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!