Natue's Fireworks

What an awesome display of God's power and beauty!  The sky was lit up from one end to the other on the western horizon.  When chores were wrapped up for the night, I jumped on one of the geldings and headed out into the open field across the road from the barn.  Just by the way he was acting, I could tell that there was a change of weather in the air.  Since he seemed to have unlimited energy and wanted to spook at every little thing along the way, we rode through the freshly plowed furrows.  I was hoping it would slow him down enough so that I could alteast enjoy a little bit of the ride.

We headed south & came across Farmer Rick.  He had gone out on his choice of transportation - the four wheeler - to check some wet spots in some fields.  There are some areas that just don't want to dry out!  Now with all of this rain forecast for this week, I don't know when we'll be able to get to them.

Farmer Rick was enjoying a fence-row conversation with a neighboring farmer who was out working in his yard.  We stopped and said Hi, but I didn't want to interrupt their conversations together.  It's not too often that we slow down enough to enjoy a good catch-up with a neighbor.  So, I left them to their visiting and worked my way out into the open field.  From my vantage point in the saddle, we caught the first glimpse of a flicker of lightning in the western sky.  It didn't take long and the flickers began to multiply in ever increasing number and color.  Brightened to a brilliant orange and yellow, the flashes of lightning would light up the jagged edges of the clouds as it danced from cloud to cloud.  How beautiful!  I had wanted to just stop and enjoy the show, but my gelding had other ideas. He was just too antsy to want to stand in one place for very long.  It's hard to truly enjoy the handiwork of God when your chair is bouncing to and fro!

So after making a round of the field, we headed back to the barn as the first distant rumbles began to be audible.  Just a low grumble, but soon thereafter, the grumbles gave way to distinct rumbles of their own.  By the time we were unsaddled and I had the skidsteer in the barn to clean stalls, the flashes were right above us, but still cloud-to-cloud.  It was nice to work in the barn, listening to the advancing storm.  Since it was building slowly, I had time to enjoy the sights and sounds of an early spring thunderstorm.

Well, the horses were standing at the gate.  They were lit up with each flicker of lightning.  I could tell they were getting impatient with me, so I hurried up, got hay and grain in the stalls and brought them in.  Since there was hail forecast, I finished up by parking the pickup in the alley of the horse barn before heading to the house.  We don't need to add a trip to the body shop to our list of things to do this spring!