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Monday, September 9, 2019

First summer monsoonal rain! YAY!

9 AM: Waiting in town for the oil to get changed in my pickup so I can head south to water my trees, I photographed a lovely female Two-tailed Swallowtail. It's the only butterfly I've seen in Alpine for many days.


1 PM: Got to the oasis about the same time as a visitor arrived that is into dragonflies. That's a rare occurrence so I couldn't bring myself to water trees. Hung out with him instead.

4:30 PM: Visitor left and I went up to the house. Too tired to work. Chasing odes isn't easy. Five minutes later it unexpectedly started to pour rain. I got .84." It worked out good because water backed up to the spillway of the stucco tank but didn't overrun the spillway. With the water behind the tank wall, it began going through the wall into the tank. This helped me see where the leaks were. So now I plan on patching them tomorrow, and filling the tank the next day. Hopefully, it won't leak too bad.

That'll be a killer two days for my back and shoulder, but it has to be done. A couple of hours after the rain stopped, it started drizzling, and hasn't let up yet at nearly 11 PM.

Thanks to my visitor, Todd Fitzgerald, I saw my first Autumn Meadowhawk of the year.


And even though I see oodles of Red Saddlebags, I like this shot of a female.


I really look forwarding to odeing at my dragonfly pond for the next month or so. It caught a lot of water and tomorrow I'll pump out the settling pond into it. Mexican Amberwings should show up and who knows what else. (The tank filled after I snapped this photo.) 


Jerry Chen took this fascinating shot of the oasis with his drone. I've always known the oasis was the center of my world, so this illustrates my viewpoint nicely.



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