Shop/Shed Update

We have been working 19 consecutive days on the building. We are having fun! But I think that today we are both tired. It is true that we work about 5 hours a day on it, but that ain't loafing! Yesterday we finished all the walls.

The roll up doors and the windows have also been installed.

So, today we started on the roof; with my fear of heights, not a favorite part. But, it has got to be done, and if nothing else today we found a method on how to proceed. Now if I could just quit wimping out and keep Dan from having to go up and down the ladder 4 times for every roofing panel we need to install.... That will be tomorrow, if the wind does not pick up.

Butterflies

We may not have seen the number of hummingbirds that we have in the past, but this year the butterflies are spectacular.




I know very little about them (never saw many in Oregon), but just in trying to photograph them for this blog, I found out several things. Some of them don't care to be photographed, whereas others do not seem to mind. Some feed with their wings folded, some with wings open. Some appear damaged and obviously on their last legs (wings), whereas others are brilliantly colored and "new". They all have their preferences as to flowers, but I find it interesting that the native butterfly bush (Buddleia marrubifolia) is totally ignored in favor of the non-native one (Buddleia davidii).

Weather

Even though I consider myself an outdoor type, I did not realize the importance of weather until I came to live in the country. Here skies are huge, sunlight in summer ultra-bright, and spring winds are powerful.

Being in the desert, the topic of conversation at this time of year is the rainfall (did you get any?). We live in the northern-most tip of the Chihuahuan Desert, which is older, cooler and wetter than the Sonoran or Mojave Desert, and during a "normal" year we can expect about 12" of rainfall. Most of that falls in July and August. This year we have had good rainfall, although I cannot say how much rain has fallen exactly.

To remedy that situation we bought a new weather station, and managed to get our data uploaded to Weather Underground on the Internet so anyone can see what it is doing here at that moment. I called our station Blacktail Bajada, because that is where we are located. If you are interested in our current weather, please look here http://www.wunderground.com/US/AZ/Pearce.html#PWS

Last night we had a large storm going by just north of us. Dan managed to capture some of the lightning.

We only got 0.04" of rain out of it, but there is a lot more water in the Willcox Playa, the dry lake north-east of us, this morning.