Wednesday May 17th 2023

Today seemed to follow a summer weather pattern. It was a humid day with thunderstorms moving back and forth across the Florida peninsular. There was the sound of thunder nearby late this morning, as the storm line formed a little west of here and moved inland. This afternoon around 3PM the thunder returned. This time it brought heavy rain with it from the west as the storm line returned and headed out into the Atlantic. The rain lasted about an hour before everything started to return to normal.

I was finally able to sleep in this morning. Both Monday and Tuesday morning the landscape crew managed to force me to leave my bed before I really wanted to. On Monday it was lawn mowing that started before eight in the morning. Tuesday morning the same crew was back with string trimmers and leaf blowers to “finish” the job. I know it has to be done and it is cooler in the morning, but it doesn’t allow one to sleep in. Since it still gets down into the high sixties or low seventies over night, I prefer to keep the windows open rather than run the AC. This tends to exacerbate my annoyance.

Once I did get up the threat of rain and then the actual rain kept me at home all day. I held off leaving the campground when I heard thunder in the late morning. About the time I figured it wasn’t going to rain and make travel difficult, the sky was starting to darken again. The second hesitation was the right decision. I wouldn’t have enjoyed being on the road in the downpour and doing anything outdoors would have been impossible.

Around 6PM I got in my daily walk around the campground. There were still a few puddles along the sides of the road, but the road surfaces were dry. Unfortunately, the heavy rain caused many of the flower blossoms that I like to take pictures of to fall off the plants. The opportunities that were already slim were even slimmer after the rain.