The heavens’ embroidered cloths, Enwrought with golden and silver light

(Not my own, but Yeats', by the way)

Here's a sampling of the latest pretty skies around here. There have been a lot of them! We've had lots of thunderstorms or almost-thunderstorms, and plenty of huge clouds to go with them. I love it so much! I would love this kind of weather year-round.

Daisy in the pinky-gold light. And on the other side of the sky…

It looked like this. Beautiful!

One night we had the most amazing lightning storm. First it was far away over the west mountains, with flashes every ten seconds lighting up the whole sky. Seb came in from a bike ride saying "You have to come see the lightning!" So we all went up on the hill to watch. There were some other people out there too, and we all said "ooohh!" every time there was a particularly good flash. This picture above makes it look like it was still a little light, but actually, it was very dark:

…this dark!

It was so cool seeing the clouds outlined with light from behind.

This flash was cool. I don't know what made it pinkish-orange!

I love the beautiful purple of these flashes. You can almost see the shape of the lightning in this one.

This one was even brighter, almost as bright as day!

This looks so ominous, like a tornado over our house!

You can see the rain coming down in sheets back there, far away.

I love the angry swirl of clouds here.

Seb went down by the lake to try to get pictures of the lightning with his bike in the foreground (as one does?). He got this awesome shot! I love the forked lightning streaming out from behind the bike.

Then we were sitting back up on the hill watching, and suddenly we got hit with a BLAST of wind. The trees started whipping around like crazy, and we were almost falling over. Seb's bike started blowing down the hill! The clouds were swirling closer, and we felt a few drops of rain…and then we RAN because we knew we were at the edge of the storm. We raced up onto our porch just as it started pouring! I don't know if I've ever seen it rain so hard. The streets turned into rivers! It was amazing.

Here is another beautiful evening. It was hard to capture the true color of these clouds, because the bright parts were SO bright! I love the way the sun is coming through onto the mountains.

Zooming in helped fix the colors a little.

Look at that bright glowing cloud behind the mountain!

Sam and I went out on a walk so we could keep looking at the sky, and when we passed the dip (did you know there is a dip next to the hill? Haha. It's not usually in my pictures) we saw Goldie walking along in the field, back and forth, back and forth, engrossed in her book. It was so funny! She was just pacing and reading, totally unaware of anything around her.

Must've been a good book! :)

I love sunsets like this, when the sky keeps changing constantly. First the clouds in front were lit, then the clouds behind, and then just the little tips of the clouds.

And finally this soft pink was all that was left!

Here's a view we don't usually get to see. This was when Sam and I were downtown on our date one Friday. I love the Capitol building with the sunset behind!

I like the dark beams(? beam-shadows?) here. Are they still crepuscular rays if they're dark like this?

Here's a boy on our hill with a bright blue sunset sky. I love this color.

After Seb's piano recital, we went up the hill (full of happiness and relief, as one is after a recital). There was this huge, perfect specimen of an anvil cloud. We watched for the next hour, and it just got prettier!

Such a fiery glow behind these!

And this might be the best one yet. We didn't even think the sunset would be pretty on this night because it had been so cloudy and rainy earlier. But somehow there was enough sun to shine through and light up the clouds in these bright rainbow colors!

Pink-lit Teddy running up the hill to see!

Sam taking pictures

Gold windows

I love it!!