After over 100 days, Phoenix finally received rain. Like when I was growing up, the wall of dust came first. Naturally we were out walking the dog when it finally reached us. Pink skinned and stinging from the blowing dust, we raced home.
And then came the smell.
Wet earth. It is the best scent on the planet especially after such a long dry spell.
Then there is the hiss of rain on wet asphalt.
And the golden sunshine turned to liquid silver. I love the monsoon season. I love the dust storms and the rain.
The humidity is another issue. I think I’m gonna graft a set of gills on my lungs to breathe. How do folks in the green parts of the country survive?
Rain, rain fall today
And again another day
If you don’t, I declare
I’ll cloud seed the atmosphere
Linda Andrews 
That’s a poem only a scientist would love or even think of. Sure glad you got some rain. Are you allowed to store rain runoff in your area? We’ve had one brief rain in the past 30 days in our area but it has rained quite a bit in the state. It just seems all the thunderstorm miss our town. The clay is hardpan and cracked about an inch deep.
We can store it but with mosquitoes carrying West Nile virus in our area it’s not a good idea.
We have one 275 gallon collection tote and where the rain gutter downspout dumps the water into the tote we have a screen to keep out the mosquitoes and any other debris from contaminating the water. It’s rare we see a mosquito on our property. Our Koi pond has a waterfall on each end and that keeps the surface water moving so they won’t use that. Plus the Koi and the tadpoles would eat any larvae that would crop up. Of course the Koi will eat the tadpoles too. We had hundreds of them and maybe a dozen got big enough where the Koi wouldn’t eat them anymore. Didn’t have to feed the Koi for a couple of weeks. LOL
Do you find a lot of dead bees in your pond? They’re all over our pool
No, no bees. If they are all drowning in your pool then they are really hurting for water for their hives. In the fall the honeybees will sometimes swarm our birdbaths getting water. None of them drown or if they do the birds eat them up. What’s funny is watching the squirrels sneak up to the Koi pond to get a drink. The actual pond is 6 inches below the lip so the get on the edge and reach across to the waterfalls and rink out of the top of them. I say sneak up because we are sitting only 5-10 feet away. They act like we can’t see them.
Squirrel stealth?