Last night, Bill and I were enjoying the huge TV that is now in our family room - a gift from my lovely Mother in Law - when we both heard something. The two of us jumped up and ran outside and sure enough - RAIN!

Big sheets of lovely, wet, cool, smoke eating rain!

It rained for at least 2 hours - manybe longer. I lay awake in bed and listened to it pound the metal roof. At one point, it really poured and I thought, "Oh, that is awfully hard, I hope there is not a flash flood." I immediatley began berating myself. A flash flood in the smaller mountain streams would not be unwelcome right about now.

Thank You Heavenly Father for the gift of rain and clean air!

I am feeling so good, I am going to pull my car out of the garage and take it for a spin today!

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I may be on hiatus for a couple of days as I just received my copy of Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade and I cannot wait to read the words Jamie Fraser!!

The smoke has cleared here - even if just for the time being. I cannot express to you how glad I am to not be able to see the air that I am breathing!

Autumn is coming to the mountain. The temperatures are dropping down into the low 30s at night and some of the leaves are starting to turn. Now, I try not to use four letter words, but I would really like to see the materialization of one four letter word - SNOW. Crazy I know, but I would like for it to snow in the higher elevations very soon. With the coming of snow, the fire season ends. So far 572,000 acres have burned in the state of Montana during this fire season. Fire season will not end until we get some snow and so I am praying for rain and/or snow.

The fire closest to our house is still 100% uncontained - which means it is burning out of control. I am unsure of how close it actually is to the house, but it is close enough that the hunting areas that my husband likes to frequent are closed to the public. For now, we are safe!

If you are interested in looking at pictures of the damage done in Montana, click here to get a good look at what has been going on here in Montana this fire season.

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to my sister Julie, who is 33 today! Love you lots Sis!!

Julie is a musician and has her own website. You can find the link in the Other Place of Interest section of this blog!

It is incredibly smoky here on the mountain. In all seriousness, I have been ill since Friday. The smoke is thicker than I have ever seen save the night I left my house as flames crested the hills behind where we lived on August 17, 2000. Not the best day of my life as the Sherrif had to order me to go and I was really not happy about it. I actually went when it was all over, and apologized to the local Sherrif. He did not need my crap that night, that is for sure. We lost about 30 acres of our property, a shed full of mostly my things, a backhoe and our camp trailer along with various other outdoor equipment.

Anyway, these photos show the amount of smoke hanging in the air here. The small dot you see in the first photo is actually the Sun. Yes - the Sun. The second photo is from my side porch. That mountainside is less than a half mile from my house and it is barely visible from the house.


The Sun is just a small dot. This photo was taken at about 7PM and it should be sunny on that side of the house.