Is it possible to make a photo set interesting when it involves road grading and maintenance? I’ll try.

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After a very dry winter of 2017 and spring and summer of 2018, western Arizona finally got some relief in the form of a pair of hurricanes that moved upwards from the tropics into the desert southwest, bringing some of the best rains in several years. Hurricane Rosa was admittedly a bit of a disappointment on October 1 and 2, 2018, providing me with only .5 inches (13 mm) of rain locally, which is better than nothing but certainly much less than the 1.5 to 2 inches (40-50 mm) that was projected for the entire week leading up to her arrival. However, just 50 to 100 miles east of here, almost all of the rest of Arizona got 2 to 4 inches of rain, so it was highly benevolent for those zones. I just happened to be on the western margins when Rosa ended up taking a slightly more easterly track than had been forecast.

Erosion across my driveway, post-Sergio. This was less than two hours after the rain had ended, as the skies were clearing.

But much better rain arrived less than two weeks later, when Hurricane Sergio remnants pushed across the deserts, which when combined with a low in the Pacific ended up finally bringing D:F Ranch a very heavy storm. I got that 1.5 inches of rain in only 35 minutes on the morning of Saturday Oct 13, 2018. This was tremendously appreciated despite the fact that it did cause significant erosion on my driveway and in other places.

After the Sergio-generated rains, my entry drive was washed out in several places where various local wash channels flowed across, in most cases carrying the soil away downstream (mainly into my flood basins) and leaving difficult-to-navigate ruts. There were about 4 or 5 of them in rapid sequence, all 3 to 6 inches deep, which means my truck hitch was hitting the soil in the deepest one, seen by the circular divots on either side of the eroded channel. This needed fixing.

 

The drag in action on the worst problem section.

So I had a friend and neighbor come over to drag the driveway with his homemade apparatus, which levels ruts and bumps out with repeated passes. The drag consists of an old mobile home trailer frame with a bundle of chain-link fencing wrapped around a middle support beam. Several cables and chains attached the drag to his bumper. I had him come do this weeks after Sergio was gone, in early December 2018.

Initial passes didn’t seem to do much good at first. But as the work went on I saw noticeable smoothing of rough spots, and filling in of ruts and channels.

My neighbor had only passed by here twice or maybe three times thus far. It just takes time and the willingness to drive in circles over and over again for an hour or so.

He was careful to not clip any of my plants with the drag, which I admit is a bit tricky on my property since I didn’t want to take out more vegetation than necessary for the driveway and parking/building zones.

As noted earlier, this area up near the entrance gate was most affected by erosion, with 4 or 5 ruts eroded in sequence, making it at least annoying and at most difficult to drive across. We waited for a rainy day to do the dragging since it would be most effective when the soil was moist.

The turnaround loop on Alamo Road. In and out, in and out….

If you pass across the driveway repeatedly with the drag, you can get pretty decent results for at least surface smoothing and minor repairs. I think he looped around at least 25 to 30 times.

Footprints in the freshly graded dirt. I had to spend about 6 hours raking out the windrows of soil piled up along both edges of the driveway however, because I don’t like the way they look in my garden. Just part of the process and good exercise.

By late afternoon, the storm was clearing, leaving a rainbow behind in the tatters of remnant fog.

Wisps of rare fog hang very low over the desert hills. This only happens a few times a year at most.

Bits and pieces of cloud linger in the foothill valleys and across the higher peaks of the Hualapai Mountains as the sunset arrives. Later this night, due to the saturated airmass left behind in the wake of the storm, a very heavy dew formed. To see photos of this unique event, visit this blog post here:

https://janemming.com/2018/12/09/silvery-night-how-wax-and-water-created-a-winter-wonderland/

This sort of looks like one of those glaciers in Alaska that carries lines of rocky debris on its back as it journeys from the mountains to the sea.

Archway Ridge at Destination:Forever Ranch. The arch is actually on my 40 acres, although I decided to run the deer and cow fencing some distance in front of it. This is because it was pretty difficult to install fenceposts in those gigantic rock piles, so I went for an easier zone.

I’ll post a few additional photos I took during the time I was waiting for the dragging to be finished. Above is a photo of the natural arch on my property, which is obviously why I named it Archway Ridge. Admittedly it’s not fully a rock span and more of a balanced boulder, but tens of thousands of years of erosion chipped away at the granite to cause this feature, very slowly, a few grains of missing feldspar and mica at a time. No, the rock did not fall into place from somewhere up above. It eroded in place, which if you ask me is equally marvelous.

So, who else do you know who has a natural arch on their property? 

D:FR Arch: The opening is about 5 feet wide and 9 feet tall, more than easy enough to walk through. Visitors to D:FR who are able to scramble over large boulders to get to the entrance are invited to pass underneath the giant rock as a sort of initiation rite. The presence of this natural feature was one of several factors that made me fall in love with this place and want to spend my life here.

Archway Ridge just north of the arch, showing the Sonoran-Mojave Desert transitional mix of vegetation involving both Joshua trees and saguaro cactus along with a host of other species. This biodiversity and scenery were two other reasons why I bought this property 20 years ago next week, in late December 1998.

Some of the additional plantings I’ve made at D:F Ranch. Left to right are Yucca filifera, Agave americana, Echinocactus grusonii, Opuntia macrocentra, and Ferocactus wislizenii. All of these plants survive on rainfall alone for the most part, with no help from me anymore. The black wood is a piece of root from an ironwood tree, Olneya tesota.

A different arrangement of the same species as shown in the photo above, as seen on a foggy afternoon.

Arizona fishhook barrels (Ferocactus wislizenii) bloom in late summer, usually August and September, and ripen the yellow fruits in November and December. The foreground rosettes belong to Utah agave (Agave utahensis). In the background is Agave scabra ssp zarcensis, with Opuntia erinacea to the far left edge of the image.

Detail of the yellow pineapple-like fruits of the F. wislizenii. If not eaten by desert critters, they can persist until summer of the following year, but in my area they seldom last more than a few months. Which is still a long time, just not as long as theoretically possible….

I’ve planted a number of Argentine toothpick cactus (Stetsonia coryne) around at D:FR as well. This is the first individual I planted here way back in 2000, as a 5-gallon pot only 18 inches tall at the time. It’s now nearing 5 feet.

Some of the plants I am setting aside for eventual planting. I got some of these plants from my friend Steve who sold off a lot of his personal collection in a move of his house and nursery a few months ago. Others came from retail outlets like Home Depot and Lowes.

Wait, what have we here?

Why are you blooming now?!?

Speaking of the rains of October messing with things like my driveway erosion levels, I think it also messed with the internal biological clock of this Yucca baccata, which is blooming way, way far out of season in early and mid-December. Normal flowering time for this species in my area is springtime, primarily late April or early May. I’ve seen this before on other banana yuccas elsewhere (not on this individual) where autumnal rainfall appears to trigger unseasonable flowering in occasional plants.

Details of the Yucca baccata flower spike. Totally normal save for the time of year it is appearing….

I have found no other yuccas in bloom, and this plant will be unable to set viable pods without either another individual blooming nearby, or the yucca moth that normally pollinates them. Still, it is a pleasant diversion from the lack of flower activity happening here in midwinter. All part of the grand cycles of life out here in my desert paradise.