What A Strange Day!

Nitro and I went into town today to do a little of his meet and greet training at Petsmart. After our training we decided to stop at Starbucks for a Venti Mocha and then go onto downtown Salem to go visit our friends at Salem City Hall. We decided to pop in on Mike Stevens who is the Communications Director for the City of Salem. Last week Mike was kind enough to set up some media interviews for Nitro and I so we thought we would stop by and see him and show him our appreciation (Nitro performed tricks for him).  It started out being a beautiful sunny warm day. When we got to City Hall the weather was perfect although I could see it was dark over near Ft. Lewis Mountain where I live. We were thrilled when we got to City Hall because all the flowers were in bloom so I took some photos of Nitro in front of City Hall. We had a really nice visit with Mike and his Web Developer Darryl McCoy. Nitro showed off a bit with a few tricks. They loved his perfomance! I was a proud moma.  Anyway on the way back home the sky got very dark and then it started to rain hard. By the time I got home it was obvious that we had a major storm because a lot of the roads were flooded, there was what appreared to be hail all over the ground and my creek was running in my front pasture and it is usually dry.

Here are the photos from earlier in the day when we were at Salem City Hall

 City Hall is so beautiful this time of year. The City of Salem does a great job planting flowers at every entrance to the City of Salem including City Hall.

 Here is Nitro sitting on the front steps of Salem City Hall. He looks so majestic in this photo.

The tulips are truly amazing!

Look at that face...I want to just grab them cheeks and kiss them!

 So pretty...

The City has huge cement flower boxes on each side of the entrance of City Hall...so pretty!

As you can see in the background of this shot everything in Salem is blooming including all of the trees.

Another flower box. I love this particular color combination!

There is a beautiful church and steeple right across the street from City Hall. With the high winds we have had for several weeks in a row here in Salem, you can see the flag at City Hall has really taken a beating. No worries, Mike is getting a fresh new one to replace this one.

Nitro watching the cars go by at City Hall.

Now comes the strange part. We went from beautiful to "what the heck happened out here while I was gone!"

First clue: This is usually a dry stream bed. Hmmm.....

I open up my back door to let my other dogs out to do their business and this is what I discovered. It hailed while I was away! Talk about a big huge mess! It also took down all the acorns and new little sprouts from the trees. The whole back side of the house is covered with this stuff including all the windows and doors!

It looks so pretty in between our patio river rocks.

When I started to sweep this mess up from my back deck I thought this looked so much like a "squirrel salad"...I love the color and texture of this photo!

The horses are like "what the heck mom, you left us out here in a hail storm"....sorry guys. I promise I will make it up by giving you some carrots in your feed bucket tonight.

This is our riding arena/dry lot. As you can see it is flooded.

Then the next thing that happened was amazing! The sun came out and it was beautiful again. I love how the pastures look after a rain storm when the clouds are still a dark color, the grass is bright green and the sun comes out and makes everything look so fresh and clean again.

This is our front pasture at Bluebird Farm. Can you see on the left side of this photo my beautiful little dogwood tree blooming? I love my little dogwood tree. It is the only dogwood on Bluebird Farm maybe that is why I love it so much. I think we need to plant a few more of them around here. Anyway, this was our strange day. A beautiful day with two extremes. One being of sunny perfection, and the other a cleansing of sorts for the plants and animals. Happy Tails! Christina and Lexi (& Nitro)