RAIN, HAIL AND TORTOISES

Yesterday was a good day in the garden. I located both tortoises in the garden after I had not seen them for awhile, so we decided it was time to make a home for them. We dug out a small area next to the wall and sloped the grade up a bit to the entrance, graded the dirt outside of the  entrance down to get rainwater flowing away, made walls of brick cemented with mud, laid a divide board in the middle, rough planks for a roof, and covered them with a salvaged piece of thick plastic. More mud was added on top of that, a few more planks and then we covered the whole structure in straw. I placed the tortoises where you see them here, walked a few meters away to get a lawn chair so I could eat my lunch while watching to see if they would go in and in the few seconds it took me to get the chair, they had already almost completely disappeared in the burrows. A light rain started at that moment, and I did not have hope for much but within a couple of minutes it started coming down hard, then came the hail. It was a magnificent summer storm, and I loved every minute of it.