On Saturday morning I didn’t get up until 6:15AM much to someone’s disgust. Once he was fed, I got my post up. Because the electric company had called the night before warning about the severity of the coming storms, I decided to do the labels for the New Herb garden first.
So I went out and finished the list of what I needed to make or repair. Then I printed out the names. While they were printing, I took labels I wasn’t using off stakes as I didn’t have enough stakes.
Next I cleaned up the labels needing repair and got the laminator out. Each label gets laminated first. I cut them out with a border and then I made small reinforcing tabs where the staples go and ran the laminated labels through again. Sometimes the labels don’t lay down well and I had to run them through a few times.
I got them all cut out and then stapled them to stakes. I ran out of long stakes and had to use shorter ones for half of them. All together I made or repaired 23. I finished at noon.
I sat down to rest for a while and the storm was still a ways off so I went out and picked half of the raspberries. I filled that container ¾ full. I picked them over to get the ones with bad spots and remove the bugs.
I rinsed them and put them in the blender. I added heavy cream and some organic sugar and vanilla and blended it all up. I put it in the fridge to chill. It made a lovely dessert.
Around 2PM the rain and wind started. I got the house closed up and sat down to read. Tom called me to say they were issuing tornado warnings for his area and to keep an eye out for spinning clouds.
Shortly after that the wind got quite strong and I could hear thunder off in the distance to the west. There wasn’t a lot of rain yet, so I dragged the office chair to the front porch to sit and watch.
The lightning got closer and then: (What I wrote to Tom)
“Well that was exciting! I sat on the front porch through most of it. At one point a big fat bolt came horizontally across the herb garden and front of the house and struck somewhere out on the back 40. I went inside so I could see if it was the barn or the truck. But it was raining so hard I couldn’t see past the barn so I knew it and the truck were ok. So I went…
Oh dear! Another one hit out on the back 40 but barn and truck are ok.
Anyways I went back out on the porch and shortly there were 3 strikes all at once and all together off to the southeast.
But even though the wind was crazy in the tops of the trees on the driveway I stayed dry-ish on the porch.
I’ve never see 3 strikes like that at once.”
I was able to stay on the porch as it wound down and never got more than a few light sprinkles on me.
Cottontail rabbit in the rain
It had stopped raining by 4:30PM and there were a few rays of sun. I got the house opened up again to cool it down as the temperature had dropped 15°F.
We got about 1½” of rain.
I made supper and sat down to watch more Big Bang Theory. My older brother in Connecticut called and said they were just getting the storm around 6PM. He was going to try to make it up early on Sunday to see the Birds of Prey talk at the Fair at 11AM.
I headed to bed at 8PM after closing the house up again. It was to get colder and rain again in the night and up until 11AM on Sunday. Then it would be cloudy and cool all day. It looks like we will be spending most of the day at the Fair. It would have been my husband’s and my 51st anniversary.