Nature's Bouquet

Mother Nature creates her own bouquets of wildflowers, and this morning's photo is one of them. Blue and white flowers stretch for yards and yards along the treeline at the edge of the ski slopes. I feel I needed a nice calm photo after the pyrotechnics of last night.

Mother Nature was in a rambunctious mood last night. What had been a good night's sleep turned into long hours of no sleep, due to the sound and light show that started around midnight and went on for several hours.

It was an odd storm too, with lightning strikes all around, first to the east, then the south, and then the north. Some were close, others miles away, all within a few seconds. As I lay awake around 0130, the lightning strikes were all 3-4 miles northeast of me, an improvement I thought, from the 1-2 miles away of several minutes before. All of a sudden, a loud crack makes me grab for my ears and shield my eyes. A milli-second later, the flash hurts my eyes even with them closed. A loud boom like an explosion rattles the windows and sends two cats under the bed and one dog up onto the second floor landing. The strike was close, just up the hill from me. I suspect it hit the utility pole out on the lane between my cabin and my neighbor's further up the mountain.

The storm rattled around for hours, but eventually rumbled far enough away that I could go back to sleep, though of course by then my good night's sleep was ruined. This morning, the sky is a bit clearer, the humidity a bit lower, and I'm hoping that tonight will not bring a repeat of last night.