I've Seen Fire & I've Seen Rain

So tonight I was unloading the pics from my camera with the idea of putting together a post of the younger's birthday celebration from last weekend. Those plans have gone awry for now.

Instead, you get this!!! A pair of shots from the night before the event, and a few more from today. The night before, I had been doing a bit of painting in the bathroom, and as I headed outside to wash up the brushes, I saw the chopper I'd been hearing for a while but hadn't even really registered. Looking around (namely at where he was training his spotlight) I located the flashy lights of several fire trucks and the glow of the fire.

My younger & I headed over a ways closer, then up the hill to try and get a better look. A bit hard to tell exactly where it was at in the dark, and we didn't get that close. Sadly, one of my neighbors, a World War II veteran, died in the fire.

The weather changed this week, and we were told by the local media hype that we would all be swept away by buckets of the hard rain that was gonna fall. The first wave swept through on Wednesday night while we all slept, and it was bright & clear the next morning, which of course made my commute take roughly twice as long. Almost no rain that day, and Friday morning there was a light drizzle coming down as I left the house. It picked up once I was to work, but then was dry enough that people were eating lunch and taking breaks outside. Saved it up for the afternoon and today.

This afternoon it was actually coming down pretty good for a bit, as well as having some nice long rolls of thunder. I had my camera ready at this point, and took a few shots of it coming down good, making the canyon and gutters into raging streams. Near the end of the time I was shooting, it was letting up and the sun was glinting off the waters.

Pictured in a couple of the shots are some block retaining walls. The last shot has the latest one I had put up, just a couple weeks back, or more to the point, just in time. Upon having returned from our weekend in Carpinteria, we discovered that a few of the cement slabs had slid forward and a good amount of dirt had come out from between them. The slabs were looking quite precarious, and I took several out and dug some out from behind them until I could get the guy out to put a wall. Naturally, I got busy and it took a while before I dug up his number. He did a great job again, only as you can see, it tends to pool water behind it. I dug out a drainage channel when the rain had let up a bit.

All these great picture opportunities, and I get to title a post with a James Taylor reference!!!