Sunday, June 22, 2008

Thunder and Roses



It was a beautiful morning, bright and sunny. In keeping with the pace of the weekend, I rather sleepily repeated that first coffee/early watering routine, but a little later today.

It was already getting sort of humid, so it felt like a scorcher was on the way. I was at work a few hours later when suddenly the bright sun vanished and a host of storm clouds came piling in over us from the west.

We could hear the telltale rumblings of thunder, not sounding at all far off as the skies darkened and it looked like we'd be in for a nice thunderboomer, bringing some much welcomed rain and the possibility of the thrill of a good lightning show.


And then just as quickly, the clouds brightened and before long the sun was shining brilliantly once more.

Those white blossoms up above are the flowers of the kousa dogwood tree in the gardens outside the restaurant. It always puts on such a lovely show, first in the spring with these flowers and then later in the summer, as it develops its red spiny fruits.

Here's two more roses in that same garden which have come on strong in the past few days.

Neither are especially fragrant, but their beauty forgives much.

4 comments:

Curt Rogers said...

Holy thunderheads, Batman! Those are some amazing clouds! I can almost smell them from here, heavy and rich with wet. Do they smell like the sea? Being a landlubber myself, and securely landlocked in the middle of the country I wish I had a better understanding of the hypnotic ocean scent.

Greg said...

I don't find the storm clouds themselves smell much like the ocean. The humidity was high as these moved in and it seemed to press all those sweet floral scents down on us.

I find myself most often surprised by the smell of the ocean early in the morning after a storm, or a particularly high tide, when everything's been stirred up. If its a foggy morning, you can almost count on it.

Jenn Thorson said...

Those cloud photos are almost Harry Potter like in the sense that I almost SWORE I saw the clouds moving a bit. They just SEEM SO animate. That's crazy.

Greg said...

Right, it's the photos that's crazy.