Tuesday, May 3, 2011

Black flies and other natural disasters

We get a lot of wind at our house. Our house is situated on the top of a ridge in an former cow pasture in Plum Creek and the wind just races up our little open valley only to plow into our house. Thankfully it isn't as bad during the summer...I think leaves on the trees might have something to do with that, but I dunno. What I do know is that I'm often cursing the wind during the month of April.

The wind died down on Friday. And, hello! It was almost May and the black flies came out.

I hate black flies. They swarm around my head and dive bomb into my eyes and get into my ears. Then they bite. And the bites itch for days.

So after cursing the wind all month, I wanted it to come back just a little. Just enough to keep the black flies off me.

Today the wind came back. With a vengeance. All 24 mph of it. Sigh.

Originally I thought I'd make a post where I whined and complained about the wind, the black flies, the yellow jacket and wasps that are swarming our back deck. Really, it's like one of the Biblical plagues out there.

But I'm just not snarky enough to compare my minor inconveniences to a natural disaster, not after seeing the damage caused by the tornado outbreak last week. There were tornados in Pulaski, VA, in early April, and then Glade Spring, VA, got hit last Thursday. That's a lot of tornado action for Virginia.

I think the storm that came our way was one of the worst I've ever seen. I looked out our back door at 1 am and saw nearly continuous flickering of lightening with very strong winds. Funny thing is, I don't think I heard any thunder, just flash flash flash flash lightening. Really eerie.

And then the news reports began pouring in from Alabama, Tennessee, and other southern states the next morning. The death toll is incredible, more than 300 dead, from a whopping 119 confirmed tornados between April 25-28. Thousands injured, towns obliterated, lives torn apart. The monstrous tornado that hit Tuscaloosa and Birmingham had a track that stretched 80 miles long.

So I'm just going to shut up about the winds that are currently gusting around our house right now. At least they're just gusts and hey, it's keeping the flies and wasps away for a little while.

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