A Friday Night Quickie

Here's a quickie for you. I had planned to write about our medical day in Tucson, which had its ups and downs.

But here we are, sitting in our trailer (which we have decided to call Koko House for reasons which may someday be explained), listening to the constant sound of thunder, watching the regular flashes of lightning, and enjoying the torrential rainfall! Yes, the Monsoon Season has come back in full force!

Our desert relies on the Monsoon rains. This year's Monsoon was expected to be hotter and wetter than normal. Hotter it has been, with Benson temperatures regularly above 100 degrees. Wetter? Nope. In Tucson, our closest metro area with TV reporters, it has been 28 days since they saw over a half inch of rain. Today all is forgiven! Rain, in a fast moving storm, was falling at the rate of an inch per hour. We were in Tucson as the storm passed over, moving west at about 25 miles per hour. Fortunately for us, we had pulled under a shelter and were enjoying a delightful lemony icy cold frosty beverage! By the time we were ready to travel again, the storm had moved past.

The storm moved west, we drove east back home to Benson, where every indication was that there had been a great afternoon rainfall. We came inside, unloaded everything from the car, and sat down to what we call our "amber liquid," a bit of Canadian Whiskey with water, over ice. The rain came back, and we were drawn out to the porch (that part of the front steps where we just finished putting cement blocks last week), with our amber liquid in hand, standing there grinning like Cheshire Cats. Our rain is here, it's going to return mightily over the weekend, and our desert will bloom!

And bloom it will. The saguaro cactus, which isn't native to this part of Arizona, will put up its flowers. The barrel cactus, which is native, will bloom in a variety of colors. All the others will put on a display -- that most of our neighbors will never see because they are out somewhere in the north, the west, the east, hopefully not in the hot middle west. They'll come back and we'll tell them, tell them about our beautiful late summer desert.

How about a round of applause for ... Our Life on Wheels!