Fall Art

Some artists say the finished product is not the important thing; it’s all about the journey. With the fall here and winter not far behind, like nature I withdrew inward—and rather quickly. The ebullience of summer’s energy faded and withered, giving way to thoughtful musings and time to reflect. Since retirement, I finally have that time and used it.

I started this blog with enthusiasm and then fall hit and the blog came to a screeching halt. I’ve become reflective and quiet. I want to stare out at the hazy days of fall and watch the yellow, orange and red leaves drift down.

My roses are giving their last push to put out puny blooms (I think I need to feed them). I know I should go out and rake the leaves and tend my roses, but instead I stare at it all in sleepy awe and do as little as I can conscionably get away with.

We haven’t done much traveling since the start of this blog, unless you count a drive into the hills to get a couple of free dinners at the Table Mountain Indian Gaming casino. Fred got some dinner coupons for his help at the Savemart golf Shootout last month and we needed to use them or lose them.

The hills are dry now. After living through many seasons here in the San Joaquin Valley, I’ve come to appreciate the dry hills of fall. They have their own beauty of beiges and tans. It’s a more subtle beauty than spring, when all the shades of green explode and fill your soul with healing and hope. Fall is quiet. Reflective. Introverted. A good time to take a moment to think about where you’ve been this year, where you are headed—or maybe just watch Nature do its fall art.

After The Clouds

. . . then came the storm. At the beginning of this week, late afternoon, the Emergency Broadcasting System kept interrupting Oprah, telling of a storm coming, threatening lightening, thunder, hail. After two hours of that and no storm, I went outside to cover a glass top table just in case and take a picture of the sky.

I didn't notice while taking it but you can see a tiny funnel cloud coming down from the clouds.

When the storm finally hit, we got some rain, no hail (although some parts of Fresno did) and lots of lightening and thunder. With all that electricity in the air, I was motivated to pick up the camera, run upstairs to try and catch a picture. You are thinking why am I even showing this, right?

I snapped about 5 shots one after the other to try and capture a picture of the lightening. I downloaded them and then thought I didn’t have very good pictures until noticed that the 1st one was actually the lightening strike, when initially I thought it was steamy and foggy on the window due to the rain. But the shots right after that are not like that at all. So I enlarged them (you can click on the picture twice to enlarge) and saw the little lightening “sparks” running along the lower left of the picture and I wondered if the rest of the blotches are some sort of energy explosions from the lightening. Anybody who can explain this, please make a comment to enlighten my curious mind. Anyway, I thought they were interesting.