Rain, rain, go away....and don't come back on Sunday........that's tomorrow. I'm serious, don't come back.

I'm looking for sun where I can find it because once (or twice) again it just keeps raining. The bullydogs were supposed to come out to the country today but it just keeps raining...and raining. Besides being gloomy and just plain wet and cold, I'm not sure how deep the creek is anyway. After all this rain, Rie says the little sausage known as Bucky would probably float away if the creek was deep and running fast.

So I look for some sun substitutes while it rains outside.

I remember years ago I was at the Zuni Cafe in San Francisco and their entryway bouquet was a huge flowering branch from a tulip tree. I had never seen the flowers close up before. They were incredibly exotic and beautiful. Memorably beautiful, actually. I usually see the flowers from far away...like maybe 50 feet away because when the tree blooms, it usually blooms high up and when you look at the flowers, it's almost always looking up at the bottoms of them from down below. For a couple weeks now the tulip tree in my front yard has been blooming. I usually cannot see the flowers very well until it's time for a tree trimming...which is probably going to happen this year because I was able to reach up and snip a branch to bring inside.

And then take it right back out to the backyard to photograph up close.

Look at the stamen eyelashes on this one...

There's sort of a sun ray thing going on in the middle there....although in keeping with today's theme of falling water from the sky, maybe it looks more like an underwater sea anemone with some crazy tentacles.

The tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) is native to the U.S. and is definitely on my list of trees to plant on my land in Kansas. Maybe I'll even transplant some seedlings I find in my yard later in the year since this is a tree that grows relatively fast.

This photo was taken a couple days ago. Because it's been raining so much, I think all those flowers are now homeless petals on the wet ground. And probably very, very clean.

I was at Powell Gardens a couple weeks ago for their annual plant sale and came home with about a dozen sedums and sempervivums. I'm planning a rock garden and rock garden plants usually like sun and lots of it. They have an orb quality to them too, like the sun.

This one is so tiny and compact I could wear it as a piece of jewelry. I just love these things.

I potted them up last weekend since they aren't going to be planted in the ground any time soon. And after that I went to a garden center and brought home even more.

I hope they survive all this rain. They're not looking all that happy. I keep checking on them and moving them around so they can at least dry out a little but the rain still finds them. Everything out there is sopping wet.

I wonder when the moss that has started to grow on some of the pots will have had enough of this rain because the rest of us certainly have (!).

Things are just better when you add a little Bacon

Yesterday Rie wondered if I was driving to my land in Kansas today because even though Bacon was still a little gimpy from last week's adventure, he was getting restless for another one. Rie found out that Costco parking lots are no substitute for the outdoors once a dog has turned country.

And so it was on. Sunday afternoon in Kansas. Not Sunday afternoon in Missouri cleaning the kitchen and the rest of the filthy house like how I had sort of planned.... getting outdoors was too compelling and when we got to Kansas, Rie and Burgess and Bucky and Bacon and I got there at the exact same time. We met at the intersection. :-)

Bucky is always good when it comes to water (that's what I've heard and that's what I've seen).

She's a very good mermaid for being such an old girl.

But Bacon? Today was a big day because Bacon figured out where all the good shallow spots in the creek were and has now officially become unafraid of water.

Almost. He's still not comfortable when water comes down from the sky. On the drive out Bacon had to drive through a short storm. But me? I only saw great big clouds against a bright blue sky when I was driving.

The clouds today were just astonishing. Every time I rounded a curve or reached the top of a hill, all I could think of was WOW. There aren't any good places to stop on a 65 mph rural highway with ditches bordering each side but I tried my best....stopping right on the highway and taking a quick picture before revving up as fast as possible before another car appeared behind me.

I took this picture at a stoplight though. That is not an explosion made in a construction zone, that's just a cloud, a great big cloud. Really big. Crazy big.

These clouds gently arc-ed their way over the trees in a wispy Van Gogh sort of way.

I don't know why this one was all stretched out while the clouds behind it were sorting themselves into a line of cotton balls. What kind of weather was going on up there?

Drama. How else to describe this ridiculous amount of cloudage?

And then there were clouds so heavy they didn't want to stay up in the air anymore.

When I got back to Kansas City, the clouds were all over the horizon, in front of me, behind me, both sides of me and above me...just big white clouds everywhere I looked. That directional sign needs a few more arrows if it wants to be accurate.

The clouds today were incredibly beautiful...and I would have missed seeing them if it wasn't for my new Kansas craving friend Bacon. :-)