The Day After the Rain

Yesterday was an inside day, with wind and rain the main events outside.  Jim made a pot of chili and the gang came over around 4 with their contributions of cornbread from Janna, Fritos and cheese from Gina and wine from everyone.  We had a feast while it rained and even hailed a little bit!  Gina and I both made brownies, so we had chocolate galore for dessert.

But this morning, it was different, the sky was on fire!  What an incredible sunrise.

When it rains out here in the desert, the next day is extremely fragrant and fresh.  Everything seems cleaner, brighter, and most definitely greener.  Today was no exception, as we woke to a beautiful day.

Jim had laundry on the agenda, and I wanted a super-vacuum session, so it worked out perfectly for us.  He’d decided to try the Laundromat in Quartzsite today, and by 7:30 this morning he had everyone’s trash bags loaded (Monday is also one of the days to drop off our trash at the refuse transfer station in Quartzsite), and our laundry in the car.  Before the car had cleared our little desert area, I had the vacuum cleaner running.  I was done by around 8:30 and was ready to go on a power walk.  I found Gina, but she was not quite ready to go yet.  So I walked the dogs around for a little while until Gina was ready to go, and we took off.

This is one of our views from up the way:

Turn 90 degrees and this is another view:

Gina is just a little bit into the rocks around here, so no walk with her is complete without a little rock-hounding.  And, around here, she has LOTS of rocks to sort through!

 

The desert is starting to bloom, even though yesterday’s storm beat up the blossoms, they are still colorful:

By the time we got back from our walk, it was time to grab a quick bite of lunch.  My new router had been delivered to Janna’s friend’s address just north of Parker, so I drove and Janna navigated me to her house to pick it up.  We stopped in Parker for fresh water for Janna and Mike and cold beer for Jim.  We all have our priorities, you know!

Router in hand, we headed back home.  Janna and Mike had planned on leaving us tomorrow, but have decided to stay a little while longer, it’s still a little cool where they had planned to go, down around the Tombstone area.  See, we’re all finding it very hard to leave this area! It’s hard to beat perfection, and this is still a pretty darn perfect set-up as far as I’m concerned.

The six of us gathered at our house again this evening for a dinner of leftovers, including what I call refrigerator soup – I cleaned out my fridge of leftovers and turned them into a chicken vegetable soup that everyone seemed to enjoy.  We even had a few brownies left!

Ahhhh….life is definitely good.