Rain? What's Rain?

So, the rain stopped and the sun is blaring down again.  Perfect weather is... you know what I mean.

Today, was a great day!  Words can't express how clear it was.  I walked outside to take in the fresh air and catch a few morning rays when I noticed the 3rd St. Promenade Clock Tower.  I know it's not that far away from my Sustainable Urban Farm, but whoa!  There's usually so much smog, I can't see past 26th street.  If you look close, or click on it and make the image full size, you can even see the Pacific Ocean.  Gee whiz, I love California!



Now here's the real test of clarity.  It's rare when the mountains behind Los Angeles are visible, but today it made my wife cry.  Remember when I said I love California?  This is one of the many reasons why!!

Since the sun was shining and...  well let's be real for a second, the sun hasn't shown it's pretty face in some time.  We decided to give a tribute to our old friend and build a sun dial.  After cutting down all those planks for the planter boxes I built yesterday, there was more than enough scrap wood laying around.  Don't get me wrong, we hit YouTube for a little personal instruction before we attempted making our own solar guided time keeping contraption.  Turns out it's deceptively easy, yet difficult simultaneously.

If one were to pull of a three sixty, that would me a full turn.  Well, the Earth pulls a 360 everyday.  From noon today to noon tomorrow the Earth will rotate 360 degrees in 24 hours, which is 15 degrees an hour.  All you have to do is get a protractor, printable for free online, and measure out 180 degrees in increments of fifteen onto a flat surface.  Then figure out what your longitude is and place a perpendicular object along the 90 degree line angled to your specific longitude.  Oh, remember when I said deceptively easy, yet difficult?  Forget easy.  Ha ha.  Long story short, here's the final product.  We met a couple of neighborhood friends in the process and they hung with us for the rest of the day.  FYI, the photo was taken at 12 noon.

Once the sun dial was finished, we needed to kill some time to see if it would keep up with the clock on my cellphone.  I asked the crew if they wanted to paint a planter box and they all said yes!  I checked in on them from time to time, but while they painted, I mowed.  It's amazing how a torrential downpour will push all brown-ish colors completely out of the color spectrum.  Green.  Very green.

A quick game of Duck, Duck, Goose broke out!

Then some running.

Rosemary Flower

Hippy Flower Princess

Check in on the Sun Dial, and it works!!!

Counting tree rings.

This stump was once the only tree on this block.  I think it was destroyed during a storm in 2004.  Oh, times are changing.