Oh, well.... it's summer. We don't get that many months of summer up here north of the 49th.... so we make the most of it.
Golfing, gardening, hanging out on the patio sipping a cold beer .. admiring the fruits of our labour ...etc... you know how it goes. The lawn is the best its been in years..in spite of those pesky voles having made hundreds of trails all over the one side ..it grew in beautifully. Kind of like they aerated it I guess. You'd never know they'd spent the winter wrecking things under the snow banks.
My pots are beautiful... a riot of colour this year. I particularly love the 'million bells' flowers (Calibrachoa) ... they just keep on blooming all summer. I always have yellows and pinks ... and purples ... and even the odd orange just to get my own attention. I don't even like the colour orange ..but, some oranges are nicer than others...and, for some silly reason, I like how orange and pink flowers look side by side.
After my visit to my sister's "fat farm"... there was no Mr. Limpy when we got back. Nobody fed him while I was away ... and I guess he moved on to greener pastures. Like the clubhouse at the nearby golf course. I was there one day and a whole family of crows was perched on trees and signposts "cawing" for a handout...hahahhah...I laughed and tossed a few bits of my peanut butter sandwich in the air. I scared one off the post... must not be my guys...my crows wouldn't be afraid of me. I did try to call out to Limpy just to see if one of them was him...but, no limpy guy hopped down to greet me.
This is the last time I saw him .. through the window... having some fun in the birdie bath all by himself.
And, this is the last one I have of Missus..... giving me the 'come hither' look ... there is just something about her.........
We had a huge storm last Wednesday and I saw my first funnel cloud. It gave me goose bumps. I know the folks in Kansas and Oklahama will be saying, "big deal"... but, we don't get that type of weather around here. Well, not often. There was a tornado that did touch down several years ago in Edmonton, a city not too far from us ... that did a lot of damage...and a lot of people were killed. That was a first.
I looked it up on Wiki ... here is what happened.
~~~July 31, 1987 The tornado killed 27 people, injured more than 300 people, destroyed more than 300 homes, and caused more than $332.27 million CAD ($597 million in 2015 dollars[1]) in property damage at four major disaster sites.~~~
Our day was nothing in comparison. But, on Wednesday, I was coming home along a busy highway and cars were stopping to look ...and take photos...traffic was doing ridiculous things. I kept my eyes on all of them and on the clouds too... knowing I could make it home in 8 minutes and feeling as though I would beat it for sure. Hard to tell how quickly things were moving but it was a fair ways off in the distance. I did get home just in time to wrestle the big flower pots closer to the house. I "walked" them by turning them side to side .. cuz I sure can't lift them. All 8 of them.
Next, I grabbed the camera and stood in the garage with the big door open. Got a few good ones of the clouds. The lower ones were rotating as it all moved along (just like in the movies) and I was happy it was moving south ... at quite a rate of speed .. not a funnel, but a huge dark bank of clouds... looking pretty ominous....
black as night at 1:00 pm...
then it rained ... next came hail.. then... oh, wow ... huge hailstones!! And, seeing as folks might think I was exaggerating when I told the story, I took this photo with my tape measure to corroborate things..... no doubt how big it was now!! I had to wait til it stopped as I didn't want to feel the bash of one of these on the old noggin. Guess I could have worn a motorcycle helmet...but, what about the rest of my body? .. Didn't risk it.
Areas just outside the city were the hardest hit and crops decimated by the hail ....several houses totally trashed....it did plenty of damage.... and apparently a small tornado touched down just outside the city limits...but, not a lot of damage in that area.
But, today is beautiful.... time to go out and water my pots...... luckily I still have pots to water. !!
