Can you feel it? The changing of the seasons, that is. Over the past few days suddenly the days are getting shorter. The nights are becoming cooler. In the mornings I run around the house closing windows to stem the flow of cool damp air into the house. The sun is rising later and last night we barely got through with dinner and walking the dogs before it started getting dark. How did this happen so quickly?
The hummingbirds feel it too. They are hitting the feeder at a frenetic pace. Whirring and chittering around it, fighting over whose “flower” it is. I see it as a last final sugar charge before starting their long journey south. I haven’t seen this many hummingbirds all summer, so maybe we have a few visiting interlopers that have already started their migration from points further north.
The pool, of course, is done for the year. It’s closing is scheduled for the 13th of September. It might be swimmable this weekend. Maybe. But, right now it’s full of leaves from good old Irene. And of course, all the pool furniture was put away and most of the cabana was taken down last weekend in preparation for Irene. Somehow I can’t see us bringing it all back out again only to put it all up again in a few weeks.
I’m not sad. I don’t mind seeing summer end. Especially this one when it’s been so hot and humid. I’m ready for the change, are you?
In other news, the flooding “down the mountain” (as they say around here) is at epic proportions. Rick can make it to work but it takes twice as long. His company has adopted a shorter day work week (9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.) to allow people more travel time. The gas station where he normally gets gas has sunk into the ground and there is standing water 6 feet deep around it. I feel so badly for all of the people who have been forced to leave their homes in the advancing flood waters. We were so lucky not to lose power or any trees. Lots of tree limbs down, some very large, and lots of stripped leaves everywhere, but that’s about the extent of our damage. It’s going to take some time for things to return to normal again.
The battery of our battery-powered light sources (and a few oil based ones) for which (so far) we have not had to use.
Well, not quite Goodnight, but close. Most of you out there are probably too young to remember the song of the same name. I lifted these two sentences from the lyrics:
You cause me to weep, you cause me to mourn
You cause me to leave my home
We did not have to leave our home like so many others, nor did we do any weeping although there was quite a bit of anxiety involved. Mostly now we are worried about all the huge trees surrounding our house and what the rain saturated ground and now escalating winds will do to them. Hopefully all will be as well as our weathering the storm last night and into this morning.
Yesterday the turkeys were acting very strangely. They all came to feed as they usually do, but then they all starting digging in the mulch under our burning bush hedge in front and laying down as if they were all trying to nest. Trust me, the sight of 18 turkeys (grown plus 13 babies) all doing the same thing was very odd. The dogs were acting strangely too. All on edge and jumpy. I am thinking the huge drop in the barometric pressure was to blame.
As it was getting dark last night Bella was barking from the back yard and looking into the front yard. She was pretty adamant about it and it wasn’t because neighbor Finnbarr was out. Rick went out front to check it out and saw a big black shape in the driveway. By the time he got out there it had gone. More than likely a bear who felt the strange air preceding the storm as well.
Here are a couple of captures from yesterday’s weather report on the television from ABC news with Lee Goldberg. I love the shape of Irene in this photo. She is one awesome and quite beautiful force of nature.
I just had to take this photo which shows the county we live in being dissected by one of the course projection lines. (The furtherest to the left: blue and pink converging on each other.) Now that was scary!
Overall we had right at 7 inches of rain since just before midnight last night. This does not impact us, but further down in places like Wayne (where Rick works) it spells disaster and flooding.
The “little” creek behind our house has overflowed its banks and is more like a river.
Our power went out in a tiny glitch around 11:00 p.m. last night. Not enough to disturb the clocks or anything else. It went off and on again twice close to 4:00 a.m. which was enough to reset the smoke alarms and send everything else in our house into a tizzy. The dogs hate the beep of the smoke alarms, so they all ended upstairs wanting attention with us. The winds were really strong around 2:00 a.m. and wind driven sheets of rain were pelting the windows. Then it all seemed to calm down a bit until later when the rains set in again big time.
Right now the sun is sort of out at 1:20 p.m. and it is very breezy to windy. I would love to go out and explore now that the rain has finally stopped but I am worried about trees falling over. After one man died last spring in our community when a tree landed on the car he was driving and killed him (his wife in the passenger seat was spared), then a few months later a colleague of Rick’s was killed in the same way. Again, his wife survived and he was killed instantly. Since then I have a whole new respect for wind and trees. (Katie, I hope you’re doing well!) I think now it’s become a phobia for me.
Airports closed, public transportation shut down, roads and bridges closed. WOW. Seems hard to believe. But I agree with their choices wholeheartedly. There are always those people who go against the grain and need to be “rescued” from situations they should never have gotten themselves into in the first place. Yet the tax payers always seem to end up paying for their stupidity. What a system. And might I add that it seems no American can be responsible for their own actions anymore. There is always someone else to lay the blame on. Truly sad. I think I’m getting old.
ANYWAY, in honor of my Mom’s birthday yesterday, or should I say what would have been her 85th birthday, I made her spaghetti and meatball recipe. I had never really been a fan before, but after trying various different recipes and having them all taste not so good, I went back to a classic. I miss you so much Mom! I would love now to ask you if this is Nana Monroe’s recipe or if you made it up yourself?
I am happy to report a resounding success! It was delicious! Yummmmm.
So, enough for now. Just wanted to let anyone out there who might be concerned that all is well at the moment. Now we have to decide which things to put back out around the pool before we leave for Colorado. Maybe nothing since we mostly took down the cabana except for the side curtains which we just tied to the structure; the canoe is safely tucked inside the basement (thanks to neighbor Mark for his help!); the deck planter boxes are down and the flowers pretty much done.
Maybe I should thank Ms. Irene for helping us jump start the fall clean up?
Maybe not. She’s been a disruptive little bitch. (Please pardon my language.)
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.
