~Faraway Sunset~

~An Outlying Beauty~

Somewhere, maybe the Colorado River Valley or even California, there was a very beautiful sunset. But here in southern central Arizona it was a far off display peeking over a dark cloud bank that was beginning to rising above the Tortolita Mountains.

Still working in my yard, today I began rebuilding my "rock rivers". This work will take a month or more if I'm lucky and work hard. What are rock rivers you ask? There are natural or forced drainage paths in my yard, in the past I had to dig trenches in these paths to help with rain water removal. They are maybe 10 inches deep and 2 feet wide or more. In these trenches are placed river rock, round stones maybe three inches to 12 inches in diameter. When I built my yard I brought in 12 tons of river rock for this purpose. Unfortunately, over the years the rock waterways have begun to filled with sediment and gravel, this defeats the function of the drainage paths. So now I am removing the rock and small boulders from the culverts, then digging out the dirt and gravel and returning the river rock to the culverts. So hopefully the summer monsoons will not overwhelm my 'rock rivers' and my yard!

Believe it or not I do enjoy this manual labor, I have worked hard in construction all my life. Now that I'm retired I feel that need to keep up this physical labor out of joy, but also I'm slightly afraid that if I stop this labor intensive lifestyle I might fall apart.


See ya, TucsonJim ;o)


A Larger Distant Sunset