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One of few sun rays this weekend.
Nice contrast between mown and unmown areas.
Saturday 10:13

                         a   S T A M M E R  project              

2008 November 1 & 2, Saturday & Sunday

When we arrived at the terrain the rain gauge indicated 40 litres of rain. In the high Pyrenees this precipitation had fallen as snow as we saw during a brief spell of clear skies on Saturday afternoon.

Fresh snow on the Central Pyrenees.
Saturday 17:35

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The rain must have fallen regularly without extreme downpours because the water in the higher pond was still clear, without indication of dirty inflow. This changed on Saturday night when a deluge of 25 litres filled the ponds up with dirty water.
 

The colour is nevertheless not the same 'café con leche' colour of 21 July 2007; a clear sign of the ground being protected and covered by vegetation.

The shore of the lower pond.
Saturday 10:01

Transparent water in the higher pond on Saturday 10:10

The higher pond.
Saturday 10:05

Muddy water on Sunday 11:09

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Of course we were worried of what all this rainwater would do with our future garden house. In general it withstood the attacks of rain and wind quite well but at some specific, and not expected, places rainwater had entered. For example the boards of wood we use as scaffolds worked as a bouncing surface for falling raindrops and wetted a considerable area of the exterior western wall. A protruding edge of the wooden floor on the exterior walls acted as a barrier and made it possible for rainwater to invade even the interior floor in some areas.
How much the damage is and will be (when rotting of straw sets in) is difficult to assess now. We adjusted and improved the coverage with sheets and hope that affected areas will have the opportunity to dry.
But the situation is not ideal and we probably should have avoided being in this stage of the building in a rainy season.

The building looks like a ghostly fortification against the elements.
Looking north.
Sunday 11:51

Workplace inside the building where the different parts of the roof are being made.
Saturday 15:00

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The building is already offering a nice sheltering place for human and other beings. I have installed my working place inside and a group of  Black redstarts (Phoenicurus ochruros) use the place as a shelter for the night. They even use small niches in the exterior wall, which offered a funny spectacle when I checked the building during the rainstorm in the middle of the night.

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Near the caravan there is a patch dominated by Bitter fleabane (Erigeron acer). Last September they were all setting fruit but they had now started flowering again.

The (semi-) perennial Bitter fleabane in fruit.
Photograph taken on 17 Sept. 14:54

Bitter fleabane flowering.
Saturday 15:07

introduction
floristic catalogue
faunistic catalogue
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index
gallery 1: 2006-2012
gallery 2: 2012-
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>> 2008 Nov  8
<< 2008 Oct 25