Rain, Glorious Rain! — Janet Szabo

This was the most beautiful sight I’ve seen all summer:

A storm rolled in around 4:30 yesterday afternoon. I’d been watching the radar for over an hour as the system came up from Missoula. It wasn’t moving very quickly, which meant that we got a drenching rain for quite a while. One rainstorm isn’t enough to put out the fires—we’d need a week of rain like this to make a dent—but every little bit helps. The temps cooled a bit, too. The high today is supposed to be 83 with the possibility of more rain, followed by three days back up into the 90s. We’re not out of the woods yet, and unfortunately, this may give people a false sense of security. We still have the entire month of August to get through, and that traditionally has been our fire season.

Those poor people down in Finley Point—the reports are that upwards of 20 homes were destroyed in that wildfire after it jumped the highway. It has been confirmed that it was caused by humans, but the investigation is ongoing.

I can’t access the video to embed it here, but if you go to the NBC Montana Facebook page, there is a six-minute video taken by one of their reporters from a boat on Flathead Lake showing the utter devastation of that fire. It’s hard to watch if you know the area.

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I’m going to take advantage of the cooler weather to get some things done around the house today. A thorough deep clean will be on the schedule this fall because of all the ash and dust that has floated in this summer. I need to organize the pantry and rotate what’s left of last year’s stock to the front of all the shelves. Canning season is going to begin in earnest shortly.

DD#2 sent me the link to this very nice article about the Amish store in St. Ignatius. This is the one I visit whenever I go to Missoula.

I’ve also got half a dozen T-shirts made that still need their hems done, and today would be a good day to assembly-line them through the coverstitch machine. Then I could actually wear them.

Some of lavender hedges I put in more recently—within the past couple of years—bloomed this year. I transplant little seedlings and have no idea what color the flowers will be until the plants get bigger. Twenty years or so ago, I put in about 40 different varieties of lavenders spanning the entire spectrum of colors, so it’s always a surprise. My favorites are the deep, dark purples and the very light pink/white ones. This one is especially pretty:

The bees like them, too.