Summer is Ending???

    It's hard to believe that summer will soon be over. Here in the part of Arizona where I live we haven't even had our monsoon rains.  We've had excessive heat warnings for days and days. Our skies should have looked like this:

     Instead its been hot and dry.  For the entire year we've only had 3.70" of rain.
Whether we'll get some rain between now and September 30, the official end of the monsoon, remains to be seen.
   
    But while the end of September may be the official end of the monsoon, the unofficial end of summer is Labor Day.   And Labor Day is fast approaching.  It's only about 14 days away.  Schools, which used to start right after Labor Day, started here last week.  The calendar does seem to be spinning faster and faster.

     According to Etsy, Labor Day is now a big shopping event. School supplies and new shoes were always bought at our house around this time of year.  But the experts say other items are in demand today.

      To mark the occasion, Etsy is sponsoring a sale event and encouraging shops like mine to participate.  So I am. 

       Beginning August 30 I'm offering 10% off of summer items in my shop.  You'll find summery floral earrings as well as bracelets in bright colors.

     Click on the shop sign on the right to go directly into Desert Dabbler Handcrafted Jewelry.   Hope you'll find something you like!

       In the meantime, send some rain our way.
     

Monsoon Season

Before I moved to Arizona, I thought monsoons were something that only happened in India and exotic islands.   But here in Arizona, they have their own version of the Monsoon.  

Officially we are in the middle of the season now, although it only just started raining here in Surprise a couple of weeks ago.   For a few weeks we could see the storms building but they never reached us.   Then last week we started getting some rain.   I took these photos on a day when we didn't get much rain, but we did get a beautiful rainbow.

Then Thursday the real thing hit.  I was on the road, driving home from Parker, when the storm hit here.  Luckily it had stopped raining hard by the time I got home.  I drove through a bit of rain near Wickenburg, but nothing dangerous.

On Friday morning I went walking with my friend shortly after dawn.   We saw a number of tree limbs broken and damaged and a few agaves uprooted.   Water filled the retention basin, too.  




All weekend it has been raining, which is really unusual.  Much more common are fast, hard-hitting rains that don't last very long.   Instead of that, we have had a weekend of clouds and slow, soaking rains that are wonderful for the plants.











Our ocotillo loves the rain.