The tiny blue butterfly in the photograph, and yes it is a butterfly, and not a moth, is a Tennessee native that shows up every spring, and is literally only about half an inch across with its wings folded, or just about an inch across with its wings spread.
And yet, it is a true butterfly, and they are lovely little guys, who for some reason seem to frequent our backyard firepit, though obviously when no fire is lit, and not when a fire is blazing.
I'm guessing that it is because of the somewhat uniform grey color, as they blend in well against it, and it can be hard to spot them if they are not moving, giving them natural camouflage.
The only other butterfly with much blue in the wings, at least here locally in our part of Middle Tennessee, is the Spicebush butterfly, not surprisingly common on our place, as we have a LOT of spicebush here.
Though, rather than hanging out near our spicebush, I've more often seen them hanging out sunning themselves on the red clay in the doorway to our barn, or what would be a doorway, provided that our barn still had a physical door.
But in any case, they are beautiful, and like the tiny blue butterflies, always welcome.
We had an interesting start to our day, as Lolo awoke me a couple of hours after I went to bed to let him outside, and right after I let him back in, I promptly got five or six back to back extreme tornado warnings on my phone. Oh, fabulous.
At that point we had only rolling thunder in the distance, but when I checked the radar, the storms were almost on us, so since we don't have a basement, or any inside rooms that don't have outside walls, I decided to shelter with Lolo and all three cats in our master bathroom, which at least has no windows.
It is also by far the largest bathroom I've had in any home I've lived in, as large as a den or a smallish bedroom, so I immediately grabbed my laptop, drives and peripherals, along with my purse and a package I had ready to ship to a friend of ours, and proceeded to double bag them in plastic trash bags, just in case.
Getting the cats in the bathroom proved more difficult. Lolo wasn't a problem, and Bear was fairly willing, but both Musica and Truffle balked at the unusual request, and Truffle especially kept trying to escape, but in the end I finally got us all in the room, and firmly closed the door.
Naturally, I completely neglected to bring in any rain gear for myself. Oh, well.
Then the weather hit in earnest, leading to a fairly tense time, as the end time of the tornado warning kept being further extended, even after it sounded like most of the thunder was moving away.
Finally, the extreme tornado warning was downgraded to a severe thunderstorm warning, at which point I let the cats back into the living room, and went back to bed.
And, for the first time in weeks, I actually slept through until about twenty minutes before my alarm was set to go off. Which was a huge gift, as sound sleep is, after all, among the best natural medicine.
It's interesting how exhausting that kind of adrenaline rush can be.
I was grateful that our power remained on, though once I awakened, several hours after the storms had passed, our power blipped off and on twice, then went off for good. Oh, wonderful.
Our electric company is a co-op, so I called to find out when I might expect to have my power restored, and the woman who answered told me that as yet they had no idea why we'd lost power, so she took my address to add it to others who'd already called in, to give their workers an idea of the scale of the problem.
At that point, I decided to go to Cookeville to get the few things I hadn't been able to get from the store the previous day, and noted that there was no damage on our front porch, and that even our lightweight plants hadn't been blown over, so we were very lucky indeed.
I called my next-door neighbor, whose power was also out, not surprisingly, and told her I'd call before returning home, to see if she needed any ice.
Luckily, by the time I returned, power had been restored an hour or so earlier, so no need for ice, and no need to scramble to provide aeration for our many aquariums. Thank goodness.
There were a number of tornadoes that formed from that line of thunderstorms, but none in our area, and I saw no damage while I was out and about; not even any downed tree limbs.
But I did make the decision that, if we decide to stay here long term, we are building a decent sized root cellar, which can double as a storm shelter in severe weather.
After several years with zero warnings, this is now our third spring in a row of severe to extreme tornado warnings, and if our climate continues warming at its present rate, I have little doubt that such warnings will become even more frequent.
This is NOT what I signed up for.
In any case, since I'm still exhausted, I'll end it there, except to say that I have started bringing Bear's food into the bedroom with us at night, and keeping it near the head of the bed where Lolo can't reach it.
And he has been eating, not a lot, but several times each night, so that is gratifying. He's lost a lot of weight, so anything I can do to help him to gain it back, and give him the best quality of life I can while I still have him, is more than worth doing.
And, having him purring across my neck at night, his favorite position, is also wonderful and healing medicine for us both.
Life is wonderful, and is getting better, better, and better.
I hope you all stay safe and well, wherever you are, and take care of each other. I love you all.
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