The first year Jim and I were married there were several blizzards that left my little teal 4-door Geo metro buried and our house surrounded by snow drifts so deep that I did not use the stairs of my deck nor see my yard fence for 3 months. Instead, I walked over the fence straight onto my deck on snow. Then, for the first 12 years of living here on the ranch we had a drought. Summers were a dreadful brown. In fact, in the summer of 2006, we were afraid of any storm cloud. Because clouds meant lightning not rain. All of my life, I had been taught to stay away from hilltops when there was lightning. That year, night storms meant Jim would get up and sit on a hilltop watching for the glow of a fire. Day storms would be a time for Ann & me to gather up our four kids and sit on a hilltop watching for smoke. Ready to call our husbands away from another fire if lightning struck close to home. That summer the Black Hills were burning and the prairie was burning too. My parents evacuated their house in the Black Hills and we moved several neighbors out of their homes because the flames were headed toward their house Here on the prairie. Weather went from extreme blizzards at the start of our marriage to a drought that drifted into dry winters. So dry that our kids would take plastic sleds and slide down brown grass and cactus covered hillsides. Sledding winter, spring, summer, fall on dry ground. I had no idea then that the prairie could be so beautiful. I had no idea that wildflower seeds lay dormant waiting to explode in color and paint the prairie. Photos & text 2010 Jodene (Jodi) Shaw.