Wednesday Vignette (Late Edition): Rain, at last

It's hard not to take rain forecasts with a grain of salt here, especially when the first 3 weeks of November were unusually hot and humidity levels were stuck in the single digits all too frequently.  Things didn't look good overnight or this morning when Mother Nature just spit at us without registering any measurable precipitation.  However, the situation turned around mid-day when we received several short bursts of rain.

View of the back garden and the Port of Los Angeles in the distance this afternoon

We recorded just a quarter inch of rain but I don't consider that bad, especially as more rain is possible overnight.  The roof poured a good amount of what we got into my rain barrels too.

My husband reconnected all my rain tanks to our roof gutters over the weekend.  Our modest rainfall filled my 50-gallon tank and I accumulated almost 70 more gallons of rain in this 160-gallon tank.  I expect I picked up something on the same order in the tank that feeds off the garage roof.

The prospect of rain got me moving earlier this week.

I filled in the bed I showed in my post of November 6th.  Although succulents may have been a better choice for the sandy soil here, I chose Argyranthemum, Violas, and Lobularia (Alyssum) because I wanted something softer, at least in the short-term.  I also cleaned up the far end of the bed, pulling our some of the elongated Aeonium arboreum and cutting out the dead undergrowth of Acacia cognata 'Cousin Itt'.

I pulled the last of my zinnias, supplemented the soil in my raised planters with compost, sowed larkspur (Consolida ajacis) seeds and, because I couldn't resist them, planted snapdragon plugs.  I also sowed California wildflower seeds on my back slope.

Meanwhile, the neighbor across the canyon continues to work on the backyard structure visible from our garden.

Realizing that the structure is probably associated with the property on the left rather than the white house on the right as I'd earlier assumed, my new theory is that the structure is intended as an art studio

Our remodel hit 2 more unexpected roadblocks this week.  The stone mason cut and delivered the wrong granite for our fireplace hearth yesterday and then the electrician's work failed to pass the city's inspection today.  With next week being Thanksgiving, we were told it could be 3 weeks before we get the replacement hearthstone, which delays completion of the living room fireplace.  Redoing the electrical wiring to meet code is likely to require tearing apart the wall in my office (again).  So, it could be Christmas by the time we're done after all...


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