The Wind

I woke up this morning to howling winds and snowfall. The weather bands showed the snow north and east of us, but this snow was unusual even by our standards. Snowflakes dropping from skies over Polk County were passing horizontally by our house at forty miles per hour in Greene County and landing over in Lawrence County. For all I know they might have three or four counties worth of snow stacking up in the fields over there. The winds had just died down 20 minutes ago as I sat down at the computer. Now as I sit here, it sounds like the howl of a freight train moving down the road. I just looked out the window as a small tree sailed past the front porch. I’m not sure, but I believe that tree used to live at the north fence. I suppose I should be happy as I have just started cutting and clearing trees back from the fence line and that is one less I have to deal with.

For those of you who may be tree huggers, relax, around here trees grow back fast. They grow in the fence lines and when they contact the fence wire, they grow around the fences and the sap mixes with the metal, dissolving it and breaking the fences down. Then when the fences break down the neighbors cross through, eat all the garden plants and leave huge patties of fertilizer everywhere they have been. One time they came through when we were gone overnight and the neighbors ate our half-acre garden right down to the ground and left fertilizer all over the area along with six-inch deep footprints in our nicely amended garden soil. I started to track them down, but lost the trail when they headed up the highway pavement. We would have starved that winter but for copious numbers of canned goods we held in the pantry.

I’m looking out the window at Joyce’s cedar boughs and outdoor lights. I was the sailor, but never could remember how to tie knots properly. Joyce, however, was a girl scout and her knots around the cedar boughs and Christmas lights are holding fast against our gale-force winds.

I just saw a squirrel headed north on his tree branch highway in the sky. He was at the point where he had to leap from one tree to the next; when he let fly toward the northern tree, a gust of wind caught him and he landed in the next tree south of where he had started. There, now he is back on the ground and running across the lawn for his eventual destination. He looks like he is freezing his jeepers off.

I am signing off for the moment as I see out the southern facing windows that there are some large branches in the orchard that were not there this morning. I suppose they just blew into town a few minutes ago.