Stormy Weather

For thre straight days we had storms roll in from the south.

After a rather nice day the sky turned an ominous dark color...

And filled the sky with lightning and thunder much like I remember growing up in Houston


...the rain fell hard as the wind picked up to a small squall.

I slowed down the exposure time and if you look at the top of the red tree you can see it's being blown back and forth causing a blur effect.


It was very black out and the thunder was almost constant for about 45 minutes. If you look to the right of the tall tree you can see a reflection on the window. That's the TV telling me we lost contact with the satellite because of the strength of wind altering the direction our dish is pointing. This has never happened before at home.


I tried some things to show the ripples in the clouds ...


...near the center top I saw what looked like a tornado ...


...but this was my favorite. I had enhanced the color slightly and the red, white and blue look very nice in these bubbly clouds. I think they are Mammatus clouds.


Each day we had storms they left soon after arriving (an hour or two) showing us why our valley is called Emerald Valley


I saw this butterfly on my driveway and thought it was just relaxing till I looked underneath it and saw the white spider with a red dot attached to the underside of the butterfly. I can't find a picture to identify the spider.

Oh and then there is our project. we decided to replace the black rock on the Eastern side of the house with concrete pavers, 160 pavers. We got the sand and spread much of it before the pavers arrived.


Later Home Depot did arrive and we have started the job. * More to come


We did finally buy a Wisteria vine for the back patio and it's blooming.


Sharyn loves Wisteria and I do as well so it's a nice addition.


The gold finches (yellow) and house finches (red) are back since the Coopers Hawk that had been after them has taken off for the wide open spaces.


We just love the gold finches that can show up in groups up to thirty occasionally...


... and we love the hummingbirds that come every day to eat and fight for their territory.


Those first Friday Art walks are a lot of fun and after taking this picture of out yellow iris blooms I realize how much our St. Francis garden statue reminds me of ...


...my Art Walk buddy Vern.


More bugs, this time without an attached spider. It's a green Dragonfly that posed for about fifteen minutes giving me enough time to fetch my camera.


Just for fun I took a shot of Sharyn's sun hat on the patio table still strewn with rocks from our fossil dig.


Our cactus is getting reasy to bloom with early red buds and ...

... other large pink bloom ready to open at any time.


I found this wheat under the bird feeder and stuck it in the planter with the cactus.

Scrabble Score - No scrabble we watched Benjamin Button thanks to Netflix and both enjoyed it and thought it much better than our expectations.

Quote of the Day

Lee Trevino was struck by lightning at the 1975 Western Open when asked what he would do in storms in the future replied "In case of a thunderstorm, stand in the middle of the fairway and hold up a one iron. Not even God can hit a one iron." ~ Lee Trevino