Thunderstorm coming!

We have a thunderstorm coming directly from the west.  It may pass us by.  They often do.  But this one challenged the sun.  It made a colored photo look grayscale.  I actually hope it comes and dumps water on my poor dusty town!

More weed pictures!

This is a weed.  It was living by my back fence.   Parentage and genealogy unknown.  A nasty thorny thing, it produces a beautiful bloom.  Even more amazing, the flowers open all at the same time.  Beauty in an unlikely place.

Fire on Blue Mountain!

This is the result of years of drought.  The land is tinder dry.  Now when a lightening storm comes along we can watch these things spring up across the valley.  This one is on the east side of Blue Mountain.  A beautiful place.  It'll take years for the beauty to be restored.  It is being fought, but the winds are high.  We won't know until morning. 

The second photo is of the leading edge of the storm that sparked the fire.  Beautiful, but very, very scary!!!!

This may seem a strange selection for a blog based on the desert, but it is such an evocative photo I had to publish it.  It was taken by my mother when she attended the San Francisco Exposition in 1939.  In a few short years, if that ship survived Pearl Harbor, it would have been in the heat  of the War in the Pacific.  I'm hopeful that someone will be able to identify the ship.  Or at least the class of vessel it belonged to, I cannot.  The image was not in an album, I found it when I developed old negatives.  So I haven't any other information about it.  Hope someone out there knows more than I do!!!

Water Drops!

Maybe because I am a desert creature, water drops on plants fascinate me.  Here are a couple of photos of just that.  Warning!  I may become boring with this!!!!

This is the sad state of the Humboldt River right now.  Usually this time of year, the river is flooding.  This year it looks like it does in mid summer in a dry year.  It is almost not there.  And, when the river is this low, it's dangerous for the animals who rely on it for water.  It's close to toxic.  Very, very little flow and close to stagnant.  In another month, unless it really, really storms a lot, it will be dry.  I've been putting a water bucket outside.  I keep it full of fresh clean water.  I hate to think of all the creatures that are dying of thirst.  And the evidence of fire you see?  It happened almost two months ago.  The willows along the river were so dry that they caught on fire from an electrical spark from the transmission lines.  Where this was taken was along the wagon route the 49ers took.  Good thing they aren't trying their crossing now!  

Sunset over Blue Mountain!

This time of year, the sun sets directly over Blue Mountain

Of course, I had to get it closer.  All of that beautiful color.

And finally, this.  The sunsets we have are amazing!