Leaves Finally Falling

Fall finally is in the air here in Montana! November 3nd and we haven't had more than a few flakes here and there of snow. This year is so unusual for us! Normally by now we have had one good snow fall if not more. In the last few weeks our leaves have finally started falling off the trees, and the last few days most grees only have a few left on them. They are saying snow by Saturday though. How's your weather been this year? Is it normal or did it get colder faster this year? I know for one I'm not quite ready for winter!

Life With A Swamp Cooler is Not Cool

 

As time goes by you will learn one thing about me.  I do not like hot weather.  Any temperature over 85 and I am dying.  I live in the Southwest of Arizona and right now it is 113.5 degrees outside.  Trust me when I say if I could move I would be gone, and in Colorado Springs where my heart and spirit roam.  Until then, I look like the poor fella in the picture above.

You want to know the kicker of it?  I was born and raised in the desert of Southern California so you'd think I would be used to it?  No, not at all, a desert rat I am not.   My 'ideal' temperatures fall in the range of 30-75 degrees.

Most people in the real world have central air conditioning but is that what I have?  Of course not.  I have a swamp cooler also known as an evaporative cooler and I'm here to say they are useless as....ok this is a family blog so I'll be nice :-)

Don't get me wrong they are 'ok' as long as it's not over 85 or humid outside.  Wait, before you say "but it's a dry heat" we do get humidity during monsoon season and when that happens you can kiss your fanny goodbye if you are not a heat lover and have health issues where the heat makes you sick, including, yours truly.

This blog post probably is of no interest to anyone other than me, it has no real value to it other than me whining :-) and trying to pass the time away because it's 95 degrees in my house and the swamp cooler is broken...again.  My landlord bless his heart is up on my roof furiously trying to get it fixed.  I cannot complain about my landlord for he is awesome when it comes to caring for our home and my heart goes out to him out on the roof right now.

Moral of this rant is?  If you can't take the heat and you can avoid it, don't buy or rent a home with a swamp cooler because it's anything but cool.  To me at least.

Psssst...guess what?  It's now 114 degrees and the news says we have one more degree to go.....nice......

As always, my best to you,

Live Life, Laugh Hard and Love Passionately

The Night The Arizona Desert Sighed

Let the rain kiss you.  Let the rain beat upon your head with silver liquid drops.  Let the rain sing you a lullaby.  ~Langston Hughes

While some parts of the United States have had way too much rain and devastating floods this past year, Arizona has been dry as dust itself.  The  Arizona climate sees very little rainfall and it's getting sparser as the years move on.  So far this summer we've seen temperatures as high as 114 and it's early in the season.

I laugh often when someone says "at least it's a dry heat" well let me tell you folks that is no consolation in a region that sees rain so infrequently we can't recall in our memory bank when the last one happened that wasn't a literal 5 minute spittle from the sky. 

Arizonan's looked forward to Monsoon season where it would rain everyday like clockwork.  You could set your watch and by 4:20 p.m. it would grow dark, the winds would whip and the rain would pour for close to two hours, everyday during the season.  The Monsoon doesn't really come to us much anymore, no rain does.

June 30th 2011 it's the wee hours of the morning at 2:30 a.m. I know something is up because my body starts aching really bad and my joints start to scream.  This means the barometer is rising.  How do I know just by this?   I have Fibromyalgia and many conditions that end in -itis so, any drastic change in the barometric pressure sets my body to nothing short of crazy.

Anyway, I manage to drift off and at 3:20 a.m. I am roused from a fitful sleep by a grumbling, a low rolling guttural sound of none other than blessed thunder.  Then.....

              



 a thunderous crack and lightening lit up my bedroom.   My heart races with excitement and my husband shot straight up in bed.  "Is that thunder I hear, is it raining"?  hahaha I could feel his excitement because I was up and out of bed and literally hit the floor running pain and all to the front door.  Then it hit, the lovely scent of rain meeting dust in the air and dirt on the ground.  I flung open the door and.....  Sweet Mother Earth!  It was raining, I lifted my face to the sky with my arms held out to my sides and giggled letting the cold, yes COLD rain drops just fall on me and around.

With head tiled back and eyes closed I could sense, no feel the earth around me give into a deep, happy sigh.  I could feel my mesquite tree, which is a desert dwelling tree "lighten" up, you could see it's leaves curling upward toward the sky, the plants, flowers and grass perking up...it was a spiritual moment for this tree hugging nature lover and I could feel the sweet, happy vibrations of the desert around me.  The heaviness and burden of infrequent rain and being pounded by scorching hot days was lifted if only for a little while.

I mark this day June 30th, 2011 in my blog The Night The Arizona Desert Sighed.

On a note; you can water all you want in the parched dry desert but to the vegetation here it's not enough.  You can tell the difference in how your surroundings act with natural rain fall verses watering from a hose.  Have you ever noticed everything seems so much greener during and after the rain?

My best to you always,

Live Life, Laugh Hard, and Love Passionately