I was sitting quietly in my easy chair filling in the crossword puzzle and watching Mallory exercise a paper ball when the kitchen window suddenly became effused with the most electrifying gold glow. At the same time, the distant growl of thunder penetrated through the house. I ran to the desk and grabbed my camera and went out there.
This is what I saw, which immediately suggested that I ought to participate in Skywatch Friday today. While I was taking these shots, occasional bolts of lighting spiked through from cloud to cloud. You can see where the early rays of the dawning sun are trying to make a rainbow.
We were right at the spot where the cold front slid under the warm front, and the clouds blossomed into amazing forms right before my eyes.
Those images were taken only seconds apart. The sun was just coming up, so the side lighting of the blossoming thunderstorm makes an amazing image. The dark cloud on the left is the lower atmosphere.
The light was amazing. The cleomes seemed to glow in the rays being reflected from those clouds.
Yes, I was running around the yard barefoot. For a moment, I became entranced by the work area in the back yard. Jim has an ongoing project that he works on when he isn’t making pizza, schlepping boxes of produce around the produce department of the Commissary, mowing the lawn, or whatever else. There is a faucet on the north side of the house that has never worked right, and has been fixed from dripping twice and now drips once again. We have decided that what it really needs is to be capped off. So, a new water line is being cut in from the line out to the vegetable garden so a new freeze-proof faucet will be located close to the stroll garden where it is needed.
I feel like this image is actually a portrait of Jim on many levels. For example, the reason it is being dug by hand is that the ditch witch that is available for hire from the local equipment rental is too big for the job and costs too much. So he stubbornly decided to save some large quantity of money by digging the ditch by hand. But, look at the amazing symmetry and beauty of the whole thing, lining up with the hole in the fence where the new faucet will be.
It has taken much longer than he wanted it to, because there have been quite a number of things we had to accomplish in the betwixtwhiles, namely and to wit getting the rental house ready for occupancy, and we have been blessed by scattered rain during the course of events. It is pretty hard to work on the ditch when it is full of water. By the way, the storm we experienced this morning has left it full of water once again, which means that the fact that he is exhausted from a full days work at the commissary and doesn’t want to dig ditch tonight won’t make him feel guilty (hopefully).
The vegetable garden communicated a need to me this morning. The garlic needs to be harvested, and I need to see what is going on in the potato patch.
I turned just slightly right from the view of the ditch, and found myself focusing on the view that gives me “uncompleted work” angst: the pond.
Yes, there is a pond back in there, Ruby is drinking from it. I really need to beat back that forsythia bush. I need to do a lot of things.
There is a lot going on behind the scenes in that picture. While I was shooting this whole photo essay, there were two pairs of wrens mustering their sundry troops of fledglings. Imagine as you read this blog post that what you hear is the constant muttering of thunder and high winds aloft punctuated by the screechings of robins, blue jays, grackles and finches accompanied by the rapid fire of orders being hurled by the frustrated wren parents at their rather distracted younguns. Here they are in the Stroll Garden, near The Bench. The chick is perched on top of the drift wood piece, the parent can be spotted in the upper right corner, perched on the crepe myrtle, staring straight at the camera: “What are you doing!”
While I was beguiled by all this miscellany, the storm continued to develop. Quite a nice rotation developed up there in this cloud. Glad there isn’t more energy in this system or we could be having our own little tornado here at The Havens.
Meanwhile, the light was amazing, and the day lilies garden and the rain garden were putting on quite a show. Remember all this photography was accompanied by constant thunder and wren chat.
Meanwhile, the sun continued to rise, illuminating the developing storm that was coming from the north and west.
Then it proceeded to rain, monsoon like deluges. There was hail; fortunately it was all pea sized or smaller and there wasn’t much of it. Nor were there damaging winds.
I came back in to make a post, bake bread, and play with Mallory while I waited for the rain to be over. There are quite a number of things on my list today: dig the garlic that I mentioned previously, make pesto (which involves harvesting the first cutting of basil which you can see at the front of the whiskey barrels in the above shot), prune the crepe myrtles, and start trying to eradicate the lemon balm which has decided that it needs to completely own the garden behind the sauna.
It is nearly ten in the morning, and the storm line has finally moved through. The timer will be going off on the bread baking, and soon I’ll be off to work once again, thankful that it will not be in the rental house now that the carpets are clean, the walls washed, the new vinyl flooring installed, the ceiling mended, washed and patched, and the only thing left to do is put in the quarter round moulding in the family room and varnish it.
If you are wondering why I don’t post more often, the above paragraph ought to give you a clue. Some times I feel just exactly like Sysiphus, rolling my stone up the hill only to discover in the morning that it is back at the bottom. At least it is usually a different stone each day. Good luck with all your Sysiphian tasks, all of you!
the havens 