Okay. I was wrong and I freely admit it. Irene does have us in her sights. What a week it has been! First an earthquake; now a major hurricane force is heading our way.

But, who would know? Today we drove to New York (Rhinebeck) for the Dutchess County Fair. We planned this day off for Rick weeks ago. The day was sunny, hot and slightly humid. The sky—a pretty blue with puffy clouds. If we didn’t know any better we would assume the following days would be just as nice. Not so. Irene is bearing down on us. Big time.

New York City as of tomorrow at noon all public transportation will shut down. People are being evacuated. Airports have cancelled flights. This sounds serious to me.

Although where we live we are at no risk of flooding since most everything is downhill from here, the sheer amount of rainfall (even if we don’t get the high winds) is staggering.

We spent the time after we got back from our away time at the fair preparing for the worse scenario. We brought in all the things around the pool that could be projectiles. I took in all the deck flowers. We turned our deck tables (which are iron) upside down. We brought the fig tree inside the garage. (Poor figgy is loaded with about 60 un-ripe figs.) We filled huge jugs full of water. We know where battery powered lanterns are and Rick bought lamp oil at our local Sears store for the oil lamps we have. We have a butane burner for cooking on if the power goes out. We have plenty of food.

Of course, with all this preparedness we are bound now to not have anything happen.

As long as we still have power I will keep you posted. We are hanging in there!

P.S. I just now noticed that Rick and I were doing blogs at the same time. This is his idea of Hurricane Preparedness.

Yesterday I felt my first earthquake. Ever. I didn’t really know what it was. I was sitting at the computer and Bella was in the room with me.  I felt the floor moving under me like the dogs were running through the house at full speed, only they weren’t. I turned around to see what Bella was doing and at that moment I got a chat message from Rick saying ‘Earthquake!’ He typed that his building down in Wayne was rocking and rolling pretty good. I quickly looked up on the Weather Underground sight and they were not showing any earthquake activity locally so I clicked on USGS.gov. We do have an old fault line close by, the Ramapo, and I thought it might have originated there but instead it was showing a big red block in Virginia. Virginia? That can’t be right! But it was. 5.9.

I guess because it’s a different kind of fault system than they have in California it was felt more far-ranging. Even people in Cleveland, Ohio were shaken up. Our system is shallow, so it was kind of like dropping a small stone in a big pond and watching the ripples fan out rather than being deep and more centered. I think it’s a good thing since it lessens any damage that way. Still, it was all that was on the news all afternoon. I’m sure the people in California think we are a bunch of weanies here in the East, but we aren’t used to that!

I have a friend who lives very close to the epicenter of the quake (Charlottesville) and I immediately emailed her to see if all was okay. It was, but she said it seemed like the shaking went on forever. Everything in her house was rattling and she said “it sounded like a plastic garbage can rolling around on a cement floor.”

Such excitement!

And waiting in the wings to take the stage for the next nature performance we have Hurricane Irene. It would seem she doesn’t have us directly in her sights, but close enough to make us wonder what the weather on Sunday is going to be like. Sheesh. Maybe she will turn out to be nothing or maybe she will surprise us like the quake did. We just have to wait and see!

In the meantime maybe we should be making offerings to appease the nature gods!

Photo taken at the Botanical Gardens on Monday. It seemed to fit with this post perfectly!

Last weekend we did our annual down the shore trip with a group of friends. I only got my beach walk one morning due to not so great weather. Here is the beach as I saw it at around 6:45 in the morning.

The sun coming up.

A feathered friend.

A pretty shell.

A beautiful sky.

There’s nothing quite like newly groomed sand.

And, the beach after the crowds arrive later in the day.

Where oh where did the summer go? I know it’s only the middle of August, and summer isn’t quite over yet but it seems as if it is.The summer has flown by and I’m not quite sure where it went. Maybe it was because Rick was traveling so much at the beginning which made it feel like we had less time than usual for taking rides in Mia and lazy days around the pool.

When I was in grade school it seemed as if the summer stretched out forever. Those few months seemed like years. Or at least looking back on it now it seems that way. It’s true, you know, what they say: the older you get the faster time goes by. Is it because we are more aware of the passage of time than we were as children?

It’s been hotter and more humid this year. And certainly buggier. Lots of little annoying midgey-type black bugs that hover around your eyes, nose and mouth. They don’t bite, thank goodness, but they are a nuisance. We don’t normally have a lot of mosquitoes either, but they’ve been more numerous too. Not nice!

It’s this time of year when the weather starts to change. Right now we are having a lovely cool morning, low humidity and a gentle breeze. For the first time in weeks I have the windows open and the air conditioning turned to OFF. We will still have another round of heat, (we always do), kind of like summer’s last hurrah, but you can tell the summer is winding down. We lose the pool around this time of year too, especially for night swims.

But we aren’t quite done yet. There is still the annual trip down the shore, a visit from friend Carolyn, and the Renaissance Faire (don thy corset, Lynne!) all left to look forward to.

I have to say that summer is not my favorite season so I am not too sad about letting it go. But still ...

This is Thomas. Thomas is a turkey and named with the utmost originality. He is a tom turkey. Get it?

We have many turkeys that visit but Thomas always comes on his own. He usually arrives in the morning just as I am sitting at the computer with cup of coffee checking email. He stands there and stares at the house. Sometimes he even comes up closer to the window to catch my attention as if to say helloooooo! i’m here for my breakfast! And, it works. I get my bucket and put a few scoops of cracked corn and bird seed mix and head out the door.

Thomas trusts me and stands and waits for me to scatter the food. I tap the bucket lightly as a signal he’s going to be fed. He waits patiently. Sometimes he starts eating with me still standing there and sometimes he waits until I leave.

Now I am not saying that I have trained Thomas the Turkey because no wild animal can be tamed, but Thomas has learned over time that tapping the bucket means food. The other turkeys know that signal too and sometimes even when not one turkey is in sight and I tap the bucket, I get a swarm of them coming out of the woods running towards me. It is a sight for sure to see all 13 babies and three or four adults heading right for me! They are smart birds.

Lately our little group has included a few toms, one that is quite large. I didn’t know that toms could be persuaded to be babysitters, but just look at this proof.

They are fun to have around except for when they make their way into the back yard and I unknowingly let the dogs out. The dogs love to chase the turkeys and the poor things squawk and gobble their way out of harm’s way, either by flying into the trees or taking off over the fence. Hailey can sit for hours under a tree with a turkey sitting in it. They amuse everyone in our household.