More Company -- And a Thunderstorm!

Today was a "stay-at-home" day. A day to do laundry and catch up on rest and household chores. I must admit we had a bit of a difficult time getting anything at all done as we were enjoying watching all of the visitors to our feeders today. The Eastern Bluebirds were outside a little after 6 AM with their ongoing squabbling.

We had a couple of new visitors to the feeders today. A pair of Red-Bellied Woodpeckers spent a great deal of time at the feeder. (Supposedly, they get their name from a red spot on the belly, but my bird book says "it's usually hard to see...")

This is the male (the red head on the female doesn't come all the way to the beak). He has taken a corn kernel from the feeder. As we watched, he would stick the kernel into a crevice in the bark, then hammer at it with his beak until he broke off smaller parts which he then ate.

After a while, this fellow came along and was cleaning up grains that had fallen to the ground from the feeders --

He tried very hard to eat directly from the feeders, which are supposed to be "squirrel-proof," but finally gave up and feasted from the ground.

For a good share of the afternoon, we could hear rumbling in the distance, which finally got closer and closer. There was a great many loud claps of thunder, then the rain began. You can see that the road alongside Auntie Violet has become a virtual lake --

The campsites on the other side of us (which are all reserved for Memorial Day campers) got pretty soggy looking --

The rain came down hard for about half an hour, then the storm moved on and we could hear it continue to rumble in the distance --

I'm sure by morning it will be hard to tell that there had been any standing water!

Lightning and Thunder and RAIN!

What a night! We started seeing lightning over to the west about 8 PM and it just kept coming! It was a horrendous lightning show lots of cloud to cloud strikes as well as huge strikes to the ground. By ten PM it was all around us, we could see lightning on all sides. We did drive up on top of the hill to take a look after we smelled smoke. We didn't see any fires from there, but it was amazing how the countryside was lit up as bright as day after the flashes. Evidently there were lots of small fires, but the rain that followed put most of them out. However, down by Soap Lake and in Grant County they have four pretty good sized lightning strike fires burning today.

We had a couple of pretty good rain showers during the storms -- enough to get the ground wet. We're only hoping that there wasn't enough to crust the ground over Jeff's newly seeded wheat...

Today was a tedious long day. A drain had gotten plugged in the ice maker on the freezer and we had a river of ice flowing down the back and side of it. This morning Forry brought in a couple of coolers and we emptied both the freezer and the refrigerator into them and covered them with blankets while we attempted to defrost all of the ice river in the freezer. Even occasionally using the hair dryer, it took all day to get it thawed out.

But at least now the refrigerator and the freezer are clean -- it's amazing how much room there is in both of them!

Ode to a Thunderstorm

We had a great thunderstorm this afternoon. Big black cloud with lots of lightening and peals of thunder that just rolled. It brought a small amount of rain, but thankfully no hail. It only lasted for twenty minutes or so, but it was fun while it lasted.

We went in to Moses Lake later this afternoon to pick up some more bark at Lowes for the dusty area around Auntie Violet and some parts for the antenna pole Forry is building.

Stopped by Vic and Phyl's just in time to meet the new caregiver and help with Phyl's shower. It was a busy place. Got to visit with both Pam and Curt and Sarah as well as say "hi" to Peter and Vanessa.

We ended up at DQ and had blizzards for supper...!

Million Dollar Rain

My Dad always said that any rain at all in June was worth a million dollars in increased wheat production -- I hope that there's been enough of these thunder showers to make that an accurate forecast! The temperature is a good 25 degrees cooler today than it was just a couple of days ago. We've had intermittent sprinkles with an occasional good shower since last night. Yesterday we had just gotten enough to make big dust splotches on all the windows, but today you could actually call it rain a couple of times. Oh, the joy of living in a desert -- our ranch averages 7-9 inches of rainfall a year!

Today was a bit better of a day although my stomach is still a bit queasy, especially this morning. I've not done much today but a couple of loads of laundry and read. I've been reading the Twilight series (to catch up with my granddaughters!), finished those four and Danielle Steel's Impossible.