Digging day

We moved into our house a little over a year ago, and we love it! I'd say the biggest problem we have is with drainage when it rains. We never have water in the house, but it would always cover the sidewalk, and the front porch just about every time it rains!

A couple month ago, we added a large flowerbed in the front and took the soil down 2.5 inches. It helped a lot.

However, with the storms a few days ago, the sidewalk was covered again and all the mulch in the bed was floating away. So, Friday, my wife decided she would try to dig a little drainage ditch between the gravel and paved portion of the driveway. While doing that, she found a drain that had been placed there who knows when. As she excavated, she found that the drainage pipe went about 10 feet into the yard and just stopped. Also, it was all filled with gravel and dirt.

We decided to do something about it. My wife and son had cleaned out the drain yesterday.

Today, my wife and I dug a ditch and bought some new pipes so the drain would actually drain out and away from the house. We even put a clean-out section in the pipe to help with keeping it cleaned out and working. We now just need another good rain to give it a try.

I remembered to take a few pictures today as we worked.

Did I mention how many rocks and shell we have in the ground? Yea, it's a lot!!!

Gardens

After the storms Wednesday night, my wife decided to see if she could dig a trench where the gravel driveway meets the paved section. While doing that, she found that there was a drain in place.

She started looking for a pipe where this would drain out at. She finally found it. A pipe left the drain and went into the yard 6 to 8 feet and just stopped. It couldn't drain out anywhere cause it was covered by dirt!!! We'll have to drain it out somewhere, just have to figure out where.

So, after looking at that, I decided I'd walk around the yard and look at the garden. It's the first garden we've had here, and it just doesn't look good. However, our tomatoes are finally starting to produce. Also, we finally have some blooms on our cucumber plants too. Now, I just need my peppers to start producing!

Very cool

Well, today, I had some much better photo ops.

I got home from work and was sitting on the couch when I saw a golden finch fly up into our weeping cherry tree we planted earlier this year. So I grabbed the camera and carefully opened the door. I only managed on shot, but I think it's good!



Later, my wife and I went for a while. I had my camera in tow! And I wasn't having much luck on finding anything interesting to take a picture of. Then I saw this tree. It looked fuzzy. It was something I've never seen before. I took a picture, but it doesn't do it justice.



A bit later, I was walking by this field that had a huge array of wild flowers/weeds in bloom... which ever. Either way, I gave it a shot.



Then the storms blew in! What a crazy night for storms. Tons of lightning, rain and tornadoes! I'm not sure how many touched down, but they were all over the place. It's raining so hard, I hear many streets are flooding. One of the nice things I like about storms is the lightning. I love it. Especially now I have a camera that is capable of taking photos of it. Here are a couple I thought turned out pretty good.





Oh, speaking of flooding, the rain is doing a number on our new flower bed. The mulch just keeps floating by.





This was a much better day.

Beautiful Sunrise

The sunrise was beautiful this morning. There was cloudy morning, but the sky was beautiful pinks and purples and blues as the sun came up.





This isn't as long as I had hoped, but it's something.

Quiet

I realized I've not blogged a lot lately. Mostly just because I've been busy. Some cause most things I just put in Facebook and I can limit more of who see's what.

But I saw someones blog the other day where they were blogging about their photography. I thought that might be fun. Get me back into my blogging, and more incentive to take pictures.

So, I'm going to give it a try. We'll see how it goes.

First off, at the start of the year, I decided I'd try to take at least 1 photo everyday for the year. I've failed miserably, but I'm still taking them and uploading them to my flickr set. You can find that here if you're interested.

Tonight, on my walk, it was getting late and the sun was setting on this mostly cloudy day. It was really nice out. The temperature was cool and many people were out mowing their yards.

I was really enjoying the colors of the sky tonight and stopped and took several pictures. I think this one may be my favorite of the night.




This picture was probably a close second. I liked how the sun was trying to peek through the clouds, and how all the trees and shrubs were framing the sky.





Further on in my walk, I saw downtown Tulsa off in the distance. From this vantage point, there were a lot of power lines between me and it, but I still thought it was decent.




Early on in my I saw these thistles, and really liked the way the looked.





Hope y'all enjoy this short walk through my walk tonight.