These glorious spring storms

Why anyone would ever want to move to some boring temperate zone is beyond me. I love these wild weather changes.

This morning was all glorious sunshine and breezes. I did three loads of laundry before I even should have been out of bed on a Saturday morning and had them all hanging on the line to dry. It was just blankets and old towels airing out and looking beautiful as the sun bleached the winter from their folds.

Before my fourth load had finished it was pouring and I stood at the back door watching it puddle onto the patio. The Forsythia is in bloom already and I could smell the Lilac from the front yard.

When the next load finished it wasn't raining anymore so I hung those blankets and sheets out as well.

It hailed on that load, along with the others. Pea-sized. Dime-sized. I watched that from the back door too. Hailed quite a while.

The laundry's still out on the line and it's dark now. Every thing's sopping wet.

I walked into the yard and looked at the clothes line; nothing was on the ground. I can remember my mom's clothes on the line in the rain when I was a kid... I would run my face through it and smell...

Far to the east, lightning filled the sky, but try as I might I couldn't capture it in a picture. It's so beautiful and destructive and powerful and illusive and I used over thirty shots but got nothing but out of focus shots of the trees.

Coming back into the house with nothing in my basket and nothing on my camera, I stopped short for a final picture.

There's something lonely about being outside your home when it's getting dark. It's always an interesting perspective to me and sometimes I go outside at night just to look into my windows and see what I can see. But I always just end up feeling excluded... I can see the light but I'm excluded from that light.

Thank you, God, that you will take us Home where we will never be excluded. And thank you for this tremendous weather experiment today!