Whew - barely made it back inside with Clove before another downpour started. Poor dogs had to be satisfied with a pee dash instead of midday walkies today. The rain has been generous and fairly well-behaved over the last 6 days. Daily rainfall has ranged from 0.7 to 1.7 inches each day, with a chance for more than 1.7 inches yet today (1.2 so far, with more coming down now).
Last evening, Barnie and I spotted this lovely rainbow as the sun was setting.
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| A hint of a double arc. The main arc spans from approximately Pine Ridge Creek to Great Monkey Cay. |
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| Unusual (to me, anyway) to see a rainbow this low. The brown water is from a plume of fresh water from Monkey River due to all the rainfall in the recent days. |
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| The colors at the base intensified as the rest of the rainbow faded away. |
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| A single arc over the swamp and jungle. |
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| Always a great way to begin the day. |
I call this rain well-behaved not only because it gave us rainbows, but also because it was spread out over time and hasn't caused any flooding, it topped off our water vats, and still let enough sunlight through to charge our solar power system. The rain that fills our water vats is our only source of fresh water for drinking, cleaning, etc. Dennis keeps a close eye on the vats and their maintenance. We have to make sure we have enough water on hand to make it through the dry season. That includes watering the garden.
Dennis also keeps a close eye on our solar power system, making sure that we don't shorten the lifespan of those big, expensive, batteries by letting the charge drop too low. If it gets too low, we will need to run the generator to recharge them. We have become very spoiled with our solar system. When we first built down here in 2005, we had a big diesel generator for power. The power tools for construction ran straight off the generator. We soon added a small battery bank for the generator to charge so there would power 24/7 instead of only while the gen was running. Our goal always was to move to solar power, which we did in 2015. We installed solar panels on the roof of the new cabana, which we had oriented to maximize solar gain, and installed the baddass batteries we have now (here is a post Dennis wrote with the gory details of solar system we installed). We were able to decommission the big diesel generator and get a smaller gas-powered generator for backup power. The sound of silence when we turned off the big generator for the last time was magical. The bit of red roof in the next-to-last photo is the generator shed, which was actually the first building constructed here. With that generator and its big barrel of diesel fuel gone, we can use the shed for storage of gasoline for the boat and new generator; it also houses the water pump.
As I am finishing up this post, the sun is out, the batteries are charging, and the water vats are full - life is good.
