The rain washed everything clean and brought with it much cooler temperatures yesterday. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. Good because a lovely cool breeze wafted through the house making the curtains billow out, breathing fresh air in; bad because the combination of new rain water and the cooler temps made the pool temperature drop by three or four degrees. boo hoo. It was pretty cloudy for the better part of the day and not very conducive to splashing around the pool. Still, we hung out in the cabana. We feel we have to take every advantage of the pool that we can since all too soon it will be closed for the season. At least that’s the best rationale that we can come up with for spending another Sunday doing not much of anything.

We kicked off our shoes

and proceeded to kick back ourselves and just relax and read while the cool breeze blew through our little poolside oasis.

Of course, with us there is always food involved and this was no exception. I tried out a new recipe Grape-Mint Salsa. It’s made with both green and red grapes, chopped mint, chopped chives, a jalapeno pepper and some lime juice. (Follow the link if you’re interested in the recipe.) Sugared pita chips are served alongside for dipping.

And, if you’re following along with the Robinson’s you should also know that there is always some kind of drink to go along with the food. Another new recipe, this one taken from Rachel Ray’s website: Beer Margaritas. Oh my. I am not a beer drinker at all, but this is enough to change my mind. delicious. refreshing. addictive. Take 4 12-ounce bottles of ice-cold Corona, 1 cup of tequila, one 12-ounce container of limeade concentrate and mix together. Salt glass rims with kosher salt and serve with wedges of lime.

The only downside to these that I can think of is that they go down a lot easier than a normal margarita. Maybe too easily ...

The day got sunnier as it went on and we did take a quick dip, then just floated around for a while.

Our little garden frog was happy too.

For dinner we grilled pizza. The crust comes out cracker thin and crispy. yum. One with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, portobella mushrooms and roasted red peppers,

and one with caramelized onions, gorgonzola cheese and black olives (my particular favorite.

A walk after dinner down the road with the dogs topped off another great (if not very productive) Sunday.

Last night we had a power failure. Since moving here we’ve only had one other significant power outage and that was during the daylight hours. Our neighbors have always told us that it’s very common to lose power here so I always have candles on hand, and we bought a lantern the year before last when tropical depression Ernesto paid us a visit but we’ve never used it.
Sidebar: Most of our power lines are above ground; not buried. Add to that all the trees that fall down on a fairly regular basis and you can understand why we have power outages.

We had a thunderstorm roll through around 7:00 p.m. last night just as we were eating dinner. We had three very close hits (if not our house than something in our yard), and on one of the lightning hits the power went out. It poured; more lightning and more thunder. We sat there watching the rain come down and about 20 minutes later the power came back on. The little thunderstorm moved off to rain on someone else and we cleaned up the dinner dishes.

An hour later found us settling down in front of the television to watch Flashdance and give Rick a much needed back rub. All of a sudden we were sitting in total darkness. Hey, who turned out the lights? Somehow, this seemed more final than the previous one. We scrambled around in the dark grabbing candles and remembering where we’d put the lantern. It was so dark! Soon we were sitting in the comforting glow of candlelight. Kind of nice. Peaceful. We carried lanterns down into the yard to put the solar cover back on the pool. So very dark.

We didn’t get to watch Flashdance, but Rick did get his back rub—by candlelight. Two hours later as we got in bed to read, the power came back on. It went off again in the middle of the night too. We only know because we were rudely awakened by the beep of the smoke alarm as the power came back on. This morning everything had to be reset, from the coffee pot to the pool timer. Oh how we depend on our electrical gadgetry!

Black Swallowtail Butterfly on the butterfly bush.

I apologize for the wordless entries. I just don’t have any words this week! I hope you’re enjoying the photos anyway. Every time I walk down into the garden I see a different butterfly or bug and I just can’t resist trying to capture them with my lens.

More Snowberry Clearwing Hummingbird moths.

You’ve heard of the phrase “I’d like to be a fly on the wall”? How about on a flower? I don’t think it was just a normal fly, too iredescent.