The Calm Before

Our area is supposed to be inundated with severe thunderstorms today and tonight. At nearly 11pm, I can hear the thunder rumbling and the occasional spatter of rain on my windows. It promises to be a wild night.

Darling Man went to bed early and sleeps soundly in the next room. In the other room, ZBoy and his friend Jesse are finally settling down for the night. Me? I'm blogging and standing by to attend to the weather radio which has already gone off three times tonight, but not with anything for us particularly but areas all around.

It kind of feels like old times. When we lived in Wakulla, the weather radio was my domain. I was the one who could sleep through the night with the interruptions taking up just enough of my time to ascertain our safety before drifting off to sleep again. This means I sleep in the spare room with the radio, waking the others only if there is a need. We've passed many a hurricane or severe weather night in this way.

I noticed an interesting phenomenon today though. The morning dawned sunny and warm with just a hint of breeze. And the entire neighborhood decided to get up at the crack of dawn and do yard work. Even the drunk across the street was planting bulbs as the sun rose. We had a tea olive that we needed to plant, a cabbage, and some tulips.

Darling Man decided to put them all in the little bed next to the front porch. It looked great, but I worried - the last time I planted something there it didn't last 24 hours. A rain storm came along and literally pounded my flowers to death. So I looked and pondered and finally asked for the keys to the truck. I drove to Lowe's and bought pea gravel - 6 bags worth. I also bought some cactus and some weed and feed because the dollar weed is determined that my grass needs to be shoved out to make way for more dollar weeds.

While I was gone, DM mowed the front lawn. Blew the driveway.

When I returned, I gave him the fertilizer and spread the pea gravel in the new bed, planted the cactus in the other bed and put what was left of the gravel in the other bed as well. Then I cleared out under the Japanese Magnolia - the lantana and dollar weed had gone haywire!


Looks pretty good, doesn't it? Our efforts (and those of the neighbors') were curtailed by a rain storm. I came out afterwards and checked - the new bed was just fine!!!

As the thunder rumbles tonight, I can rest a little easier knowing that all the hard work of today won't be ruined by rain pouring off the roof.

As I was going back in after checking the bed, I saw this:

Which led to this:

Well, I guess all that work was done under supervision!