Goings on

Yesterday evening, just before dark, I noticed that the sky had turned a bizarre color, and there were rumblings of thunder in the distance.  Seems as if that Mexican hurricane had sent enough warm wet air north that we were getting some thunderstorms.  I live right up next to the foothills here in central California, so occasionally the storms leak down from the mountains into my neck of the woods.  When that happens just as the sun is going down, there can be some amazing light generated by the sun's rays shooting horizontally right into the clouds and rain.  Saturday evening here was one of those rare days.

Below, looking north east.  Just to the left of the end of the eave of the house, there is a dim section of rainbow that you can see if you look carefully.

Looking directly south.  The color was so intense I actually dialed down the saturation on this image.

The rain never quite got to us.  We got a few spatters of those big drops that come with a thunderstorm, but not enough to even wet the ground.  Still, the unique light, the rumble and boom of not so far away thunder, and it was an evening to remember.

So today, it was basically back to normal, although there are still a lot of those cumulus clouds marching across the sky.  Last Friday, on my way back from Visalia, I stopped at my sister's for a visit, and while there, my brother in law gave me a banana tree sprout (great guy, that Greg). 

His banana tree was given to him a couple years ago, and it's a pretty nice tree now.  It has numerous sprouts coming off the root, so we dug one up and wrapped it up.  Today, I spent the morning preparing the ground, and planting the little devil.

Now no one around here has a banana tree that I have seen, and there is probably a good reason for that.  The environment down in Fresno, where my sis lives, is just about the same as here, and their banana is nice and healthy, so hopefully I'll manage to get mine to thrive as well.  The internet tells me that they don't grow when the temperature gets down below the mid fifties, or when it gets hotter than 100.  It does both frequently here.  I'll have to cover it in the winter, and water it generously in the summer.  They're big eaters too, and lots of mulch and fertilizer is in store for it.  I predict it will be a challenge to get it to fruit, but my brother in law got a decent bunch of bananas off his a year ago, so it's possible.

I need to name the banana tree.  Any suggestions?