Let's Talk About the (Wicked) Weather...

Most of the time it was probably real bad being stuck down in a dungeon.  

But some days, when there was a bad storm outside, 

you'd look out your little window and think, "Boy, I'm glad I'm not out in that."

~ Jack Handy's "Deep Thoughts" (from Saturday Night Live) :-)

The weather has sure made for a rather savage spring in a lot of places around the country and the world, including our little corner of it! As I mentioned in my last SkyWatch post, our weather last week was turbulent and often violent. We had a series of storms, each one noteworthy for an extreme version of a weather phenom: lightning, rain, hail, and wind. Here's a recap of what dominated local news and conversations this week (along with the awful fire in Colorado Springs)...

The series of wild storms began last Friday night, with the thunderstorm I mentioned in my Post-Yard Sale Fiesta post. I didn't get any photos, but for those of us unable to sleep through the meteorological equivalent of a night of nuclear detonations in our back yard, the intensity and frequency of the lightning and the eardrum-bursting volume of the thunder was the hot topic Saturday morning! 

After a chilly, gusty Saturday, a warm and lovely Sunday, and another very gusty day Monday, an uncomfortably muggy (for this usually dry climate) Tuesday brought more notable weather. We were under such dire severe thunderstorm warnings that afternoon that I grabbed my camera and photographed some flowers I'd admired on my walk with the dogs that morning, figuring they wouldn't survive the predicted weather...

Pretty Poppies

(I saw these again on Sunday - the spunky red ones took a lethal beating, 

while the dainty-hued pink ones were totally unscathed! Just goes to show...)

Not sure what this is called - snowball bush? - but they're quite popular here

 and this is the most impressive one I've seen. I also saw it again on Sunday,

 and though it had a carpet of white petals beneath it, it was still loaded with blossoms.

And then the scary monster arrived...

...turning the sky darker than I've ever seen daytime skies turn when not experiencing a total solar eclipse, and bringing more 60mph wind gusts, an impressive amount of pea and dime-sized hail, and torrential rain that caused flash floods. Here's a quick bit of the local coverage with a couple of photos, and here are a couple of videos I shot through two upstairs windows, mostly for the sound of the hail, which I thought was pretty impressive (having no idea what Thursday would have in store!)...

But after every storm comes the calm. So here is Mr. Peabody, one of our resident pheasants (we call all male pheasants "Mr. Peabody") in our next door neighbor's back yard after the rain and hail stopped, apparently come calling to discuss the storm with his pelican friends. ;-) Despite their stony expressions (*snork*), I think the pelicans probably enjoyed it a lot more than Mr. Peabody did...

Someone told me our rain amount of more than an inch in 15 minutes made the national news. I can't verify that, but at our house the rain came down in blinding sheets for about 20 minutes and, as you can see, filled our rain gauge with 1.6" of water, while the Weather Channel reported a total of just under 2½ inches of precipitation for that day (which would have included some more rain that fell that night)...

Too bad some of this couldn't have fallen on Colorado Springs!

Wednesday brought more thunderstorms, more gusty winds, and another ¾" of rain in our rain gauge, ho-hum. And then came Thursday.

BW stopped by the house as he usually does around 3pm, and when I greeted him at the door I noticed with alarm that the sky was absolutely black. So I got online to check for weather bulletins, and sure enough there was another severe thunderstorm bearing down on us and spotters in the direction it was coming from said it had ping-pong sized hail. I battened down the few hatches I hadn't already battened (and had left battened) on Tuesday, and hoped for the best. But though it did toss a few icy ping-pong balls at us (the half-dozen or fewer that hit our roof sounded like 2x4's dropped from an airplane!) along with more pea-sized stuff, and blew like stink (as usual) and rained hard (as usual), it only lasted a few minutes and then the sun came out and all was calm (I thought).

Not even the loud hail sounds could distract me from the unusual sight out our front window, though... the mist that rose from the hot pavement when the rain started to hit it and was then blown down the street by the gusty winds, looking like fine, blowing snow. I shot one video of it during the storm, and another after the sun came back out...

After it passed, I walked down the street and took some photos of the storm as it moved away from us (one of which was in my SkyWatch post). It was so huge, I could only fit less than half the expanse of storm cloud in my frame...

The rest of the evening was unremarkable until Robyn called me at around 6pm and asked me how bad it was at our house. "How bad what is?" I said, baffled by the question. "The damage from the ping-pong sized hail!" she answered. I told her we only got a little bit for a minute or two, and it didn't do much more than knock some little branches off our little trees, why? Turns out that hail storm cut a destructive swath through Robyn's neighborhood (where several other of our friends live) and the north end of town, while only grazing us and not affecting most of the town at all. Poor Robyn - the hail did enough damage to the shingles (and hopefully only the shingles) on their two-year old roof that it needs to be replaced, punched holes in her vinyl siding, pummeled (and probably totaled) their Honda Ridgeline, broke her fountain, cracked the main pipe from the house to their sprinkler system, dented her greenhouse panels, oblitered her flowers and veggie garden, and even knocked some of the metal leaves off her new faerie cart! :-( She said the hail was piled several inches thick against her fence.

Meanwhile, BW's boss (and many others, no doubt) also has to have his roof, including the sheathing, replaced. In addition, many trees, gardens, vehicles, and skylights in the affected part of town were damaged or destroyed, and even birds were knocked right out of the trees and nests and killed. :'-( Our friend and eye doctor Tim, whose beautifully landscaped house is right near Robyn's and so also suffered damage, normally would have had his car parked at his office in an unaffected area. But Thursday wasn't his day at all, as it was the day he goes to see patients at the VA Hospital - and the VA was right in the path of the hailstorm. He said his little car was "toast." 

But no words can describe it as well as photos can... so here's more local media coverage (check out at least the first several seconds of that second video - whoa!) and here are some of the impressive photos of the hail stones and of the some of the equally impressive hail accumulation and local devastation, most of it at the north end of town.

And even after all that, the weather wasn't through with us. At about midnight, some invisible, fiendish force flipped on the wind switch and the fiercest wind I've ever heard started screaming and roaring around our house. I have no idea how hard it blew, since the airport on the other side of town, which measures the official wind speeds in Sheridan, doesn't get nearly the wind that we do up here. But they still recorded 58 mph gusts that night - I'd guess the wind gusts here were close to 70mph! 

We've been enjoying beautiful weather since that final, epic fit of fury Thursday. But don't think we're not keeping a close and wary eye on the skies these days, and not just for photo ops!

❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂❂

And finally in non-weather news, tomorrow is our Silver (25th) Wedding Anniversary! Our 2-week vacation in the PNW at the end of the month is our anniversary gift to ourselves, but the only silver involved (besides what's in our hair) is the color of our Highlander Hybrid we're driving out there. :-)

to us! :-)

SkyWatch Friday: Skies for Jiroemon Kimura

On Wednesday, the world's oldest man in recorded history, Jiroemon Kimura, died of natural causes in Japan at age 116 years and two months. What does this have to do with SkyWatch? According to the article linked to above, "on his 115th birthday, Kimura told reporters he attributed his longevity to getting out in the sunlight." 

"I am always looking up towards the sky. That is how I am," Kimura said then.

So I dedicate this post and its variety of skies from this week to the long life and SkyWatching spirit of Jiroemon Kimura, and to all of us who make it a habit to look up towards the sky. :-)

But first, some perfect musical accompaniment as you view this week's photos: Kyu Sakamoto's hit song "Sukiyaki," whose first line (and Japanese title),"Ue o muite arukou" means "I look up when I walk"  and which hit #1 on Billboard's pop charts in the United States on June 15, 1963 ~ yup, 50 years ago tomorrow! (Told you it was perfect!) :-)


Given that Japan is known as "Land of the Rising Sun" (its name's Japanese characters translate to "sun origin"), I thought we'd start out with Tuesday's sunrise...

Lupine on a hillside blends with Sunday's cloudless Wyoming sky...

Can you see the wee bee in the upper right? :-)
(Click on the photo to see a larger version)

Some not-so-cloudless skies during this week of turbulent (and sometimes violent) weather...



Sunrise-lit storm clouds clear out after a night of wild weather...

Only to start gathering again each afternoon...

This cloud reminds me a bit of Underdog! LOL

Though beautiful, this is definitely not a cloud you want to see looming over your house, as this was over ours last evening...

This storm hurled ping-pong sized hail and did great damage to nearby parts of town ~ 

we were very lucky to only be grazed by the edge of it!

A striped sunset sky with an eerie red glow on the horizon...

And finally, a "cresting wave" cloud...

Seriously, this cloud looked just like a cresting wave when I first saw it, but by the time I grabbed my camera and shot this picture, its shape had shifted and blurred and a lot of its wave resemblance was lost. Still, I wanted to include it because its original shape reminded me of this famous painting by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), "The Great Wave off Kanagawa" (aka, "The Breaking Wave"), and I thought it was especially appropriate to include in a post dedicated to Jiroemon Kimura-san...

Look towards the world's skies at SkyWatch Friday, and live long and prosper!

Our saddened hearts and concerned thoughts are with the people of Colorado Springs, where I know at least two regular SkyWatchers live (as does my sister-in-law and her family). As they continue to grapple with dangerous, devastating wildfires there (for the second year in a row!), we fervently wish for everyone's safety and the end of further loss of life and property!

Nature hike and Mocha howdy

Last Sunday was a perfect June day as well as the last day of BW's week of vacation, so we loaded up the girls and drove to the ranch where Mocha lives to go on a nature hike and then visit Mocha. I took along my easy-to-tote Kodak, so here are some photos from our expedition!

I took this photo of this antelope buck and his posse from the Jeep on our way to the gravel pit road where we hike. I was glad my Kodak has a good telephoto lens, because they had bounded quite a distance away before feeling safe enough to pose for a group photo!...

I don't know if we frightened this little Killdeer from her nesting area or what, but as we walked past a sandy area beside the road, she sort of jumped-flew out in front of us and did a funny little dance several times, then insisted on running ahead of us for the rest of our uphill walk! If we lagged behind too much she'd wait for us, looking back over her shoulder rather impatiently (as she was doing in this photo) till we caught up enough to satisfy her. She wouldn't let me get much closer than 10 yards or so, so I took this with my telephoto and cropped it so she'd be in the bottom left corner of the picture and easier to spot - she's really camouflaged against those beige stones and grasses!...

BW spied this pretty little cactus-looking flower, but I haven't had time to identify it yet. Do any of you know what it is? (Anyone? Anyone?) :-)...

Now this blooming flower I DO know. It's the infamous Crazy-Dog Plant! :-) Josie seems quite pleased with herself for posing so perfectly between these two budding Yucca flowers...

I love this photo so decided to have a little editing fun with it...

Mocha has been back in out in the pasture and reunited with his old buddies from last summer, Prairie and Flame, for for a couple of weeks and is looking great! He's put on weight and is sleek and shiny, and galloped and pranced like a colt when he saw us...

L-R Prairie, Flame and Mocha

He seemed eager to show off his hair accessories, of which he was quite proud, so I told him I'd put a photo of his new fashion statement on the blog for everyone to admire. When Josie overheard this, she insinuated herself into the photo - so please don't fail to admire her, too, 'cause that's how feelings can get hurt. ;-)

Speaking of Josie, for those of you keeping track, her heart function blood work came back inconclusive, scoring fairly near the low (good) end of the "gray area" range between definitely no heart disease and definite heart disease. Since she did well on this hike and on our walks since and has no other symptoms in her heart sounds or on her xrays, rather than running further tests our vet has me keeping a log of our walks - the temperature, distance walked, how far she gets before (and how many times) she demands a break. I call it the "Josie Crap-out Log" and between thee and me, I think Josie's quite pleased to have taken her high-maintenance reputation to a new level! :-)

Pre-Yard Sale Rainbow, Post-Yard Sale Fiesta!

"A garage sale is basically when strangers come to your house 

and examine your personal belongings with undisguised contempt."

~ Dave Berry, Homes and Other Black Holes

Yep. But they came in droves on day #2 like they had on day#1 in spite of the deterioration in the weather, and bought most of our contemptible crap. :-)  We had thunderstorms all during Friday night, with thunder so loud and lightning so plentiful and bright that it woke me around 11pm in spite of my exhaustion (BW slept through it all!), and I wasn't able to get to back to sleep till about 4am. So I went through day #2 with even more sleep deprivation than I had the day before. The weather that morning was still so ominous we briefly debated whether to set up our sale at all. I guess this full rainbow that greeted us that morning from our front yard, like the one the evening before in our back yard, was an auspicious sign! The clouds finally moved out and the we had stiff breezes rather than the strong gusts they'd predicted, thankfully...

The rainbow's left side to our south,

and its right side across the street to our west

We sold everything except for a box of books we donated to the library, three boxes of miscellany we donated to a local church thrift shop, a box of equine supplies that we gave to the folks who board Mocha, and one small box of items we'll keep for now. All our new clutter-free space feels wonderful! Our yard sale partners did very well too - together our four families made almost $1500, so I guess we can put up with a few derogatory comments about our possessions for that. ;-)

It was too hectic to take photos - the sale was supposed to start at 8am, but people were arriving not long after 6:30 when we'd barely begun setting up! (Why do some people always show up that early? It's obnoxious, for one thing, and they end up only seeing about 1/4 of the merchandise!) Our sale ended at noon Saturday, but folks were still stopping by as late as 2:30 when BW and I were packing up the last of the stuff to haul away. But even that wasn't the latest of the "late birds" - our doorbell rang at 6pm, and there stood a woman wanting to know if we still had the computer desk! Nope, Robyn's desk is now available for purchase at the church thrift store! I mean, really.

Anyway, as I was saying - it was too hectic to take photos during the yard sale, but I did notice as we were closing down that our rose bush had put out its first bloom! So, proud plant mama that I am, I had to snap a photo...

Meanwhile, the amazing and indefatigable Robyn invited us over for dinner and margaritas later that evening, to show us her garden and enjoy a slightly belated celebration of BW's birthday. I don't know how she managed it, and I figured I'd fall asleep in my margarita after the first sip, but buoyed by our successful yard sale (and knowing how delicious Robyn's food is), no way were we tired enough - or foolish enough - to decline. So that evening found us touring Robyn's lovely yard and garden, and admiring her newest addition - this sweet faerie cart she bought at the local greenhouse, in part with a gift certificate we'd given her for her birthday... 

We thought it was adorable and especially love the disco ball for boogying faeries! 

And then we got to enjoy a Christmas present I'd given her this year, this festive string of margarita lights she'd put on her deck...

But what fun are margarita lights without any actual margaritas? Robyn had found a recipe for pomegranate margaritas she wanted to try, so she made it for the first time that night and it was a huge hit! We all loved it - it was a perfect, flavorful combination of sweet-tart. Pretty, too! (I've shared the recipe at the bottom of this post)...

And check out this colorful spread of nosh! Robyn had made a pasta salad and also put out fixin's for a delicious "Spicy Chick'n Taco Salad" with her homemade "fiery sauce" (in the bowl to the far left), and for BW's birthday she'd made the indescribably delicious Coconut Lime Cupcakes from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World...

Robyn had made these and several other flavors of vegan cupcakes for her daughter's Hawaiian themed wedding reception last spring and asked us to be taste testers for her. Though they're made with some unhealthful ingredients we typically avoid (margarine, oil, shortening, refined white flour, powdered sugar... yikes!), we thought it would be bad form not to help out a friend in need. ;-) I swear I gained at least 10 pounds passing judgement on those amazing cupcake samples, and this sublime flavor (teehee) was one of our absolute favorites. 

This one's still in its paper baking cup so you can't see the "cake" part, but it has a lovely soft green hue with little flecks of lime zest through it. I don't have the cookbook or the recipe, but I found it online. They are beguilingly pretty and deliciously vegan, but they are also epic sugar-and-fat-bombs that are highly addictive! You've been warned... :-) 

And here's the margarita recipe I promised, so you'll have something to wash down your cupcakes with...

Pomegranate Margaritas

Ingredients:
1 cup tequila
1 cup triple sec (or orange liqueur of your choice)
3 TBSP agave nectar
1¼ cups pomegranate juice
¾ cup fresh squeezed lime juice
4 cups ice

Directions:
Mix the tequila, triple sec, and agave nectar. Stir in the pomegranate and lime juices and ice. Serve and enjoy!

(We had ours without salt on the glass rim, but that's certainly an option).

I also found this very similar recipe (minus the sweetener but adding the salt) that just serves one... in case you prefer to drink alone or don't need to make a vat of it to unwind with your lushy friends after a grueling two-day yard sale!) :-)

We didn't get to bed till midnight, so we took it pretty easy on Sunday, BW's last day of vacation. One thing we did was take the girls to visit Mocha and go on a hike, and I got a few fun photos during that outing that I'll share in my next post. See you then! :-)

SkyWatch Friday: Yard Sales & Rainbows

I was almost too tuckered out to put together a SkyWatch post this evening, after waking up at 4:20 this morning and putting in a long, busy day #1 of a two-day, multi-family yard sale extravaganza at our house. But then we had a lovely sky worthy of a photograph, so I rallied. :-) 

Our yard sale went really well - we had perfect weather, lots of people, and sold a LOT of stuff. I don't know which feels better - putting some jingle in our pockets or creating more space in our lives! They both feel good, but the rewarding day wasn't just limited to those two satisfying things...

In addition to all the people (including some old chums we got to catch up with), we had a few cute canine customers, including this well behaved chap who waited patiently and quietly (as well as very observantly) in the car while Mom shopped...

I was going to crop this for a closeup of the dog, but hated to crop out the mountains.

There's still snow in the high country - we even had frost Tuesday night!

But today was sunny, calm and 80º - perfect!

Two other highlights of the day were finding a pair of favorite earrings I thought I'd lost months ago, when they fell out of a pocket of a pair of pants I'd put out to sell! 

And, I sold my very first piece of artwork! This admittedly hideous oil painting I'd done when I was nine years old, in an art class my mother insisted I take because I liked to doodle...

Now a casual enjoyment of doodling does not necessarily mean having a talent for (nor interest in) painting. So after I'd created this lurid monstrosity - which my mother insisted be hung in my room and then foisted on me not long after I got married - and a couple of forgettable pastels, mom, to my great relief, took my place in the class. Anyway, after trying in vain to give it away for free at our last yard sale, I was thrilled this morning when a man and his little boy bought it for a dollar! I figured the little boy (who was about six or seven) must have wanted it because he liked the bright colors (or perhaps he grasped and related to the existential angst of the clown on the right. LOL)

So imagine my own existential angst when I told the little boy how pleased I was that he'd bought this painting I'd done when I was nine, only to have his father say, "Well, I'll probably be painting over it..." Some people simply have no eye for fine art. ;-) 

And speaking of fine art, our day concluded with a painting by Mother Nature that was far better than anything that I or Mr. Snootypants Paintover could ever create! :-) After the yard sale was over, everything left was packed up and stored in the garage, and our dogs (who were incredibly perfect angels today during all the hubbub) had been walked, we had a thunderstorm. While it was drenching us with some much-needed rain, the sun came back out and gave us this full double rainbow over our back fence....

I'll be disappointed if your reaction is anything less than Double Rainbow Guy's...

(Thanks for the inspiration to share this, Molly!) :-)

I'd love to think it was a promising sign of things to come for Day #2 of our yard sale, but the wind is predicted to blow (yet again!) 20-30mph with gusts between 40 and 60mph! I have a feeling we'll be getting rid of most of the rest of our stuff, but only because it all blew into the next county! 

See what skies around the world have been up to this week...

Random Celebrations (& other stuff!)

This post is all about

starting with also celebrating...

Yep, published my very first blog post six years ago today, and was it ever a barn burner. Took the blogging world by storm. But why take my word for it when you can spend seven seconds reading its ground-breaking and witty insightfulness for yourself? ;-)

And this random post is also about celebrating BW's birthday, which is coming up on Thursday. Just a few days ago, BW could have said this is all* honesty...

*only not quite, since he doesn't own an Etch-a-Sketch, either. But we were out of wine!

But then his birthday present arrived last Friday...

and of course he opened it early (because no matter how old he gets, he's still like a little kid in all the best ways) and it was, of course, an iPad. Which he knew all along, since we'd researched and ordered it together. :-) And on Saturday we finally bought a bottle of wine AND he started a week of vacation, so the stars were once again aligned properly. 

We wanted an iPad to take on our two-week road trip to the Pacific Northwest later this month since we don't have a Smart Phone or laptop. But mainly BW wanted it because let's face it, I monopolize the computer (hey, you don't reach the impressive milestone of a sixth blogiversary without logging some equally impressive computer time!) :-)~ So now he can enjoy his favorite online pastime, looking at boats for sale, full-time liveaboard cruiser blogs, marina web sites, sailing videos (you seeing a theme here?) to his heart's delight. Except for when he's using the iPad to take photos of our dogs and emailing them to me from two rooms away. LOL...

Josie's clearly as unimpressed about being photographed with BW's birthday gift 

as she is about being photographed with mine!

Speaking of the girls, they had their annual checkups, heartworm tests and vaccinations yesterday, and everyone did great. Our vet can't believe Willow is 13 - except for some hearing loss and hazing of her eyes that comes with age, she said she looks like a much younger dog (acts like it, too!) We told her it's because her favorite foods are raw kale and red cabbage! :-) Tess was complimented on her very white, sparkling teeth, while Josie had to have some extra tests (Josie is famous for running up big vet bills!) to see why she's been crapping out on our walks recently. She starts out enthusiastically enough, but after about three or four blocks she starts demanding frequent lie-down breaks in the shade no matter how cool the day is. Since she's always had couch potato (and diva) tendencies and picks up the pace again when we turn for home, it's a bit suspicious - but we thought it best to get her checked. Her heart sounded good and looked good on her X-rays, and she had no radiological signs of arthritis (another surprise to our vet since Josie is at least 10 and probably older, but again I credit their vegan diet). We're having some blood tests run to test her heart function, and the vet said it's possible she has hypothyroidism (she has two or three of the symptoms) or that maybe after all these years, her crippled back leg that makes her work harder on walks has put enough extra strain on her muscles and tendons to cause her discomfort. Depending on what the heart bloodwork shows, we may test her thyroid or try some pain meds and/or acupuncture, but we certainly can't yet rule out a severe case of Couch Potato-itis. ;-) 

So we may just have to get her this collar charm to wear. :-)

In other random news, while running errands last Saturday we spotted this fun car in a full church parking lot (we reckoned for a June wedding, another cause for celebration) and since I happened to have my Rebel with me I took advantage of the photo op. Turns out it's a reproduction (of a Ford Model A), but it's snazzily fun even if it's not the genuine vintage article...

I loved the "ahooga" horn and etched glass side windows, and also enjoyed giving this photo a bit of an old timey feel!

Much less fun lately and has been our very strong and relentless wind. Blowing 25-40mph most days and nights for two weeks, with frequent gusts to 50-60, it has everyone feeling tattered, tired and cranky. We've wanted to get our front flowerbed planted and BW took advantage of a rare calm morning to prepare the soil, but as soon as he'd finished the strong winds kicked back up. We fear if we try to plant the flowers we've bought for it so far we'll just end up looking like Letty, Lillian Gish's tormented character in the 1928 film, "The Wind"....

I saw "The Wind" (and you can too, by clicking on that link) in a silent film course I took in college, and it keeps replaying in my head as our own winds roar around us and rattle, bend and shake everything without mercy day after day. Letty (transplanted to the west from her gentile eastern life and made an unwilling bride) had a lot more to contend with than just the wind. But the wind definitely played a major role in driving her batshit crazy, and that's one of her challenges I'm beginning to seriously relate to!

Quit blowing, dammit, or else!

I have to admit, though, it has created some beautiful cloud art in the skies....

On the rare evenings that it's calm enough to hear them, we've been serenaded by frogs just beyond our back fence. They're very loud, and so between their lusty nightly performances and the wind, we've been unable to sleep with our bedroom windows open. I took this video (for its audio) from one of those bedroom windows a couple of nights ago so you could enjoy one of their concerts for yourselves....

This week is busy with projects, errands and appointments, but mostly with putting the final touches on our big three-family yard sale we're hosting here Friday and Saturday. Let's hope the wind doesn't blow like stink for at least those two days!
Have a great week, and I'll pop back in for SkyWatch Friday before the swarms of locusts - uh, I mean garage sale patrons - descend on us! (I don't know about where you live, but out here the garage salers can be hardcore, voracious shoppers!)