Greetings and salutations everyone; yes, once again it is I, Mani the purebred border collie, and here to bring you a pretty much completely weather-related post. You may remember me from such weather-related posts as “Monsooner Or Later”, among so many, many others.
Here I am in a characteristic pose. On the morning of a day like any other day. 
Things started out pretty regular. They usually do around here. 
However, the guy I live with already knew, from looking at the forecast last night, that there was a fifty percent chance of storms bringing golf ball-sized hail, and he said he was really against that. Totally opposed to it, in fact.
The clouds began to move in, from the southwest, in the morning. This is looking sort of in the direction of Tucson. 
Some construction in the neighborhood had awakened both of us early, so after our morning walk, we both took a nap. Around noon the guy I live with woke up with a start because he thought he heard sirens, but it was something else. Just a noise. He looked at the weather site and there was no mention of golf balls any more, but it did start to rain.
I decided to go to my upstairs fort, because there was a lot of thunder at first.
Then it changed a bit. You can see the hail falling, and getting larger, too. But not very large, fortunately.
At least we discovered where the lowest point in the garden is. The soil here is creek bottom loam, mostly decomposed sandstone.
When the rain and hail stopped, the sun came out, and I was able to survey my domain again. 
A little while later the guy I live with walked out to see if the creek was flooding. It wasn’t. That seemed kind of odd. Then after an hour or so he actually saw the flood coming, though it wasn’t a really serious huge flood like has happened here.
We went out to look. 
The guy I live with wouldn’t let me go in the water. He said I might get swept away, and that would make him very unhappy. Of course he would have tried to rescue me. The water smelled kind of weird, too.
We went back to look at the water in the culvert, where the creek goes under the canal. (You can see the culvert for the canal right at the top of the picture; the canal itself is on the far right.)
Then we went to walk down the canal road a bit.
This is where the creek goes under the canal and the canal road. 
I actually got to go on three walks today. The flood-checking walk was just a short one. On the evening walk, the canal water was red, like Red Rocks which is pretty close. The guy I live with said it looked like red miso.
It could have turned out to be a much scarier day. It could still thunder more, later this evening or tonight. I’ll leave you with a picture of me, taken the other day, walking through a whole bunch of Scotch thistles. We don’t go this way very often and aren’t going to again until winter time, because the thistles are really unpleasant and stabby, but the guy I live with said it was kind of a metaphor for the day today. 
Until next time, then.
the miserable gardener 
Wow, some of those pictures make it look as if you are strolling the English countryside. It’s so green and plush. We might get some of that weather tomorrow. Just in time to mash all the blooming irises to a pulp. But what can you do, right?
The guy I live with said to say that all that green is from smooth brome, the worst weed in the world. Or at least in these parts. The grass has invaded our garden in quite a few places and it’s completely ineradicable. Most of our gardening time is taken up pulling this grass. The guy I live with pulls it. I chew it; it’s pretty good. It turns out that some gardeners here got a lot more hail which did damage.
Oh, smooth brome. No wonder it invades, there’s and endless supply right next door. We had something called “orchard grass” in the country. The edges were like razor blades when you tried to pull it.
There are some other grasses out in the field, and a lot of cheat grass (or downy chess) out there, too. And in the front yard here. At least the guy I live with has something to do in his retirement. (Something he likes doing; weeding.)
I thought you were going into the creek, and it made me very nervous. I’m glad the guy you live with wouldn’t let you go in. They mentioned hail as a possibility here in Indiana on the news tonight. What a world! What a world!rre
I really wanted to go in, too. I am allowed to go in the canal if the water is nice and clear; it comes from the mountains. It’s sprinkling right now. The guy I live with said that midnight thunderstorms in Denver used to be extremely rare, but now they’re pretty common. Things change, I guess.
It did not look very scary, but that thunder in the distance sounded very scary. Privet was terrified of thunder. It happened only a few times while he was here. He would try to hide in his fort; but his fort was under the neighbor’s toilet. That was a problem if they were not home when he needed his fort. If there was no one to let him in, he came home and hid under the kitchen sink. We had only one storm that was so scary that I had to let him in the neighbor’s house and stay with him in his fort under the toilet. I miss Privet very much.
I understand that. The guy I live with often says how much he misses the other purebred border collies who lived here. And, of course, even more, how much he misses his wife. She loved purebred border collies and would have loved me a lot. It’s thundering right now, and raining a little, so I have to be in my fort.
Okay. Be safe.
It rained a bit more in the night. Enough to wash what was left of the grape jelly out of the oriole feeder, anyway. The guy I live with says he can hear the smooth brome and bindweed growing in the garden now.
Does he hear as well as a dog?
Smooth brome is very loud, devouring everything in sight. Also elicits loud comments when it appears everywhere.
Most humans do not hear all that.
The guy I live with does.
You are getting so grown up, Mani! I notice this in each new post with pictures of you. You look fantastic!
You sure do get powerful storms. They can be scary so I’m glad you have your forts for comfort and shelter. And it’s good that your friend keeps you out of danger when you’re outside. Curiosity is wonderful but it can get us in trouble sometimes. It would be awful if you got caught in the current. I wonder what the muskrat does during heavy flooding. Where does he go? Any ideas?
Thanks. There is such a thing as a muskrat home, or so I am told. They live along the canal which never floods because it’s controlled, but I think there are sometimes muskrats living along the creek, too. Maybe they build rafts. It is nice to have someone watch over me. I get to protect the guy I live with, with my vicious and deadly guard-dog manner, in return.
The creek waters were a’rushing! So glad neither you nor the guy you live with ventured in, led by curiosity or necessity. You, Mani, have quite the detective air about you at times, and then a proper assessing air at other times. Results must be pondered. I agree with other commentors, that is one lush garden, much as the guy would say we are misled. That particular shade of teal-y blue quite compliments. Thank you for the rain-and-hail videos. Close as we will come to a rain event until — maybe forever (she said forlornly). We eat nettles in spaghetti with olive oil and garlic. Nettles soften as they cook. By the looks of them, though, not your kind of nettles.
Lots of us love you, Mani. I hope that helps.
Thanks. The guy I live with was going to paint the house this summer. A different color. A gallon of paint was purchased, but maybe now the house will be repainted the same color instead. The guy I live with says that a lot of the greenery in the garden comes from plants which aren’t supposed to be there. Too much feverfew. (There should be none.) There are nettles, stinging nettles, Urtica dioica, in what I guess you would call the overflow creek where the storm drain from the street goes into the main creek. It’s the one on the left in the video. I think we got about half an inch of rain.
Tell the guy to up the teal. I loves me some teal. Also feverfew, single and especially double. What’s the guy’s problem?
The guy I live with says it’s more like feverwaytoomuch or feverallovertheplace than feverfew. It’s supposed to be Tanacetum niveum instead. Grayer foliage. As far as the color of the house goes, there was some talk about changing it to the color of light-colored chocolate cake icing. A gallon of paint was purchased, but no painting was done. I guess the paint can be donated. The color right now is Boca Raton Blue (711) from Benjamin Moore. The house isn’t painted that color, technically, but the garage door is, because he went to the paint store to get a color close to what it was already painted, and the color was so close to the way the rest of the house is painted that that’s what the house will be painted with again. If that makes sense. But the trim should be Incense Stick (2115-20) instead of the weird greenish it is now.