{"id":5360,"date":"2019-09-19T15:29:17","date_gmt":"2019-09-19T22:29:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/?p=5360"},"modified":"2019-09-19T15:29:17","modified_gmt":"2019-09-19T22:29:17","slug":"september-first-rain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/september-first-rain\/","title":{"rendered":"September – First Rain"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"
First Rain, Malech Road, 16×20, oil on canvas<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sixth in my Preserve Coyote Valley Quest.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having spent my adolescent and twenties in East Texas, I am always enchanted by the beautiful skies and clouds when I go back to visit. Huge thunderheads, magnificent in their awesome power would bring refreshing, but short bursts of moisture during the summer months. Huge puffy cumulus clouds would fill the sky rolling slowly past in no hurry to get anywhere. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my younger days working outside in the the hot summer sun, the cloudbursts would bring a short refreshing cool break to the heat, but in an hour or two there would be no evidence of the downpour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here in the San Francisco Bay area, we rarely see such wonder in the skies. Being close to the Pacific, the skies are usually a non-event. The exception is just after a winter storm.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A bit of unusual weather for this time of year, we had our first rain of the season, and the skies were wonderful with puffy cumulus clouds and rain squalls passing through, and I always take notice. Generally we don’t get this type of weather until our somewhat mild winter season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The painting is a view from Malech Road<\/strong> which runs along the eastern foothills of Coyote Valley.\u00a0 Looking west, the distant foothills is where I started the first painting in this quest from the Coyote Valley Open Space Preserve.<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the foreground, Coyote Canal<\/a> zigzags around the hills.\u00a0 Built in 1936, this canal originally carried water from Anderson Lake<\/a> to fill percolation ponds and irrigation ditches around Santa Clara Valley. Water was deliberately routed around Coyote Valley to keep groundwater levels there from becoming too high.\u00a0 Today, the Coyote Canal delivers water only a short way to where it is then channeled through underground pipes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Soon, if this rain keeps up, the golden grass of the California coastal hills will turn emerald green towards the end of year…and I will have to adjust my artist’s palette!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sixth in my Preserve Coyote Valley Quest. Having spent my adolescent and twenties in East Texas, I am always enchanted by the beautiful skies and clouds when I go back to visit. Huge thunderheads, magnificent in their awesome power would bring refreshing, but short bursts of moisture during the summer months. Huge puffy cumulus clouds […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,6,344],"tags":[190,360,343,218,45],"class_list":["post-5360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-landscape","category-studio","category-the-coyote-quest","tag-art","tag-coyote-canal","tag-coyote-valley","tag-oil-painting","tag-painting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gXkU-1os","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5360"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5375,"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5360\/revisions\/5375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.donaldneff.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}