I did not bother going upstairs at midnight. There were to be storms with hurricane force winds. We have a couple of tall thin pines out front that could well snap in a storm and though they don't seem to be pointing in the direction of the farmhouse, you never know. When things start swaying and shaking out there, I like to be far from whatever might hit the roof.
Within an hour, the sirens began their wail and a merely heavy storm suddenly turned into a tornado warning.
We were at the western edge of the trouble spots. What to do? Well, sirens really do mean basement time, but our basement is unfinished and dusty and not fit for human habitation so I usually opt to hunker down in the corner of the mudroom. If the house were to be ripped up and carried away, like, say, in the Wizard of Oz, then the mud room wouldn't protect me, but the corner of it is windowless and has a door leading to the basement just in case things got really violent, so I see it as a good compromise.
Ed gauged the risk to be small (he said the winds didn't sound strong enough) and the inconvenience to be large and so he stayed put. I know, I know, you could raise good counter arguments, but, I suppose probabilities were on his side so there's that.
In my mudroom enclave it was anything but cozy so I moved in a kitchen rug and tried to make do with that. Nope. Not good enough. Next, I carried down a sleeping bag and a pillow, thinking I could at least rest. Nope, couldn't rest. And then Ed let the cats in (they are scarred! they have the sheep shed, get them out of here!) and the cats thought my resting in the mudroom was very very strange, so yes, Ed did finally chase them out of the house and by that time the tornado warning was over.
I got very little sleep last night.
This morning, we noted a half an inch of rain in our measuring cup. The air improved, from 97% humidity levels last night to something more summer normal this morning. I found it easy to work in the garden, even though my motivation is slowly (maybe not so slowly) diminishing. I only snip lily heads visible to "an average passerby" (even though there are no passerby types, average or otherwise, passing through here ever).
An hour into it I consider myself done. Breakfast!
And as I sit there thinking how absolutely delicious that milky coffee is, the kids arrive!
(purple on purple)
I'd say we concentrate on three things: sampling flowers, reading books and doing art. Oh, and eating fruit, but that goes without saying. It's a gaga thing.
(What? Sampling flowers? As in tasting them?? The answer is yes. We have some edible flowers in the yard and the kids were checking out the flavors!)
(We did also admire stuff without ingesting it!)
(When I return the kids home, I check in on Sandpiper. Nope, not awake at the moment!)
And in the afternoon? Market time! For the cheese-egg exchange. For checking on what's growing these days.
One last item on the agenda: garlic harvest! We'd started growing garlic by accident. Somehow a bulb got planted. And within a couple of years, we seemed to have a patch, right in front of the lily bed. Lately, we've been much more deliberate about it: we harvest, we cure it, we plant cloves from the biggest heads. Today was harvest time!
In the evening I feel I could fall asleep early, no problem, but the Olympics are on and the air feels good and the mood is gentle and sweet. We hang out on the couch. Our beloved purchased on Craigslist four years ago couch. So much better than the floor in the mudroom! No, no storms tonight. Just a moon out there, shining down brightly on us all.
