Hillside Leaves

The summer "monsoon" rains came about mid-July and the trees responded with a whole new set of leaves. This picture of the same hillside was taken in early August, just six weeks after the upper one.

The summer of 2002 was very dry down here. The scrub oak trees started out the spring in full foliage, but dropped about 90% of their leaves by late May as a defensive effort to conserve moisture. By the end of June all of the leaves had gone, and the hillside just across the ravine looked like part of the Rodeo fire that was tearing up the Rim about that same time.

Critters and Rocks

There are lots of interesting critters around here. This summer (2002) during the monsoon rains we twice had a tarantula creep into the building we are living in. They show up at night, so it can be a bit startling to come across one in the dark. They are quite harmless, though, so I took this one outside the next morning and got some photos of it before it crept off into the weeds. It hard to tell the size from the picture, but it was about six inches across the tips of it's legs ... a small one.

As I mentioned, we've been collecting the rocks we pulled out of the trenches as we dug them. We carried them or rolled them into the bucket of the skid steer tractor, then dumped them into piles around the periphery of the build site. This pile represents about 5% of those we've collected so far. The larger rocks (top and foreground) are about three feet across. In case you're wondering ... yes, it was a lot of work.

Primitive Quarters and Hillside Well

We're living in fairly primitive quarters while we build our own home. My wife's parents built a workshop/RV storage building on their own lot that is located about 1000 feet down the hill from ours. Since they won't be starting on their house for several more months we've been living in their RV and the workshop, which we've converted to semi-habitable living space. We have satellite TV, satellite internet, a washer/drier, and a full bathroom. It isn't insulated and gets chilly, but it works fine for us ... for the time being.

Our well is located up the hillside above our lot and produces plenty of water, which is a bit unusual for this area. Since there is 120 feet difference in vertical elevation between the well and our house, we are able to store the water in this holding tank (now buried) and get lots of water pressure just by gravity feed. Here's the interesting part ... the well diggers first hit water at a depth of 55 feet, meaning the water table is about 70 feet higher than where our house will be just 400 feet away. It makes for interesting speculation to consider what might happen if an earth tremor should put a crack in whatever layer of rock is holding all that water back.