We pause a moment to remember..

..sunny warm skies, blooming flowers, growing things. Summer will come again.

The Artist's Garden at Eragny by Camille Pissarro

When we moved here, I wasn't expecting as much cloudy dark skies as we've had. For an area that gets only 8 inches of rainfall a year, I was kind of thinking it would be a bit more like Idaho. That is, quite a bit of sunshine year round. I know it gets blazing hot in the summers here, but the lack of winter sun has taken me by surprise. Not sure if it's like this every winter.

And it gets dark early! Before we made the move, I made numerous phone calls to set up utilities, etc. In one of the calls the service man at a storage unit place made a comment about coming out to see the units before it started getting dark at 3:30. Ha, ha, I said, thinking he was exaggerating. Nope. On December 21, sunset was 4:11 pm. Yes, I was closing the blinds and turning on lights at 3:30.

But soon the seasons will change again and we'll be receiving more than our daily quota of warm sun.