Rain Today

It's been a few days of rather unusual weather for the desert.  It's not that we never get rain, but we rarely get it several days in a row and certainly not on and off for a week with periods of very steady rainful.  That just doesn't happen around here.  We even got tornado warnings last night,  very unusual indeed.

This morning, I thought I'd try to capture a representation of the rain.  Not the rain itself, falling from the sky, that can only be captured effectively in certain circumstances, and besides, that stopped with the light of day.  But the aftermath, I was hoping to capture at least a piece of.

There's lots more, to be sure, but these are a few that I liked the look of.

This next one is clean and defined, instead of dull and covered in dust and washed out by bright sunlight.

I'm trying for artistic here, still working on that, but I'm pretty happy with this shot.

This was the strangest growth of a cholla cactus I recall seeing in a long time.  These were up about 3 feet off the ground on a horizontal branch that looked mostly dead.  It's growing a whole new cactus village.

The phainopepla takes the high road.

This cactus wren sat and called while I snapped his portrait.  Very handsome.