What the Hail?

We really took a pounding last night when tennis and golfball size hail moved through the area. This formed between our place and Snyder within a 45 minute time frame and within a 17 mile area. I could hear roaring as it approached and I thought it was a tornado. My daughter and I were in the cellar, but my husband stayed inside with the dog. He said it looked like cannonballs were being thrown into the tank (that's a pond) when the hail hit the water. It was scary and another hailstorm followed just a while after this one. The windshields were broken on all our vehicles and there is a lot of body damage. There was also a window broken on the house. I don't always love living in Texas, ya know.

Prickly Pear Blooming

A friend gave me a field guide this week, written by Zoe Merriman Kirkpatrick, entitled "Wildflowers of the Western Plains". It has been invaluable in helping to identify all the pictures of flowers I have taken. It's nice not to have to shuffle through a bunch of plants that don't grow in this region, and the photos make for fast identification. I just can't get enough of the flowers!

Andrew Williams Dies at Age 80

Andrew Williams died this past Wednesday at the age of 80. His son, Ricky, drives the school bus out here at Hobbs. The Williams are known as an upstanding family and one of the historical families in Fisher County. Details can be found in this Abilene Reporter News article.

Scarlet Globemallow...

is the name of the little orange flower I posted about previously. I finally found the information at NCRS, the USDA's Plants Database. I was able to download a list of the plants that grow just in Fisher County, and got lucky enough that this flower was just about number five on the list. I say download, but all I had to do was cut and past into Excel. Lots of plant info!

Small Beauty

I've searched for the name of this flower for a couple of hours, but I haven't come up with anything. These are fairly common here in Fisher County. Out here in this semi-arid country, where everything seems to have a fang or a thorn, you have to take beauty where you can find it. Some of the flowers aren't even as large as a pencil eraser, but a closer look will show intricate design.

A couple of good sites for viewing Texas wildflowers are Maddog'n'Miracles, which has a jillion thumbnails that come up quickly, even with dial-up, and Wild About Texas Wildflowers, which has neat little pop-up pictures that have all the information, including the scientific name, in a caption below the photo.

Spring Signs

We've spotted a buzzard, a scissortail and budding mesquites in the past few weeks, so we can be pretty sure that Spring is here. Some folks are worrying about drought, but my sources say that the cattle are indicating good times ahead, which, for this area, equals to rain.

There's a building in Rotan that I think is interesting and I finally snapped a photo of it today. It's around the east corner from the Lance Theatre. I believe it's at the back of the building that used to be the bank, but I sometimes get these things confused. If anyone out there knows which building this is, give me a holler.

Hobbs Baptist Church

The Hobbs Baptist Church closed down this past year. The land it was on had been donated and specified that if the church closed, it was to go back to the grantors. The land did go back to the original owners and another individual purchased it. It was then fenced and is now used for grazing cattle. Henry Walton was the pastor when it closed.

Magic Forest

This photo of the sunset through our pasture has definitely been altered. I have these trees saved in many different colors, be thankful you only have to see one.

It was a hot one today, in the 90's. Tomorrow should be around 70 and our chances for rain start to increase. I read somewhere on the KTXS site that today is meteorologically the first day of spring, although there are still 19 days by the calendar. Anyway, the turbulent spring weather is on it's way.

Ah, Country Living

Yes, boondocks living is very fine, but one thing that is common is loss of utilities. Usually it is electricity, which we were without after the dust storm until the electric company could come and replace our transformer.

This past weekend we were without phones, since the line had been cut by maintainers fixing ditches (funny enough, it was my husbands work crew who did it, he works for the highway department).

Now, it is water. It has been off since last night, but they have assured me it will be back on today.

Anyway, back to the good of country living. I took this photo of the moon and sky at dusk the other night. The colors were really that vivid, no touch ups to the photo. I took about 40 pictures, the colors were so beautiful.

Dust and Sun

It was a very dusty day in Hobbs. This is a view of Buddy Burnett's (the Martin place) with the sun obscured by dirt. The wind finally settled at sunset.