We’ve had Santa Ana conditions for the last couple of days: dry, winds off the desert, and highs approaching 90, not bad, but around here, dry is the operable word of worry this time of year.

Tonight, they are predicting “torrential rains.” Unusual. In past years, we expected about one month of rainy weather per year, sometime between November and March, but the torrential stuff was usually in the first couple of months of the new year.

But if one wonders why i like living in the Southwest corner. Here is one reason from my dawn amble around our house:

There’s this iris in early bloom somehow in the middle of our day lily plant outside our kitchen:

And then there were Maureen’s roses on the front’s side yard:

Oh yes, the dawn sky with its wisps of pink and gray hanging over Mount Miguel was almost as spectacular as the sunset over the Pacific last night. i was too enthralled with both to take pictures. Maybe another awful day in the Southwest corner, i’ll do that.