Thursday, October 11, 2012

Seeing Red


Summer is winding down,  and if you ask anyone who lives here in the Pacific Northwest, they’d probably say: It’s about time!

For day after day this summer the sky has been a cloudless, Robin’s Egg Blue, and 60-some days have passed since the last significant rainfall -- this in a corner of the country where, in some of our wet, winter months, it feels like it rains every hour of every day.  The dry summer was good for a while but eventually overstayed its welcome. "Perfect" weather morphed into drought that led to wildfires in Central Washington that burned tens of thousands of acres of  forests and grassland...but now, finally, there is rain in the weather forecast.  We’re told that in fact we can expect rain all weekend long, and this afternoon I plan on getting up on the roof to clean out the gutters in preparation for blessed precipitation. 

I might do a little Happy Dance while I’m up there.

Rain will feel SO good.

I thought I’d post three photographs today to bid farewell to summer: A portrait I shot earlier in the season of a sweet little friend of mine; a picture of Indian Paintbrush that I shot on a hike in the mountains about a month ago; and an image I made yesterday of fall color in trees outside the post office.  All three photographs have one thing in common: The color red. Bright. Vibrant. Fiery.

Here’s hoping for a wonderfully wet and drab winter!