We had a lovely rain over the early part of the weekend. There was a bit of moist flow from the south and it met a cold front coming down from Canada to create a nice twenty four hour spell of mostly gentle drizzly rain! That was wonderful. We got about .55 of an inch here and never saw a bit of sun yesterday. Although I am definitely a sun-worshiper in that I say I run on solar energies, one day like that here in the desert is a novelty and so pleasant. I expect the real summer heat has been broken and we won't see 100 again but never say never when it comes to weather.
Today it is clearing off and a light breeze, still damp and mild but there is a faint foretaste of fall in the air. Hurrah, I am ready! Fall has been my favorite season most of my life except when I lived in north central California or Colorado and dreaded the coming of winter. In California it meant days on end of fog and in Colorado the cold, wind and sometimes snow. I remember fall as a time of clear, bright blue days when the sky was just a shade darker than the best "Bisbee Blue" turquoise and nights were chilly but days mild. It was a time to go out camping and sometimes hunting--when I was a kid we hunted for food, not sport, but now I would not shoot anything unless it was a necessity--so any hunting would be with a camera instead of a rifle, But the memories are still good. Even going back to school was not really a bad thing, those many years ago. County fairs and days spent just hiking or picnicking, gathering firewood for the winter, putting the garden to bed for another season and canning and freezing the harvest-- so many simple but good things.
My daughter's birthday is in September; my wedding anniversary was; and although a few sad things have happened like my younger brother's unexpected death from an aneurysm in September 2005 but that does not dim my fondness for this month. Fall flowers--mostly yellow--may give me allergies but that too I can cope with. I used to call the many varieties of the sunflower family "sneeze weeds" because most of them have a pungent and ticklish scent instead of pleasant but they are still bright like spilled sunlight.Then the leaves turn--mostly yellow in the southwest where the aspens in the mountains go first and then sycamores a kind of rusty orange and last the cottonwoods, a literal blaze of glory when the first frost touches them--usually later than September but we knew it was coming. They were pretty here last fall down along the main street and the railroad tracks. I'll try for some pictures this year!
These two shots I took two years ago just about this time. I'd made a trip from Colorado down thru southern New Mexico and into Arizona and on the return trip I drove through the Verde Valley, my youthful home and on to Flagstaff where I went to college. From there I cut across the Navajo Reservation into the southwest corner of Colorado--Cortez and Durango area These shots were on the east side of Wolf Creek Pass. The aspens were at their peak and it was breathtaking!
As an aside, the damp weather gave Belle a bad couple of days but I got her another Adequan shot and she seems to be snapping out of it. Here is a cute little shot of her and Rojito out by the gate where they can see past the carport to the street--to bark at passers by and 'watch the road go by' as we always say. They are still good friends and he hangs with her a lot even when she is sleeping off a few aches and pains. Surely he was sent to be a comfort to all of us. He's a very special little dog!!
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