My first trip to Jamaica (35yrs ago) was spur of the moment, FebruarygetmeOUTofhere, and a real blast. I did no weather research because JamaicaFebruaryYeah,baybee so I was totally surprised by the 2am torrential rains. The first one freaked me out – ‘omg. mah vaycaaayshun’s ruuuuined’ because it was just a ridiculous amount of rain that sounded like it would go on forever. Imagine my surprise when, 6hours later, I emerged from my room to the first of 10 sparkling days – and 10 2a torrential nights. Much later I realized that it’s this incredible combo that results in trees & flowers that seem to grow 3 feet in an hour.
We’re having a mini-Jamaica here; 90F in the day with these terrifying storms that come in…..(and here’s where it differs)…whenever the hell they feel like it. Saturday: gorgeous day 89F with sparkling sunshine. I was at a cookout when, suddenly, all the men started grabbing up tables, etc and putting everything in the garage…oooo-kay…whazzup, old dudes? Turns out ever. stankin’ oneadem has radar on their phones and they were tracking weather. Big storm coming in from Des Moines. So we all helped move stuff in, then pretty much hightailed it home.
To: Nothing. I got home and had plenty of time to mow the front lawn before a couple minutes’ Spring rain got me wet enough to have to towel-dry my hair. But that was it.
For about an hour.
Then. O.M.G. Where a moment before it was dry there came a deluge so heavy I feared the entire house would just float away. Then came The Wind. Seventy. Miles. an. Hour. Rain almost completely horizontal. Sunflowers bent double. Apocalypse-level rain. And then the tornado siren went off. Thanks, Des Moines! I snapped a leash on The Girl, grabbed my handbag with the car keys and flash drives and my extra glasses and hightailed it to the bathroom. Siren finally stopped. Then BOOM! all the power went out.
And it was at that moment that I remembered: Nature, for all its beauty and glory, Is Not Our Friend.
Sunday morning we woke up to one of the most beautiful days I’ve ever seen. Clear, clean, rain-washed air. And, despite the vicious pummeling my garden has never looked so glorious!
I’mo hop off here because we’re back to the tornado-level winds & rain and we’re on a ‘patch’ for power to the town. If I don’t get this up now there’s no tellin’…. we were without power for Saturday night and then from 10a to 7p Sunday, while they tried to fix the ‘patch’. With this crazy weather who knows if that patch will hold? I don’t even wanna know what that ‘patch’ is made of. 200 yards of gauze? 20 tubes of Neosporin? A mile of duct tape?
So. Bye! for now. whazzup with you guys? I will pull some storytellers (in addition to the last post’s folks) and send out some goodies! Are you having weather?
all Apres le Pluie (la Pluie?) with this insane weather, those sunflowers in the circular bed (center photo) are nearly 6′ tall. And it’s only mid-June!
xoxoxo
We had a small Tropical Storm come through last week…I think her name was Cindy? We got tons of rain, and periodic strong wind gusts, one of which took down the top part of our neighbor’s tree; fortunately, it landed nicely on his patio instead of his roof! And that incident prompted us to schedule some tree trimming at our house, long overdue, and we’d rather get it done ourselves instead of rolling the dice with Mother Nature. Tropical Storm this early in the season makes us a bit leery down here on the Gulf Coast; we’ve been very fortunate over the last decade, and hope to be lucky much longer!
I remember those storms well and don’t miss them, although we on occasion do get them here in LA. We had one a few months ago with a “microburst” which dropped a huge amount of rain in about a minute. Flooded the patio until the drains could catch up. I was up to my ankles in water, then 15 minutes later bone dry. Weird.
Our house got struck by lightening on Saturday during a little squall, the first real rain of the year for us. It destroyed our septic pump, hvac, laundry set, and really screwed with the outlets. Took the electrician two days to get everything squared away and several trips to the appliance store for us. Haven’t seen the bill yet, expecting a doozy. But glad that our house didn’t burn down and no one was hurt.
We had a terrible, cold, wet spring. The weeds loved it. Last week was too hot to do much outside. This week has been better. I just don’t have the time or energy to get outside to do anything.
It’s all pretty nice in the SF bay area right now, but it was hot — I went to NOLA for a few days and was hotter than there for a minute (yeah I know, not that remarkable, except we do generally have almost-bitterly cold wind that prevents me, at least, from ever feeling like It’s Summer!).
Nowhere near as exciting as your weather! Thanks for the post, always interesting to hear about how it’s all playing out in our current Climate Change-climate.
We’re having weather of the unreasonably hot variety. The highs are in the low 100’s and the lows are (finally) getting into the 70’s. My electricity bill will make me weep when it’s all over. It makes everyone a little grumpy when you get up in the morning and it’s already 80, so I’m focusing on keeping my patience and going out of my way to be kind to people.
We have had several monsoon-worthy rains here of late… I had to put my hanging baskets on the ground, they were getting so waterlogged and heavy. The grass is really green though!
We had a bunch of crazy thunderstorms come through last week — trees down, broken windows, and one of the Minneapolis suburbs actually broke out the snowplows to shovel hail off the streets!
We’re having typically miserable Texas summer weather. Hot. Either burning wind that seems to rip the air from your lungs or swampy, breathless calm. Stuff that looks like it could be rain on the radar but turns out not to be. Mosquitoes, flies, fleas, ticks, tiny swarms of things that bake on the windshield. My birdbath is dry by the end of the day and my plants look like I’ve blasted them with a torch. We skipped winter here and spring was a joke. I’m ready for any season that isn’t summer (I say this 9 months out of every year).
Musette, your garden is gorgeous!!! I love the story about Jamaica. Hope to go some day…
Our weather has been so dismal that I don’t even have the tomato plants in the ground 🙁 waaah! Last night, watching a big line of storms on the radar, I was hoping for a good old fashioned thunderstorm but it pooped out before it got to us. All we have is hot, windy, damp & muggy now. Okay, my garden may take the summer off–too many weeds and not enough good weather to do anything about it. I’m wearing Jardin Sur le Nil today.
We’ve been spared severe weather here at our house but not too far away they’ve had strong winds and lots of rain. So weird. Our hydrangea bushes are lush and blooming finally. Those in the front of the house are lavender, pink, purple and blue, all on the same bush. We’ve had purple or pink in years past, but never so many different hues on one plant. Not complaining — they’re gorgeous!