Unusually rainy weather here has been quite a problem. Flooding, mudslides and falling trees have kept us all very busy at work. They have also interfered with the utilities, such as electricity, cable and internet service. A message on my telephone informed me of the service interruption that prevented me from sending pictures to myself to share here on Six on Saturday. I intended to simply share pictures that were illustrations for my other blog, but as I was writing about them, I realized that I already shared them on Christmas Eve. I therefore have no more than these recycled pictures. More pictures from here are in the news.

1. The Steven Michael Ralls Memorial Tree was planted two and a half years ago, so it is the oldest Monterey cypress within this Memorial Grove, and is now almost six feet tall.

2. The David Noel Riddell Memorial Tree was installed with #3 below, only about a year ago. It is the smallest of the three cypress trees, and is only slightly taller than three feet.

3. The David Fritiof Lindberg Memorial Tree was installed a few days after David Fritiof Lindberg passed away on November 13, 2021, with #2 above. It is only four feet tall now.

4. The Memorial Tree in Felton Covered Bridge Park is actually one of several Memorial Trees within its landscape. It is doing well, but needed a bit more pruning for clearance.

5. It looks scrawny after pruning, but will fluff out splendidly through spring. It may not need pruning for clearance again for quite a while. By that time, it will be too big for me.

6. Sunny weather is finally in the forecast. Rain is normally appreciated in our chaparral climate, but has been excessive for too long. It has not rained this much in four decades.

This is the link for Six on Saturday, for anyone else who would like to participate: https://thepropagatorblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/18/six-on-saturday-a-participant-guide/

18 thoughts on “Six on Saturday: Service Interruption (I have nothing to share here this week.)”

  1. Hopefully all the trees will appreciate the water stored in the lower ground levels come the summer. We too are having excessively wet weather, but thankfully some of the spring bulbs are starting to flower. Hope your utilities are restored, and there is not too much damage to clear up.

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    1. Except for the trees that fell down during the storms, the trees here are remarkably adaptable, and seem to be happy with whatever sort of weather they get. Some of the redwoods are thousands of years old, so are accustomed to it.

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    1. People are surprised by it here, as if we should be exempt from it. Although the climate and weather here is relatively mild, this sort of weather sometimes happens. It might be less severe that what is normal for other climates, but by our standards, it seems severe.

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    1. The pictures were taken just prior to Christmas, so the trees have not grown since then. Zayante Creek flooded as high as where the Memorial Grove is, and actually demonstrated that all three of the cypress are remarkably close to the exact same elevation. The Steven Michael Ralls Memorial Tree was in less than a foot of water. The other two were precisely at the edge of the water! The Memorial Tree in Felton Covered Bridge Park was in less than two feet of water, and perhaps less than a foot of water.

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    1. That is how the climate works here. The summers are long and dry, and all the moisture arrives during the brief rainy season during winter. It is not really the serious problem that we all are supposed to believe that it is. Otherwise, there would not be so many millions of people living in some of the most populous cities in America here. Droughts are actually rare, and are not ‘annual’ as some would have us believe. I wrote about that before. This pattern is normal for us. Even the weather that we are getting now would be no problem for other climates. It is just difficult for us now because it is a bit excessive by our standards.

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    1. The ‘drought’ is a bunch of hooey! A drought is an unusually dry weather pattern. There is nothing unusual about the long and dry summers here. It is normal for this climate. Droughts sometimes happen, but only if the weather is drier than it normally is. The current weather pattern is a bit more unusual. It has not rained so much since 1982 and 1983.

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      2. Reservoirs are less important than the snow in the Sierra Nevada. Reservoirs only contain some of the water for redirection to where it is needed. Some reservoirs are merely recreational lakes. Lexington Reservoir above Los Gatos is merely used to recharge percolation ponds, which recharge groundwater. Most of the water that we need stays frozen and underappreciated in the Sierra Nevada.

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      3. Growing up in San Diego, I always wondered about so many people living in an irrigated desert – I think most of the water woes in California are directly related to population increase over the decades combined with people, myself included, not really understanding how important it is to conserve clean water.

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      4. Some regions have plenty of water. For example, Palm Springs, which really is a desert, has plenty of water right below the ground. That is why it comes to the surface at the springs. Los Angeles just takes water from other regions. So many people living in such regions would be less objectionable if the waste of other people’s water was not flaunted so much.

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