HOT!!!

I haven't the energy for a more elaborate post. I'd like to join the cat (below).

Our summer temps up in the Arizona mountains tend to be somewhat weird during our monsoon weather. This year, the mornings are blazing hot. Not, to be sure, Phoenix-style deadly hot, but in the upper 90s. Hot enough that the Max cat has given up patrolling the neighborhood and instead stretches out on the floor near my computer chair.

Our rain storms, which we've now had four days in a row, come in the late afternoon or early evening. One day I caught this brilliant sunset to the east (the only direction my windows face.) And then the temps drop forty degrees for a pleasant sleep.

I guess the moisture has brought out one of the new neighborhood frogs. Neighbor, in whose pond we parked the metamorphosing tadpoles, says he searched a week to locate one of the little fellows, found him on the side of his house. Presumably near the pond. Note the suction pads on the critter's feet; he's an Arizona canyon tree frog.

Monsoon rains equal a green world

Arizona in August is a different world. The monsoon rains green the hills from the deserts up into the high country; what was hot and dusty is now verdant.

Walking my little hillside to see what changes had happened during my Alaskan holiday, I discovered that the wild morning glories were absolutely covering the barren ground, except near the new monster ant hill. Where there were shrubs (below), they were in climbing mode. No flowers yet; it seems that the morning glories only start blossoming once they figure they can't shoot up much further.

The buckwheat plant that I call the white fluffies is putting out many many long stringy greygreen stems which will be covered with tiny white flowers as we approach autumn, hence my name.

No surprise that the recent rains have awakened more mushroom spores.

The miniature hen & chicken I planted by the mailbox decided to spread -- and to open pretty little flowers -- while my datura has grown four buds. This time I have promised myself to draw up a perch and sit with camera ready the evening the first flower is scheduled to open; I hope that a hawk moth or two shows up to fertilize the blossom. And yes, I discovered that another datura has come up. From seed, no less. With my previous track record, I feel accomplished.

While I was inspecting the back forty, I flushed the battle-scarred interloper, who seems determined to take over from poor Max. Spotted a couple of places where he had left his calling card.

An Arizona kind of grey

And so I'm home again, trying to readjust to a "new" place, a "different" computer, and a cat who's just a bit bewildered by the whirlwind of changes he's suffered. Right now, he's outdoors, inspecting the yard to see if that battle-scarred interloper cat has moved further into His Turf during his absence.
The flight from Anchorage to Phoenix was lovely and smooth -- until we reached the Utah border with Arizona, at which time things got just a bit bumpy. Proof positive that it was a monsoon storm we were about to move through on our landing approach. Time: five-ish in the afternoon.

Phoenix was its usual hot & sunny self but ... before we even hit the city limits, the shuttle bus was moving along under a dark cloud, all we could see ahead. Out the side window to the west was a heavy-duty storm probably between Lake Pleasant and Wickenburg. The clouds opened up briefly to let the evening sun through. Very unusual; as a rule the storms don't pour out of the mountains until much later in the day.

Clouds to the north didn't look as angry, just drizzly. And you never can tell from a distance whether that moisture using up the bottom is hitting the earth or merely virga, a curtain of raindrops that evaporates well before ground level. Virga is one of those frustrating weather phenomena which teases residents of dry country. Turned out that this was the tag end of a very stormy day in Prescott. Fortunately, I had unplugged all my pet electronics before heading to the North Country, as the transformer immediately up the hill suffered a direct hit from the lightening. So all's well once I spend time at the supermarket and replace the battery charger left behind.

Monsoon revisionism

We've been subject to a certain amount of hoorah having to do with the coming of the North American Monsoon (that's the official title, BTW). Seems the federal weather folk have revised their definition. For many years it had been an arcane formula involving the dew point in Phoenix -- obviously a Valley-centric arrangement, especially for people in, like, Flagstaff, Sonora, Tucson or, for that matter, Prescott. Now NOAA has picked an arbitrary pair of dates (June 15 through September 30) as the new definition; this, of course, completely overlooks Mexico, where the rains have already started. My own inclination is to vote for an explanation that involves physics, as being a lot more meaningful. In the meantime, I have to hand it to the meteorologists -- today, June 16, saw the appearance of a puff over the hills about 8:30 a.m. which grew into a clouded sky by about noon. That, to me, is the sign that the rains are on their way. And that the beastly heat we've had recently will finally break. Usually around July 4 or thereabouts.