Tornadoes on the prowl

This autumn has been so beautiful with little rain and lots of sunshine.  I love it, but last night realized there was a price to pay for this extended comfort.  A huge band of storm conditions ripe for tornadoes was moving across the nation and was still alive and threatening as it approached Virginia. Our house sits a ways up the mountain and is surrounded by hundreds of very big trees which we enjoy watching through our very big windows.  As the evening wore on, and the hazardous trailers kept crawling across the  TV screen, we kept opening the doors to the deck to test the atmosphere.  This started out to be mostly idle curiosity but by midnight I started saying things like "should we sleep downstairs?" "Should we be prepared to go to the storeroom under the steps if the weather gets weird?" "Let's take a big quilt and some pillows with us and a flashlight and some water and a radio, and, and, and..."  The TV warnings got more serious and we stood to watch exactly what the storm was doing, only to discover that it had skipped right over us and was already well to the east, having only dropped a little rain.  I went to bed in my usual place, Bill went downstairs alone.  I slept right through a heavy 4:30 a.m. rainstorm Bill told me about. Today we heard a man in a small town describe all the damage done to his place. He said the whole thing took only 30 seconds.  That's just about how long it would take to jump out of our downstairs bed, if fully awake, and make it across the hall to the partially underground storeroom under our steps.  If we have to get serious about tornado protection next time, we had better stock all those supplies first and just go ahead and sleep in there on the air mattress.

A glorious Fall

This is our first Fall in our forest home and it is truly glorious. The brilliant sun, the rainbow painted against the blue sky by autumn leaves and the warm temperatures combine to make being outdoors a lasting pleasure. Maples, oaks, dogwood and other trees as yet unidentified have begged me to pick up leaves and turn them into art. As they fall to the ground and dry, the walk to the mailbox down our long drive becomes a symphony of crackling sound as my feet shuffle through the drifts of leaves and crunch on the gravel. Is there a way we can make autumn last until spring?

The painted leaves and the real.

Ada

Ada is 89 years old. We met at the hairstylist's and she invited me to visit her.  Yesterday, I finally made it to her pink stone house near the campus of Virginia Tech.  A native of Italy, she married American and has spent most of her life in the states.  She is amazingly sharp, full of talk and confidence.  Only five minutes of the hour visit was spent telling me about her health, most of which is good.  Her home was neat and full of wonderful things with wonderful stories attached to them.  She showed me all around and then got up on a little stool to find a teabag so she could make me tea.  Then she told me how to cook tilapia and explained her new phone contract to me that enables her to call her friends in Europe.  She has a standing appointment to get her hair done every Friday and several months ago when I had my first appointment there, she heard that I had arrived from Germany and came over to say hello.  I was surprized to find she had been to my German town and knew all about several other towns around there.  By the end of our meeting, she had invited me to visit and I promised I would.  I should have gone sooner.  Spending that hour with her yesterday was a pleasure.

Around the forest

October is well underway and Fall is definitely in the air.  Night temps dipped into the upper 30's last night and winds are blowing many more leaves from the trees.  One tree near our driveway decided to take all its leaves down in one fell swoop.  It leaned over, away from the house and driveway, thank goodness, hung its upper branches high in a neighboring tree and came to rest at a 45-degree angle.  A close inspection showed that insects of some kind had eaten away at the bottom and weakened it enough to topple it. Much quieter than a chain saw.

Surviving despite the chilly air, a late-planted thunbergia or black-eyed Susan vine, is still blooming in a pot by the front door. Two pink impatiens plants are still covered in flowers and have not been nibbled by the deer. A pot of swiss chard gave up its leaves to a deer a few days ago, revealing a beautiful assortment of pink, red and yellow stems.  New, tender leaves have sprouted among the nubs.  Will I get to eat them or the quadriped?