October's Bright Blue Weather

That phrase has always resonated with me because it is so evocative and fits the best time of year in the southwest so well. If I ever knew who coined it, I had forgotten so I checked. It's wonderful what you can find on the internet. I learned it is the title and a refrain of sorts in a poem written by Helen Hunt Jackson, best know as the author of the novel Ramona. She lived in southern California many decades ago before smog and cities and crowds so I expect the weather was much like I now enjoy in Arizona and New Mexico. Here is the first stanza:

“October’s Bright Blue Weather”

SUNS and skies and clouds of June,

And flowers of June together,

Ye cannot rival for one hour

October’s bright blue weather;

And that is now upon us here at last. The latter part of the summer was very, very wet. One might even say soggy! July was the wettest month in central New Mexico up around Albuquerque but it rained the weekend I left for Alaska and quite a bit while I was gone and was much gray and damp after I got home. Hurricane Odile laid a swath of moisture heavily across much of the southwest and we got our share. Roof leaks and so on.... Too much of a good thing. But the weather can change literally overnight and change it did, on Tuesday to be exact and now it is clear and dry, the sky again that proverbial bright blue and the autumn flowers decorating the desert after all that rain. Not always good for allergies but lovely to behold if your eyes are working. Mine are back to fairly normal today; I think my ocular allergies may be due to molds. 

Anyway I took the red dogs walking and enjoyed the 'sneeze weeds' as well as the white, magenta and purple flowers, many of which I shared photos of last year. Maybe I will take a camera along the next day or two butt there is not much new to share, really. But it is nice to see even the cactus leaves plump and green, well watered for now.

The next few weeks should be wonderful to get out and enjoy. I'm hoping to make a trip to Arizona in a week or two and see some dear friends there that I miss greatly and I expect it will be very green there until the first frost and flowery as well. And on that trip perhaps I will take pictures. 

My skin already feels the absence of moisture and its back to the lotions and potions to forestall the lizard hide effect as much as I can! But I will tolerate that for the cooler evenings and daybreaks and the glow and beauty of my favorite early fall time. It's a good time to be alive and living where I do!

Here are a couple of rather iconic fall scenes; Alamogordo's balloon festival is earlier than Albuquerque's internationally famed one which begins this Friday and is supped to be terrific weather for it. The other is a few miles to the north and the grass will be green now not gray as this was in the late winter but the blue sky is the same!