The Power of Water III

With the rain came renewal as well as destruction. The view toward the big red barn has changed because a house stood in front of it, it's driveway lined with tall deodar cedars. They burned down along with  my favorite little red barn. But he grass is carpeting the hillside and the seasonal creek which runs through a fold in the hillside has transformed itself from an oak lined  channel of rocks to a torrent. The trees along the ridgeline don't seem to be coming back, but the palm tree beside the farmhouse is looking quite good after a severe haircut. 

John and his friend Dan are brewing a second batch of beer today. I banished them to the garage amongst the boxes containing the bathtub, the closet doors and the two toilets. When I went down there, they were sitting at the table covered with electronic equipment destined for the e-waste disposal site tasting the results of their first batch. The garage is a perfect example of the fact that if you create a space, in our case giving one of our cars to Tim, something will fill it again. Nature abhors a vacuum....

 I had a taste and, although I'm hardly a connoisseur of  beer, I didn't think this tasted much like beer. Dan said it was because they used too little water and it still needs to age a little longer in the bottle to develop more carbonation. He said he thought it tasted just  like barley wine. No wonder I didn't think it tasted like beer. 

The sky is now blue again and we have put up all our umbrellas again to dry them out. The hillside outside the window is also turning green and things are looking decidedly well washed. No more rain is in the forecast but the ground is sufficiently saturated so that the next rain will create runoff to begin filling the reservoirs. If things don't dry out too much in the meantime....