Every Day is Exactly the Same

So...not exactly the same, but most of our winter has been like this: fog, rain, wind, cold. This is a seven day project, one photo taken each day, for seven days in a row, from the same location, showing seven days of our wet, winter weather.

Day One: Not everything is brown & dead here, even in winter, we have a fair amount of green, like these ferns in my yard
Day Two: Foggy & Cold, front yard
Day Three: Foggy & Cold, back yard
Day Four: Budding Branches, Cherry Tree, Signs of Spring?
Day Five: Rain on my window
Day Six: A Bit of Sky among the clouds (this was in the morning, before the clouds unleashed their daily downpour
Day Seven: Bulbs starting to come up, Day Lilies, More Signs of Spring? Maybe I'm just being hopeful...We often have our coldest weather in February (hopefully not in the teens, like last month) & sometimes snow...

Hope you enjoyed these seven days in Tacoma, Washington & that there are signs of Spring in the air for you! SAM

(For any of you wondeing about the Storytelling Saturday, I will be making this a monthly feature & attempting to add a space for you to share any interesting storytelling objects you've stumble accross)

*All photos & text the property of Shelley McElhiney, all rights reserved, please contact for any desired usage.

That Was Then, This is Now...

That was then...Arizona desert, blinding sun, cacti, roadrunners, javelinas, quail, dust devils, tumbleweeds, hot sun visible heat, sometimes, a lot of the time. Torrential downpours, flash floods, brief but significant rains, thunder & lightening, rattlesnakes & frogs, brown & green, grey & forest, mountains & valleys, arroyos & rivers, beauty both amazing & fierce, a land of contrasts, filled with cities & vast spaces, difficulties & excess...

This is now...Washington state, vast forests, some old, some new, felled by industry & preserved for (hopefully) all time, lakes & deserts, industry & farms, mountains & fields, cities brought together by vast systems of trains, boats, cars. More rain than anywhere else in the country, orchards filled with apples & pears, pine trees on one side & desert plains on the other, the ocean nearby, connected to the world by huge ships...
In between...adventure, travel, love, sadness, the normal stuff of life. SAM

Rain...

Ok, I know, I know, be careful what you wish for. I don't really want to live in a desert, with no rain, ever. Yeah, yeah, April showers bring May flowers. All right, you convinced me, the rain can stay... for now.

Post It Tuesday 3/16/10

Sometimes, a little rain can be a good. It gives sustenance to plants, gives animals something to quench their thirst. Rain can make the air smell nice, so nice that we try to recreate the scent in perfumes & soap, use it to make our dishes cleaner & our air smell nice. We collect the water to wash our hair, soften our laundry. Without rain, the endless sun would be monotonous, drive us crazy. We wouldn't know how great sunshine is, if we didn't have rain's contrast. A little rain can be a good thing (except, in the dairy. Sorry, I couldn't resist!) SAM

Post It Tuesday 3/9/10

So, once again, maybe I should explain...
I'm not talking about an outside dairy, with lot's of cows & open fields. I'm talking about the kind of dairy you find in a grocery store, where you find the milk & eggs & all that kind of stuff. I work in a grocery store & we have a dairy. One of our duties, besides receiving & warehousing a variety of items is to work in the dairy, stocking & so on. Our particular dairy (the employee side & not the customer side) rains, on occasion, not rare occasion, in particular, when it's raining outside. How, you might say, does it rain inside? I'm not sure, but it seems to be un-fixable. We aren't directly under the roof, so it doesn't seem to be a roof leak & it's way too much water to be condensation. It only occurs in certain parts of the dairy...Rain? Inside? Dairy? Sadly, yes & this is why "I hate it when it rains...in the dairy." SAM

Weddings, Cars, Rivers, Rain, Etc...

So, despite all the car stories in the last post, I neglected the best (or maybe the worst, depending on your point of view)story, the story of my wedding night & the 67' Mustang that I had at the time. (Don't worry, it's totally PG) Floods, near drownings, destruction & dark, stormy nights are all involved. Yes, it was in fact, a dark & stormy night, well at least in the mountains surrounding Tucson, AZ. This is where the story takes place.
So, the first thing to remember is that Tucson is surrounded by mountains. The second thing, you may not know, is that there are dry riverbeds throughout the city & beyond. You may not think of desert areas as having rivers, but they do. Most
of the time they are dry & stay that way, but sometimes, during 'monsoon' season, for instance, these riverbeds fill & become swollen with water. Sudden rainstorms roll through the area & mostly, the ground is too hard to absorb much of this water, especially all at once. You don't get mud, but the water has to go somewhere. It rolls of into streams & riverbeds, creating sudden walls of water. Often, people, cars & random things are swept away, causing destruction & even sometimes, death. People like to use washes, arroyos & so on as places to 'play.' By the time they see the water rushing towards them, it is too late. It may not even have rained in the area, but rather in the mountains, making these dry rivers & streams especially dangerous. The water rushes down from the mountains to capture & sweep away anything in its path.
On the day I got married, it was sunny in Tucson. It was a simple, Justice of the Peace ceremony. My parents where there, as were two of our best friends, Margo & Mike. I wore a white skirt & top that I got from some Australian catalog & he wore his dress uniform. Afterward, we walked around the area & stopped in a museum store. We bought some African talisman that I liked (maybe this was the problem, maybe it had some sort of magic that we did not know about?) Anyway, that was the day & it rained in the mountains.
That evening we had a little reception at my parents house. Here is the third thing you might want to know about Tucson, there's a great deal of construction in these dry rivers & low lying areas. The land is cheap, maybe the companies know, maybe they don't, but they build there & even put trailer parks there. The homes are less expensive & people buy them, not knowing about the land they are built on. No, my parents house was not in this kind of area, but my husbands grandparents lived across town near an area like this. The only way in or out of this area was through one one these dry riverbeds. My husbands grandparents didn't want to drive to the reception & so my husband went to get them, driving my 67' Mustang. This should have been maybe half hour to 45 minute drive, each way (Tucson is very spread out & not actually a small city, at all), but it turned out to be an all night ordeal. He made it to a wash near their home. There was a bit of water in the wash when he started through, then came the wall of water. It spun the car & pushed it down the wash, finally embedding it in an embankment. He climbed out the window & stood on the roof, eventually being rescued by a passerby. He didn't make it back until early the next morning.
The next day my father & my husband went to look at what happened to the car. They got it back & the electrical systems still worked, but nothing else. The car was nothing special, it was not really in good shape when I bought it, lots of Bondo & a chain stering wheel. The important thing was that my husband survived & he didn't have his grandparents with him.
The car was eventually rebuilt & drove again. We've been married 25 years.
This is my other car story & this was my wedding night.