Fall rains and climate change

We are getting our first taste of fall around these parts. It has up until yesterday been warm and sunny which is very typical for our fall weather. We don't have the classic indian summer you hear Midwesterners speak about. We get shortening days and crisp cool nights interrupted by the occasional storms out of the northwest. It is one of the things that draws the snowbirds to our location. Many like the Bisbee area because we do have a four season climate. The nice feature to our seasons is that they are not too intense and when there is an extreme of weather you can count on it changing in three to four days.
We need every drop of rain that comes our way. As I travel the highways and byways of our county I am seeing deeper and more graphic evidence of changing weather patterns.
Take the mighty cottonwood for example. Although not a native to all parts of Arizona it is a rather ubiquitous feature to low Sonora desert landscape if water is available. The road to Elfrida was lined with stately cottonwoods topping 50 feet when I was young. I remember the ride to Grizzel's peach orchards to pick fruit for canning. We would frequently stop under one of these majestic trees for a picnic lunch after picking a hundred or so pounds of fresh peaches. One of my most vivid memories is sitting in the shade of those trees, on the dusty berm of an irrigation ditch, eating a warm fresh peach with the sticky juice running down my forearms. That drive is now relentlessly sunny and only the bones of one or two trees toppled by the roadbed remain. The climate is changing, after all - climate is what you hope for and weather is what you get!
The cottonwoods can no longer sink their roots into life giving water.



They stand as silent, powerful, testaments to what is happening in our world.

The end of Monsoon

Every year about this time in Southeastern Arizona we prepare for a farewell. The climate patterns that bring us regular monsoon rains begins to fall apart and it becomes hot and dry once more here in the Arizona deserts. We have been blessed this year to have a very wet monsoon and the hills and valleys are green. The multitude of greens are a feast for the eye, from the deep glossy green of the Emery oaks to the yellow blush of buffalo grass along the roadways. It is green in Arizona this year.
But although we are still blessed with rain the cusp of rainy season has passed. The leaves of the ocotillo are beginning to yellow and the cottonwoods have lost that glossy look. Fall is on its way. We may have to pass though a blast furnace for a few weeks first but it's downhill from here.
We have gotten some unhoped for moisture from a tropical storm know as Julio and based on the predictions Julio's moisture will keep us cool and wet through the Labor Day weekend.





All this good news aside these weather patterns make for incredible skyscapes.

IR

I have a new toy. No wait I mean tool. I had an older DSLR modified to infrared so I am starting to look at that genre in photography. I have only had my new tool about 12 hours so I don't have much to show you yet. (don't I justify myself well?)
We have so much harsh bright light and IR is all about the light. I can't wait to produce those ghostly images with black skies and brilliant clouds. Note to self: Must make time away from working and day to day life.

Monsoon

It has been raining in Arizona. Last I heard we were at the average rain fall measure for the area and for several years now we have been consistantly under that figure. In Arizona you can say to someone 'I hope you get wet' and it is a good thing. People brag about how many days it has been since they have needed to water their gardens.
Last weekend my granddaughter and I went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum for a bit of a walkabout. This museum is outside of Tucson about 100 miles northwest of Bisbee. Being natives to the area we didn't stop to take advantage of the instructive stops, many of which are manned by a docent. One area we did spend a bit of time in was the cactus display as my grandaughter wanted to get a photograph of a cross section of a saguaro. The woman working the stop was very friendly and knew us as locals as soon as we commented on how fat the cacti were. As the rain is taken up by the cactus it swells causing the ribs to spread. You can carefully reach into the space between the ribs and pet the cactus getting a feel of this tough, rubbery but smooth skin.

The desert has many susprises including grasslands that can be almost marsh like in a good rainy season. We get gifts such as this one which I call Monsoon's gift

Playing Hookie

I found myself back in Pocatello last week for another round of family challenges. It all came down as expected and will no doubt add to an already full plate for me, but that is how it goes with families. While looking at a map of Idaho I realized that Yellowstone National Park is only 200 miles north of Pocatello. Here in the West we don't think much about jumping in the car and driving 200 miles although with the price of gas that is changing. I had rented a small car that got some fairly decent gas mileage so on Monday after I dealt with my responsibilities I took off for Yellowstone, to play hookie for the afternoon. The sun in Idaho does not set until about 9:30 and there is light in the sky for at least an additional hour and a half so I had plenty of time even with the long drive. It was nice to be able to pull off and take pictures without feeling like I was inconveniencing someone else.



It is an incredible area - or at least the geyser area in the western portions of the park is amazing. It is a huge park and in a day trip I did not have enough time to see more than a small portion of the park. When I go back - perhaps to bring my brother home I may have more opportunity to see more of this beautiful spot and spend more time. I took over 150 photographs and uploaded over 40 to my flickr site. It is the sort of dramatic landscape that draws me and if I were close enough to spend some real time in its highways and byways I could make a career out of it - as many photographers have done.



If you would like to see more of the photos from Yellowstone or some of my other work go to my flickr site at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/radiann

Infrared photography

Lately I have been seeing Infrared shots in the photo places where I hang out. They intrigue me. There is something about the glow of green foliage and the dark sky contrasted with puffy white clouds that I find visually captivating. I am thinking about having one of my cameras retrofitted for IR photography. However the process will cost about 400 dollars - or almost as much as I paid for the camera body. Its a conundrum. There is a method to do this type of work through a filter but it is time consuming and one of the photographers that I particularly admire says his success rate is 1000 to 1. For me, employed more than full time, that is an investment in time that I don't think I can make.
So then I looked into post processing to mimic the infrared look. Not as successful as the real deal but close.
This is a test shot that I worked with, chosen more for the fact that it contains foliage, water and hard scape than for the quality of the photograph. I will be working on some with sky and clouds next and will post my efforts.

June 15th
Here is a post script on the IR front. I found a filter for my point and shoot that may help me to decide what I might want to do to explore this new genre. $45 is a much more reasonable investment right now than $400 dollars.

Summer creeps in

It is the end of May. Tomorrow will be June. It was 57 degrees overnight and although the sun is up it is only 62 degrees now. It is no complaint mind you, but observation. In general at this time of year I would expect it to be about 80 or 85. We have had two cool snaps - couldn't rightly call it a cold snap - but it has rained in May twice. Those of us who follow the weather are amazed and we have stopped talking about global climate change and acknowledged that we are living in the phenomenon.
It makes me uncertain. I have lived here all my life and I am accustomed to doing things at certain times. Plant beans two weeks apart to have a crop until September. Plant pumpkins at the end of May for Jack'O Lanterns. What does one do in climate change. It is getting too cold at night. The seeds are rotting in the ground. When it isn't cold it is windy. Change is a very delicate thing I think.
The nice bit about all this is that the flowers remain happy. In Arizona generally speaking nothing does very well from about mid May until the rains start in July, but as things are all topsy-turvee, things are still blooming.

Travel to the North

I am a desert dweller. I have always been a desert dweller but recently had the need to travel north to Idaho on a family emergency. Now it is spring...Right? I arrived in Tucson for my flight with wool jacket in hand. It was a balmy 86 degrees which may have had something to do with forgetting the jacket in the terminal. I arrived in Salt Lake City around 9:30 local time and had to walk down an unheated concourse for what felt like about a half a mile. This walk led me to my next destination - the closest airport store selling clothing where I acquired an overpriced ugly grey sweatshirt with the university of Utah blazoned across the chest - or boobs in my case but I knew I would never make the 3 hour shuttle trip to Pocatello without some added clothing. I may never wear that sweatshirt again but at that moment I was loving its fleecy warmth.
So I made it to Pocatello where the sky proceeded to dump snow on me for the next 7 days straight. Needless to say my spring cool weather wardrobe was inadequate. Gratefully cold weather clothing was on sale in Pocatello. I now own a new selection of vests, sweaters, and long sleeved shirts.
The family emergency has not yet resolved and I will be going back in a few weeks. I will be packing many of my new sweaters, vests and long sleeved shirts as I am told there are three seasons in Pocatello consisting of Winter, July and August.
It is majestic county, but it is just too damn cold!
These images were taken through the bus window at 60 miles an hour with my point and shot. Not my best work but it shows how cold yet lovely this area is.

Predisposed to like flower photos

I am a closet flower photographer. There I have said it - do I still have to do the 12 step program? What if I really don't want to quit?
I think that as visual creatures we humans are predisposed to enjoy seeing flowers. We use a floral motif on almost any material we can. Think about it. Wallpaper, cloth, dishes, printed material of all types, jewelery, hair ornament, and art. Georgia O'Keeffe said 'I hate flowers but I paint them because they are cheaper than a model and don't move'. I suspect she was a closet flower lover as well. We are looked down on by our peers in the world of art unless we have already achieved our fame and can then be in our blue or red or whatever floral phase.
Flowers exist to draw insects for pollination. Often the actual flower is very small and the plant creates showy vegetation to bring attention to its reproductive parts and its reproductive state. A do me, do me, on a much less emotive level.
But a good macro of a flower still draws me. I may never achieve fame as a photographer (I am actually betting that I don't - it keeps me going to work after all) but I will be a flower photographer out of the closet from here on. I just can't help myself! I am powerless against my addiction.

30 Moon Fire

I live in the mountains. Its a blessing really to be able to walk in the mountains without having to really leave home. It does however have some down sides and wild fire is one of them. On March 20th, the first day of spring we had a wild fire started by someone burning trash in their yard. The person responsible did not have a burn permit and is now responsible for burning over 700 acres of high Sonoran Desert. I don't know the person or even his name and I am hoping to remain in this state of blissful unknowing. I am still trying to understand the thought process of this individual.

It is March in Arizona and dry. We were having wind gusts in the 15 to 20 mile range. Not really to bad and because we have some amount of air movement almost all the time and we are often unaware of how much wind we are getting. Sometimes I will watch the news and see that the wind is blowing at 10 or 12 miles and think how odd that I was not tuned in to that. But still that is no excuse.

Some 70 people were evacuated and although we did not lose any structures it was touch and go for a bit. I had my belongings packed for evacuation. In these steep canyons this could have easily been a very different and sad story
The desert is a very fragile ecosystem and it will take years for the land to recover. It will take added resources to prevent erosion during our summer rains, and it will be generations before the oak trees return in the burned areas.
It is a small town and I predict that the person who started this fire will have a new zip code by this time next year. Small towns are not too tolerant of fools.

The cranes

In earlier posts I have talked about the wildlife refuge in the Sulfur Springs valley and have posted one or two of my more successful photographic attempts from that location. I drove out to the refuge on the recent MLK holiday and got very lucky with the birds and the light. I unfortunately forgot the 70-300 VR lens and the tripod - Acute CRS is the only excuse I can come up with. The refuge was very busy - lots of snowbirds and I mean the two legged RV traveling type - but never mind them. The birds and the light were stars of the show.


When I was a little girl I would occasionally see the birds trailing across the sky in the late fall and I have a clear memory of standing on the edge of a hill that looked out to the south on a cold blustery day wondering where they were going and wanting very badly to be with them rather than in the present that was my life at that time. I had no idea that they were only headed twenty miles down the road. If I had I might have made a different wish.