I haven't blogged for a while, so this will catch up on the past couple of days. Last week I played around with different templates for this blog. When I first started blogging, I just picked one and later found I wanted something less colorful and simpler. I also changed my blogger handle, or whatever it is called, from Dog Blogger Mom ( a bit heavy that one) to Canyon Girl.
When big and powerful storms hit Southern California it can get pretty serious. Usually there are burn areas with no vegetation to stop mud from sliding down the hillsides, the surf crashes onto land and into homes, and here in the canyon there are no ditches, so the dirt roads tend to wash away. The storms that are coming through here right now are the biggest since 2005.
This is what I experienced when the storms of January 2010 came to our canyon. On Monday it rained on and off and in the evening dark, dark storm clouds gathered around the hills.
Tuesday morning I happened to look to the east and saw these beautiful clouds tinted by the rising sun.
Well, the sun didn't stand much of a chance and it was raining as I drove to town and back home again. By the afternoon there was a large puddle in my front yard and I actually watched as the yellow grass turned green. That was pretty amazing! This lawn has been yellow since about last June – I thought it was dead and gone, but it came back, just like that.
After a while the rain turned to snow,
leaving Soldier, who doesn't like any kind of wet, sitting in the window, looking and longing for his walk.
Princess didn't mind the snow. Did she care about dragging a big mess into the house? No! The snowflakes were really big and the mess she made even bigger.
By Wednesday morning, snow turned to rain and the puddle outside my window grew into a small pond.
What to do on a day like that? First, of course, you need to make a big and roaring fire. And what a perfect day to bake a cake! Then I spied these apples on my table and had the bright idea
to make some apple sauce as well. So I baked and peeled apples and made the sauce, all the while listening to the rain falling outside and the wind whistling around the corners of the house.
By the afternoon, the rain changed to snow again. Heavy, thick, snow fell into the night. Both the Internet satellite dish and the DirecTV one got iced over, so I just went to bed and read my book and had a very cozy evening.
Today we had snow mixed with rain and rain mixed with snow and a big, huge mess everywhere outside. Angel and I walked to the mailbox after lunch to pick up two days worth of mail. I was slipping and sliding through the mud. It was fun, but I could just picture myself falling down in all that mess! My road is flooded at the bottom, but the rest is OK.
I have enjoyed the storms and hope you have enjoyed my account of them. And if this keeps up, we'll have some gorgeous desert spring flowers to look forward to this year.
