Summer Starts

 Summer started, a week early, with a noon-hour ride. 
The grasses and other low-to-the-ground plants have dried nicely ahead of summers' arrival. The ground turning sandy and dusty in the dry. I was not expecting to see rattlesnake out there, and i didn't, not where the roads and trails worry beneath the white sun. I walked, because i felt like it, around the old scarred eucalyptus. The sun and the sky beneath it was mottled, and the ground crunched with the dry leaves and bark collected there. The grass and hard star flower husks scratched my legs, embedded themselves in my socks. Further along, a pair of shoes had fallen from the tree; they were arranged as if someone had neatly set them there, ready to be slipped on the next morning. I picked them up and threw them over a higher branch, so that they could be with the other pairs - just hanging out. 

In all its many forms, many ways, summer has started.

i'm a bit suspicious, and think my computer may have been exaggerating a bit for emphasis.then again, the direct sun does have that effect

still gushing

dusty roads

white sun and red sunspots

not all dry, but getting there

yucca do not usually get all twisted like that one

red hot