Good Bye Apple Tree

Supposedly, it’s still winter, but last night brought more evidence that Spring is kind of early this year. Actually, it’s more like Winter never showed up.

Last night after supper the wind suddenly blew in, like really hard and really loud, with drenching rain and a little bit of lightning and thunder. The wind was louder than than the thunder. Becky and I wondered if we should head for the basement, but there were no tornado sirens and nothing about dangerous weather on the TV or local radio. And then it settled down. And then it started up again. We were perplexed. Finally, the TV news started showing radar images and talking about tornado watches and warnings. Turned out Lawrence was in a tornado “watch” and the “warning” was a bit south of us. Still, I pondered whether the constant very loud “rumble” sounded enough like a freight train to justify going downstairs. Well, we thought about it long enough for things to settle down, so we never made it to the basement. Instead, we went to bed and I wondered how many limbs from the maple tree out front and the cottonwood out back would be on the ground the next morning. They’ve needed trimming real bad for a few years, but I never got around to hiring anybody to do it.

This morning I went out front and there was nary a limb nor a twig from the maple on the ground. Went out back and ditto for the cottonwood. But, what heck? The whole apple tree was lying on the ground. Incredibly, it fell in just the right direction to avoid all wires and fences. On closer examination of the base of the trunk where it pulled out of the ground, I expect it would have fallen over if I’d just leaned on it any time the past year. I got the camera to take a few pictures for posterity which prompted a weird thought to occur. It was: hey, I outlived a tree!

P.S.When I got home from work there was a big pile of cut up apple tree by the curb. Becky explained: She was out back looking at the tree. A neighbor a couple houses up had just finished cutting up his fallen tree and saw her. He came down the hill and asked if we needed ours cut up. She said, “Sure! How much would you want to do it?” He answered, “Nothing. It’s what neighbors do,” and proceeded to cut it up. The whole thing. Whoa! Really? Yeah, really. She also found out the tornado sirens in Lawrence had actually gone off, except the one nearest our house.

🙂

What Happened to Autumn?

Went outside the other morning to retrieve the newspaper and could see my breath; it was that cold (the ambient temperature, not my breath). Walked down to the bank from my office this afternoon; everybody wearing jackets and/or sweaters. I heard a passerby say to her companion, “This is like November!”

Earlier this year we went directly from winter to summer; no spring to speak of. It appears the year is going out the same way; no autumn. I wouldn’t mind, except we’re waiting on the painter who’s supposedly going to paint the house before winter sets in. Doesn’t look like he’s going to have much of an autumn “window” to get it done.

Post California

Two days back in Kansas and we’re both sick. It zonked me yesterday and zonked Becky today. But, small price to pay for last week’s family time in California and getting acquainted with 6 week old grandson Sebastian and re-acquainted with 2-1/2 year old granddaughter Isabelle.

Incredibly, the weather here in Kansas has been exactly the same as we left it in California – beautiful.

I have a whole lot of photos I managed to offload from camera to PC, but have yet to go through them and upload any to Picasaweb, etc. Haven’t even posted anything on Facebook since getting home. That’s partly because I thought I’d post something on the rusty ol’ blog first but, when I loaded it up in the browser, I remembered I’d been wanting to upgrade the theme to allow for widgets and other improvements that have come along since I first launched it. So, I spent a couple evenings re-working the Chappells theme for WordPress, in between sniffles and snorts from whatever bug has got to me. Not sure I’m done with the project, but it’s good enough for now and the widgets are working (left column – probably nobody will even notice a difference).