First Friday of NCMD Y2

I stood out in the backyard last evening and watched the weather light show as the severe thunderstorms moved across Houston to the north of here. Lightning rolled through the clouds over two thirds of the sky as the mockingbirds sang in the background. We were far enough away that the thunder didn't really reach us...just the light. Oh, occasionally you'd hear a low rumble from off in the distance, but there nothing coming through to match the grandeur of the lights...Sometime later in the night we must have finally received some of the rain that was in the storms since the back porch is wet this morning, but our rain didn't come with a percussion section like the rains to the north.

With a chance of rain forecast for the entire day today the prognosticators seem to thing the temperatures here will manage to stay below those in Boone and Floyd. I stay amazed at this weather year. I went out on Wednesday evening and was amazed at the relative cool as I walked along the bayou behind the house. As I did the suburban grassy thing of riding in circles on a large lawn tractor last weekend I cut my trail along the bayou, so the walk isn't the obstacle course of reaching spiked canes of rose and dewberry. Also, since the grass is short for a double mower width, you don't have to pay quite as much attention watching out for snakes. I wil be the first to admit though that in the decade and a half we have been here I've only seen two or three snakes on my walks through the woods and fields here.

The one thing I did have on that walk was my first encounter with a "wild" hummingbird. By wild I mean not near a feeder or any other human sort of habitation. Since I didn't take my binoculars I am not sure of the species as the little thing stayed a good 30 feet or more away the whole time I observed it. It flitted around for a good five minutes checking out the tops of last years dead weed stems.



Bald Cypress in fog out in backyard this week.