Thunder and Lightning

This was going to be a picture post, but the lightning began early this afternoon. I'm watching the clouds bump into one another and suddenly the noise doesn't seem surprising.  The electrical storm is vertical today. There's no rain, but trees are flailing about, prickly acacias catching and releasing the neighboring oleander.

The dust from the under-development-patch-of-dirt to the east is moving in twenty foot gusts. I like that.... gusts of dust. This kind of weather leads to flights of fancy... or foolishness... like that, I'm afraid.  There's no going outside. JannyLou's pool guy just screeched out of her driveway, not wanting to be the tallest object in sight, holding the metal handle of a skimmer, standing next to a large body of water. It was a wise decision.

My desert mountain laurel is very happy that I left it staked up for another season.  Its roots still aren't deep enough or spread wide enough to withstand these blasts of air. The lantana is lifting her skirts for me... it's truly a Marilyn-Monroe-on-the-subway-grate moment 

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and I'd insert a photo of my own right there, but, really, it's not safe to go outside right now.  

The deadheaded hibiscus are blown to someone else's yard by now.  I had them piled, neatly, out of the way, on the base of the columns. The wind had other ideas. It did save me the chore of remembering to remove them, I suppose.

It's bright and sunny out the back windows; the Tucson Mountains are lower and further than are the Santa Catalina's out the front.  The clouds have come in from the southeast today, and they seem to be stuck on the Pusch Ridge.  The sun's making a valiant effort to illuminate the front yard, but the blackness is coming, inexorably, step by step, inch by inch..... if I said Niagara Falls would anyone know what I meant?

The wind will clean up the Texas Ranger blossoms that last a day and then fall to the walkways, waiting for the ants to pick them up and tote them home.  It's a pretty purple parade, which I'd hoped to photograph for you, but, alas, there's that pesky lightning.

Perhaps tomorrow afternoon will be more salubrious.  For now, I'm going to indulge in some James Patterson brain candy.  I need a sorbet between my day and Breaking Bad.  

Yes, Breaking Bad.  By Sunday night we'd caught up to the current episodes. Monday night, feeling bereft, we started watching again from the beginning.  It only gets better, more intense, more subtle, more brilliant.  But I really need to go into it in the jolliest frame of mind I can muster.

Hence, brain candy.  I'll read and watch and hope that tomorrow lets me show you what I tried to describe today.