We’ve had quite a spring, summer and fall with our water system at the desert house. It all started when I was looking at the back yard with our security camera and noted that the grass seemed to be turning brown. There are occasional issues with the irrigation valves, so I made plans to drive out on Friday to see about fixing it. When I got to the house, I went to wash my hands and noticed that there was no water pressure. Time to investigate.

When I got to the pump house, I noticed that there was a strange humming coming from the booster pump. It was warm, humming, and not pumping. I powered on and off, no change. I called our friendly plumber. We deduced that the pump had seized up for some reason and needed to be replaced. I locked everything up and headed home.

We went out to The Other House in mid-May and the weather was wonderful. Here are some photos from a nice afternoon time on our time there. This panorama is looking down the driveway to the southeast. Click on an image to see the full-sized image.

The light was ever-changing as the clouds moved by.

The rock rose was in bloom.

This panorama takes in most of the property, looking down at the house from the observatory.

The squirrels have built quite a home for themselves.

The tree and rocks on Bunny Hill is a favorite subject of mine.

A red bug makes its way across the driveway.

Finally, the orchard enjoyed the nice rain we had in April.

Back in November, I noted that some branches on a nice, big pine tree by our house in Lake Riverside were looking a little yellowish. My worst fears were realized when we got out to the house after Christmas and these branches were clearly dead. You can see the dead needles on the right side of the right hand tree.

With the tree right next to the house and partially over the roof, I knew that I needed professional help. I had some hope that the tree might be saved, and if that wasn’t possible, I needed a tree service to take it down safely. Consulting with our local Facebook group led me to Cherry Tree Service. Chris and Roger came out and sadly confirmed my fears that the tree needed to come down.

We scheduled the work for January 1st (they are dedicated) and they showed up in the morning with their equipment. They set up quickly and got to work. Here is a time-lapse video of the tree removal.

Reduced to branches and small chunks, the tree was removed. Looking at part of the trunk, you could see how fast the tree grew when it was young and how that growth slowed as the tree became larger.

Within about an hour, the tree was nothing but a stump.

Chris has a remarkable stump removing machine that quickly ground the stump into mulch.

After a couple of hours of work, all that was left was a mound of mulch and dirt.

It was almost as if the tree had never been there. We will miss its shade and the character it provided to the property.

On February 14th, 2019, 4.6 inches of rain fell in Lake Riverside Estates in less than 24 hours. I was able to watch the storm on security cameras as it progressed. It ended up causing some serious damage to the drive and our hillside. It also took out a large cottonwood tree. This post chronicles the events of that day and our cleanup almost a month later.

Up through noon on Valentine’s Day, things seemed under control. There was some mudflow but the brow ditch on the hill between the upper and lower drives seemed to be holding up OK. There was some flow from the upper part of the ditch which indicated a weakness, likely caused by a squirrel burrow. This picture was taken at 12:44pm. As of 12:30, almost 3.5 inches of rain had fallen — most of the total for the storm.

This picture shows the upper driveway at 11am. There is a lot of water coming down from the lot above the house, but at this point the brow ditch, seen in the middle of the frame, is handling the water flow well. Note the large tree in the middle of the frame. As in the previous picture, there is some errant flow down the hill at the upper end of the brow ditch.

Shortly after noon, the storm got much worse. The wind came up with a gust of 34 miles per hour. The rain rate topped 1.1 inches/hour. The flow of water from the lot uphill and to the west from us became overwhelming. Water flows down Lakeshore Boulevard and onto Osage Court. In this storm, the bulk of the water flowed across Osage Court, into the lot above us, and down onto our driveway. This next picture is at 1:47pm. Note that the tree behind the basketball hoop is gone and the hillside has been breached with a major mud flow coming down across the driveway.

This picture was taken at 3:50 pm. Most of the rain had fallen with only .3 inches more to go in the storm at this point. The tree is clearly down. There is still substantial flow of water from up the hill.