216- Well, Hail!

As I walked out of the Temple this afternoon I was enveloped in that wonderful *just rained* smell mingled with the riot of flower blooming on the Temple grounds. I wish there was a way to capture smells the way we can capture images!

When I arrived home I was pretty excited because the thundershowers had cool it off considerable. After kickin' it for about an hour I went out to mow the lawn... trash day tomorrow.

I was about 2/3 finished with the front lawn when there was an all-might thunderclap like a cannon and then it started to pour! Do I even need to say that I finished the job? By the time I finished 15 minutes later the rain had turned to HAIL! OK, not Texas hail... just wimpy Utah hail... but it still hurt when it pelted me so I hid under the grape arbor until it let up enough to dash the lawn mower away in the shed and high-tail it into the house. Yep, I was dripping!

I went in and showered and when I finished drying my hair I came to my creative room and I saw, I SAW... THIS!!!



It didn't look like that when I was mowing! just 20 minutes earlier! Since then I ran out between pelting torrential rain and cut off the broken part so it won't do any more damage... but I think that whole branch will have to come off!

165- Thundershowers

We are having an interesting spring here in Utah. In the five springs we've spent here this is the first one like this. I feel like I am on the east coast! Every day we end up with thundershowers in the afternoon.



I cornered a couple of Springville old-timers and asked them if this was *normal* weather for June. They assure me that it is. I guess after 23 years in the Mojave desert and decades of drought I just don't recognize a *real* spring!

Each day I wake up to partly cloudy skies and by afternoon the thunder clouds have started to gather. I can hear the timpani drums starting to warm up; soon the cymbals join in and it usually ends with cracking-cannon fire (You know that kind of thunder? The kind that startles you with the sheer decibel force!) We've had hail, rain that blows sideways and UP and of course, just the gentle piccolo of the showers.

What a treat... especially for my garden!