SkyWatch Friday: May Showers (& Flowers)

"As above, so below" - it's been a hectic, busy week at ground level as well as overhead! Since this is a SkyWatch post, I'll stick mostly with the "as above" part, so here we go...

Our late afternoon skies on Cinco de Mayo were filled with nubes ominosas, but hey, there's always that silver lining…

By the next day it was the forecast that was ominous, calling for rain, snow, wind, and much colder temps through late yesterday. Once we'd gotten all our yard work done and walked the dogs while it was still pleasant, I grabbed my camera and went on a little walkabout to capture the transition in progress overhead:

This was our fairish, blueish, puffy-cloud filled happy sky to the east, on its way out...

While from the same spot, a mere 90º pivot to the west revealed the grouchy, storm-filled sky that was on its way in… 

A short walk along that path leads to the driveway of this property. It's not every day you see a Jolly Roger flying from a Wyoming flagpole! Avast mateys, time to reef the mainsail!...

(The smoke that the keen-eyed among you may have spied in the distance below the Jolly Roger is from the springtime burning of fields. I worry about the wee critters who live in them, and hate the acrid smell!)

No surprise, seeing those threatening skies, that they did indeed open up and pelt us with windblown hard rains that night, and sloppy rain/snow mixes from then until yesterday afternoon. For a while on Wednesday it snowed so hard we couldn't see across the street. (Didn't stick, though, thank goodness!) Anyway, in some news from ground level, the hardy spring flowers in our neighbors' yard didn't seem to mind that the drinks served this week were mostly Slushies...

They put on a happy, colorful Spring parade in spite of the dreary weather!

"59 Fins"

After several days of overcast, chilly, rainy/snowy weather with wind gusts over 60mph, Friday was finally a thing of springtime beauty. And the fact that BW got the day off made it more beautiful still. So after walking the dogs and spending much of the rest of the day doing yard work, we decided that Happy Hour was best spent on the front porch with homemade margaritas (1 part each lime juice, triple sec, and tequila). But alas, we were out of tequila! So, off to the liquor store. On the way, this 1959 Dodge Custom Royal convertible, looking rather like a lemon meringue pie on wheels (I had citrus on the brain), caught our eye as it sat in the visitor's parking lot at the hospital….

"So, Laloofah," you are probably wondering, "Do you always take your camera on tequila runs?" No, my delightfully smartass but astute blog readers, I do not. :-) But since we live just a mile and a half from the hospital, we bought our tequila (priorities!), took it home and grabbed the Rebel and returned to take these photos just for you. It was the least I could do, since we didn't have enough key limes to invite you all over for margaritas...

Check out the cool trim on those headlights…

And the unique pushbutton transmission selector on the far left side of the dashboard…

If you want to read about and see more details on a '59 Custom Royal Convertible, inside and out (with top down) and under the hood, I found this beautifully restored example. They call its two-tone color scheme "coral/quartz," but in keeping with my snappy citrus theme I prefer to call it Ruby Red Grapefruit Margarita. Cheers!:-)

"Bandwidth Exceeded," bah!

Please pardon the temporary ugliness foisted on my blog until my free Photobucket bandwidth allotment resets tomorrow. I don't know why this has become a problem in recent months, but my chief suspect is Pinterest. I've pinned a few of my pictures and posts there, but it's mostly others doing the pinning. I'm flattered, and I love to share that way, but it's a shame if it's sucking up so much of my bandwidth allotment! I just can't figure out what else would account for it. Guess I'll have to consider forking over some dough to keep my Photobucket bandwidth kitty full, because although I'm often a slacker with my blogging, I have no intention of quitting altogether! :-)

The images that are showing up are stored on Flickr. They are much more generous with their free bandwidth allotment, but are more time consuming to use for adding photos to my blog. Besides, no way am I going back and transferring all the images I've stored at Photobucket over the past seven years! (Yikes, I've been blogging for nearly seven years? That's alarming!)

So, if you happen to be stopping by for a visit, please pardon the mess. Pretend this is a roped-off section of the Louvre, temporarily closed for repairs. Or enjoy the rare, Zen-like minimalism of a blog post without photos, videos or graphics - you won't see that again here (at least until Photobucket cuts me off again as if they're a bartender and I'm some rowdy drunken lush! LOL)