It's summer!

There are a few signs that summer is really here.

The cherry tree is blooming.

Fresh calla lilies have burst forth to replace the ones destroyed by that hail storm a month or so ago.

The iris are strutting their stuff.

And the alyssum are getting freaky. (Several years ago we planted some white ones next to some purple ones, and now we have these weird hybrids. One year we planted two yellow and two white corn plants together. The corn ended up being interracial. A botanist could easily explain this, but I'm pretty sure it has something to do with the Giants winning the World Series.)

Another sure sign is The Boy taking the top off The Long And Winding Road, his Jeep. (Although doing this pretty much guarantees that one last rainstorm is on its way.)

The top and doors snuggly tucked away, under the bottle brush tree (which I forgot to include in the Parade of Blooming Things earlier).

One last sign of summer is Mrs Notthat being outside and sleeveless. I took her out to Rancho San Antonio this morning so she could finally see the park where I do most of my training work. (Work has been all encompassing so far this year, so I more or less took today and tomorrow off to try to catch up on a lot of things around the house. For example, I discovered I was three months behind in balancing the checkbook. Yikes!)

This is how hot it got today - even in the shade, Mrs Notthat was running around sleeveless.

This week I got a nice flashback to the opposite of summer - March's Mt Diablo trail race. This month's UltraRunning magazine included a story about the race, and even better, one of the pictures I took!

My picture is the big one, which I can honestly say I make sure to bring up every time I talk about how famous I now am. Which is often. Actually, it turns out that another guy, Etep (not his real name), who uses a proper camera, had two of his pictures used for the story, and ended up getting all the credit and fame.

I hear that he hasn't had to pay for a meal since the magazine hit the stores.

That's it - move along...

PS: Did I mention that mine was bigger?