It has been HOT for days here, to the point that I had to dig out some Spring-like clothing and shoes.  Once I am committed to the winter season, which involves copious wearing of tall boots, I like to stick with that routine until late March.  This smattering of 70 degree days doesn't lift my spirits...it just makes my feet sweat.  I prefer the cold.

It's supposed to cool down a lot this weekend, so Charles and I are going to head over to this place called "Noah's Ark" where all kinds of awesome animals live, and you just pay whatever you want as a donation to go inside.  They just got in a new lion, tiger and bear (oh my!) that were all raised together from babies, as the story goes.  At first they put them all in separate paddocks, but none of them would eat, so they reunited them in the same area, and then they were fine.  They missed their buddies!  SO CUTE!!!!!   We can't resist a story like that, I tells ya.

I like going to animal places when the weather is cold, because they are more spry and active and visible.  In the summer everybody just lays around in the shade, and I don't blame them, but it makes for a sort of boring visit.  This place isn't a zoo, really.  The animals all have LOTS of space to run around, and most of them are there because they couldn't be returned to the wild or to a zoo for some reason, like the male lions who some fool was keeping illegally in his APARTMENT.  He had them declawed - which...who in the WORLD did that for him?  Who declaws lions??????  Being without claws meant that there was no way they could ever be placed with other lions that had claws, so the declawed dudes live together now in an enormous pen.  They seem happy enough, although I'm sure they would be happier running around free somewhere with claws.

Obvously, the drought is a terrible thing, and we are heading for serious trouble, very soon, if we don't get several straight days of good, steady rain.  It definitely has reached the point of being extremely scary, and most of us are doing everything we can to conserve while we wait for something to change.  But I would be lying if I didn't admit that in the meantime, I have really been enjoying the amazingly beautiful weather and clear days.  I think it would be a shame not to.  This is my favorite time of year, and it has been a while since we've had a "true Fall" where we could wear sweaters before Christmas.

The drought definitely has played a role in the less colorful changing of the trees that we are experiencing this year.  Some trees are doing their regular thing, but others just dumped their brown leaves in the first stiff breeze of Autumn because they were so dry.  The sharp, vivid colors are harder to come by than usual, but I'm very lucky...the office complex where I work has lots of gorgeous old hardwood trees about, so I've gotten to see some really pretty leaves.

On Wednesday, I happened to have my camera in my purse.  There were 3 different kinds of trees over by the wooden bridge that I had intended to photograph, but I didn't make it over there before dark, so I promised myself I would go straight there the next morning.  Unfortunately, a storm came through that night, mostly wind, and when I got back, the trees were completely bare, as if a week had passed instead of one night.  Still, there were a couple of trees next to a nearby building that had held up, and they were by far my favorites anyway, so all was not lost:







Fantastic, yes?

And I'll throw this one in, too...Co-worker spotted it while she was out having a smoke break, and by the time she came in and told me, and I grabbed my camera, it was already dissipating, but you can still see that it had at one point been a cloud in the shape of a heart:



Wow.