The Bad and The Good

This has been the coldest Arizona winter we have experienced in the seven years we have been coming here. Until this week, the daytime high has been in the 50s for several weeks. We were getting tired of it. We come here to be in shorts and t-shirts--not possible in these temps.

Look at what we woke up to last week.

That's right--frost on the truck windshield! Brrr.

Then came the rains. See the water, running in the street? And the rain running off the neighbor's roof?

Finally, this week, we are having highs in the low 60s and lots of sunshine. And the good side of the rain is the flowers on the cactus. Beautiful!

At Least We Didn't Have to Shovel

It was only 34 degrees outside this morning when we woke up. Really? It is still summer. They had predicted snow, so we expected to find the ground all white. We were relived to see it was only wet. When we went for our walk, the clouds were hanging low and gray in the sky and we could see a little snow on the foothills in the distance.



We couldn't see our breath, but there was fog coming up off Chatfield Reservoir.



Many of the plants had beautiful droplets of water sparkling on them. Since I only had my cell phone, I couldn't get a picture of that--closeups don't work. But I could see the water drops on this large plant.



We found this small bird, which we think is a lesser nighthawk, hunkered down on the gravel path. Poor thing was cold--and maybe young. It finally flew off as we passed by.