We are getting some badly needed rain. It has been threatening all morning, flashing and muttering under its breath, teasing us with brief sprinkles.
The radar shows that all of this activity is moving along to the south, which is odd because most of the lightning and clouds I am looking at are to the north of me. At any rate, I am glad it is raining. We need for the ground to be nicely wet and more rain promised in order to distribute the beneficial nematodes that are reputed to dine on Japanese beetle grubs. With a good rain under our belt, and more promised, we can order the supplier to ship them. With any luck, the weather will cooperate and keep the ground nice and wet after they are applied.
I am happy that there is a storm, Impy is NOT. I don’t know what horrible trauma happened to him in his kittenhood, but he is terrified of thunder and slinks off full speed ahead for the nearest closet as soon as the first distant rumble occurs. This morning has been just terrible for him. With the sporadic nature of this storm, there have been periods of calm in between the heavenly percussion performance long enough for him to stick his whiskers out. Inevitably, as soon as he is bold enough to exit his sanctuary, a random clap of thunder will send him scurrying back under cover.
We have hypothesized that Impy can understand the weatherman and has listened to all the instructions regarding what to do to be safe in a stormy situation. If you don’t have a shelter to move into, you should stay in an interior room (preferably with no windows) and put a pillow over your head. When you hear thunder, you should keep yourself as close to the ground as possible while you move to shelter to minimize the danger of being struck by lightning. And for God’s sake, don’t go stand under a tree.
Our local YMCA is so careful about lightning danger that they clear the pool if there is any within a few miles of us. Consequently, this morning our water aerobics class was only 15 minutes long.
I have been surfing the interwebs excessively, so I finally decided I ought to get something worthwhile done instead of endlessly posting on facebook. I made the bed, and cleaned the catboxes. I did the dishes, and I am contemplating the idea of vacuuming. I am pretty sure I can spend enough time on my blog that I simply won’t have time to do that chore before I have to leave for my mammogram.
While I was washing the dishes the storm finally blew into our area and produced a measurable amount of rain. I was musing as I scrubbed my pots about how one would depict the skies opening up as a response to a prompt of “Open” on an the Art Journal Adventure. The view out my window captivated me as I worked and pondered. The finches are busy at the feeder, they don’t care it is raining and neither do the squirrels, who use their tails as easily as an umbrella as they do a sunshade or blanket.
The rain will be good for the garden too. The peas are about an inch tall, and the lettuce that we tended all winter is going gangbusters. I heartily endorse the use of cold frames in this climate. We ate beautiful lettuce all winter.
So as I allowed this train of thought to pass through the station of my mind, a huge ground strike flashed down just to the northeast.
I was standing at the window, scrubbing a metal pot with my hands in running water, and I recalled the wisdom that says you can get a pretty bad shock if lightning strikes near your water line when you have your hands in running water. Suddenly I thought “If that bolt had struck the house and electrocuted me where I stood, I suppose my last thought would have been ‘Impy was right’.”
the havens 