April Storm

What a difference a day makes.  Yesterday morning, I took this shot of Corny standing in the shade, thinking deep thoughts.  The grass in the pasture is already going yellow from the heat and dismal lack of water.

This morning a decent-sized storm rolled in and we're being blessed with a day of rain.  It's not enough to change the big picture of severe drought, but the short term effect will be to prolong our springtime by a week or so.  At this point, I'm grateful for any sort of reprieve.

One of the things I wanted to do over my break this week is make strawberry jam.  Yesterday I finally believed that this storm was actually going to materialize, so I drove down into the Valley to our favorite fruit stand to buy a flat of strawberries.  Rain damages the ripening fruit, so it made sense to get them before the storm came.

I hauled in the canner and spent the afternoon hulling, mashing, stirring and ladling strawberries.  Some people might say that this seems like an awful lot of effort for something that can be bought from the shelf of any market.  But those poor, ignorant souls couldn't have had jam made from field-grown, just-picked strawberries.






I'm glad I did this yesterday, because today's storm started gently enough, but ended with torrents of rain, flashes of lightning, booming of thunder, flickering of lights and a deluge of pea-sized hail.  I loved every minute of it.

Nothing ever by halves around here.





Oh, and in the midst of all of this, Raleigh, the farrier, arrived to trim Corny's hooves.  We got caught up on all the news while she rasped away and the rain pounded on the metal roof.  Corny doesn't even have to have a lead rope on anymore when she does his feet.  He just stands there and does as he's told -- such a good boy.  I gave Raleigh a jar of jam and a carton of eggs as she left.

Very glad for this storm, but I hope that the strawberry field wasn't hit too hard.