September 17, 2014

A Beautiful Day With a 70% Chance of Rain

But No Rain Today

September 17, 2014

What a beautiful morning I spotted out my sewing room window just after daybreak today!  It was so pretty.  The sun was shining and the weather man said there was a Flash Flood Warning and a 70% chance of rain.  Usually we would be delighted, but we were ready for a break.  There was no rain today in our area.  Some of the valley may have gotten a little.  The morning's newspaper said that we officially have had 5 inches of rain in the past 5 days.  The National Weather Service website says we have had between 8-10 in the last two weeks.  Any way you slice it, that is a lot of rain.

The town looks beautiful!  The trees and plants don't know what season it is.  Many of them have put out new growth like they think it is Spring!  Our Chinese Tallow Trees have new bright green leaves at the tips of the branches.  The same goes for our oak trees.  I stopped by Mom's house on the way home from work this evening and her rose bushes are sprouting deep maroon leaves of new growth.

The ground was just perfect for weed pulling and I couldn't resist so I pulled long runners of grass and clumps of weeds and Johnson grass out of Mom's rose bed until the mosquitoes found me.  Then I quickly quit.  At home the mosquitoes were waiting for me and you should have seen me hurry through the filling of the feeders.  With all the rain none of the ponds or birdbaths needed filling.  I did take a minute to check for birds out by the water and found the kingbird out there again.

I was hoping to find the Green Kingfisher again, but didn't see him.  The kingbird flew to the same area of the same tree as yesterday.  They are creatures of habit.  Notice how he blends in with his surroundings.  His tail looks almost the same as the seed pods hanging n the tree.

I didn't go to the office until about 10:00.  Not real sure what I accomplished today, but I stayed busy.  Ron was out for several hours during the day and it was rather quiet.  I did have a nice conversation with one of the delivery men who came with an order we had placed.  We started talking about the weather and then it got to a conversation about things God had done.  He was delighted that his young adult children are walking with the Lord and doing well in their college work.  He shared that recently his mother had died unexpectedly but that he knew she was in Heaven and was glad for that assurance.  I told him to teach his children all the wonderful things she had taught him and his face lit up as he pondered that.  What a nice conversation.  How blessed I am to be able to hear conversations like that.

There was one customer though that I could not hear well.  He was an older man and wanted to converse in Spanish but I told him I spoke English.  So he began talking in English, but was too soft spoken for me to understand him.  I repeated several times that I could not hear him and pointed to my sound processor.  He showed me his two hearing aids, but  in the end, the conversation proved to be pointless since I could not hear enough of it to put together what he was wanting.

Stephen called to talk about wedding plans.  I sent out several emails to assorted family members over the course of the afternoon.  Progress continues on the wedding "To Do List".

When I was at Mom's I noticed that here plants in the yard are taking over her deck.  They are beautiful but are about to block the gate entry to the deck.  Her yardman cuts them back off and on and it always looks so bare, so I decided to take a couple of photos before he gets carried away with his clippers.

The huge growths of asparagus fern she has at the end of the side walk are covered in long new shoots.  They will soon be taking over the walkway!  We can water our yard from the resaca do at our house or from the sprinkler system at Mom's house, but God's good clean rain makes things grow much more rapidly and beautifully.  Of course a few days of cloud cover keeping temperatures down doesn't hurt.