pump and flow, because there are leaks in the concrete channel that cause the basin to run dry after a full day of use. But I think we’ll be able to run this part of the water feature 24 hours a day. I hope so, because the birds really need the water.

We went on Sunday, May 4, the last day of the rodeo. As you can see, we had a wonderful time.

The cornfield has a water supply, but it isn’t part of the timed irrigation system, so I have to run a sprinkler manually. This morning, when I came to turn the sprinkler off, I found that several hummingbirds were enjoying the spray to bathe in. One of them stopped on the fence just just two feet to my left (you can see part of it the fence in the photo) and preened itself after its bath.

Look carefully and you can see a hummingbird bathing right in the middle of the photo.

The corn on the left was planted March 29. The seedlings were planted April 30.

Tuesday was the last of three days of tree work, and coincidentally the last day of almost six weeks of contractors on site re-roofing, repairing, remodeling, and repainting — not to mention the other contractors who installed our electric gate and solar panels. We’ve run out of money now, and finally we have some quiet.

The tree service trimmed the huge oak next to the house and the pool, so it’s no longer encroaching on the roof and the roses. They removed a lot of dead wood that wasn’t apparent from the ground. This was the biggest task, and it took most of a day. You can see the new look below, and compare it to the old look at https://youngholm.wordpress.com/2014/03/30/the-view-from-betsys-apartment/

They trimmed at least eight other trees near buildings or fences and completely removed two oaks that were almost dead. Wildfire is a real threat here, so this is an important step for safety.

It also left us with lots of firewood and a pile of chips about 20 feet long, eight feet wide, and four feet high.

Our 32 solar panels and associated equipment went up in a day and a half. After another hour and a half, the county inspector had come and gone. Now, at 2:00 pm, we’re generating 7 kilowatts of electricity and sending most of it back to PG&E. That’s the inspector and our contractor on the garage roof.

This baby gopher snake, only a foot long, was swimming in the pool yesterday evening. We fished it out and put it in the grass.