Wolf Wind

Do you remember the fairy tail where the big bad wolf threatened to blow the little piggies’ houses down, and then he huffed, and he puffed, and he did it? Well, the wolf wind visited our part of Alabama on Friday.

The weatherman had predicted strong storms, and even the possibility of tornadoes. Late Friday afternoon the sky started getting black and our phones alerted us to the possibility of baseball size hail. I had parked the van and pickup under the carport on Thursday, but we drove the truck into town on Friday, so it was in the driveway. I drove it back down the hill and parked it next to the van in the carport just as the rain started coming down.

And boy, did it come down! Between the strong wind and the rain, there were times when we could not see the street from our house. There were no tornado warnings, so we did not go into our shelter, which is just a few steps from our side door, but we thought about it. In the middle of all that I got a call from the neighbor across the street saying that she was there alone, that trees were falling, and she was hiding in a closet and terrified. I told her to come over here, then walked out to meet her. We had not actually met in person, so it was not the best way to do so, but we were glad to be able to be there for her.

Though the big bad wolf wind did not take our house down, it caused tremendous damage all through the area. Our power was out for about twelve hours, but I won’t complain because Travis and Gila lost power at their place and still don’t have it back on. Trees were down everywhere and there was a lot of local flooding. We also got a lot of hail.

Yesterday morning when it was safe to do so, I went outside and began assessing the damage. There are a lot of tree limbs down all over the place.

Two trees on the south side of our yard snapped off about halfway up.

The top of one came crashing down, but the other one is hung up on a bunch of branches. I don’t know how long it will stay there but it definitely needs to be addressed before it comes loose and hurts somebody. Fortunately, everything was far enough away from the house that they didn’t hit it.

Just walking around, it’s obvious that I need to buy a chainsaw to start clearing things up. Since the temperature is in the mid to upper 80s, that’s not going to be fun. I will pace myself and do a little bit at a time as I can.

We obviously had straight-line winds even if it wasn’t a tornado. These are half-inch fiberglass poles that held the deer fence up around Terry’s fruit trees. They are all bent at a 90^o angle in the exact same direction.

While the fruit trees seemed to have handled it well enough, the garden took a beating, and the rose bushes in front of the house were denuded of all of their pretty flowers.

At least we were able to salvage some of the blueberries.

Unfortunately, all of the beautiful gardens that Travis and Gila have spent literally hundreds of hours of backbreaking labor on were destroyed. They not only put their blood, sweat, and tears, but their hearts and souls into those gardens and they are understandably devastated. They have a different power company than we do and have not had power since Friday on their road and are under a boil water notice. Area churches are coming by bringing people food and water and checking if they need anything. We told them they are welcome to stay here for as long as they need to, but with all their chickens to be responsible for, Travis does not want to leave them. Our hearts ache for them. Sometimes life can be very unfair.

All in all, we have it better than a lot of people around us do. We are safe, our house and vehicles were not damaged, and except for having a lot of cleanup work ahead of us, we have nothing to complain about.

Today is your last chance to enter our Free Drawing for an audiobook of my pal Ken Rossignol’s The Chesapeake: Country Cornpone Cornucopia. It’s a series of short stories of and about people in and around the Tidewater Chesapeake region – along with a few stories from other regions when the writer’s travels. This mix of history and humor is the perfect way to pass time on a beach or promenade deck.

To enter, click on this Free Drawing Link or the tab at the top of this page and enter your name (first and last) in the comments section at the bottom of that page (not this one). Only one entry per person per drawing please, and you must enter with your real name. To prevent spam or multiple entries, the names of cartoon or movie characters are not allowed. The winner will be drawn this evening. Note: due to the high shipping cost of printed books and amazon restrictions on e-books and audiobooks to foreign countries, only entries with U.S. addresses and e-mail addresses are allowed.

And finally, here’s a chuckle to start your day from the collection of funny signs we see in our travels and that our readers share with us. When my dear friend Lynn Throckmorton sent me this, I remembered sneaking into the movie theater when I was a kid. Who knew sneaking out would get you in trouble?

Thought For The Day – Staying positive doesn’t mean you have to be happy all the time.