Winter, abruptly

We appear to have completely and entirely skipped fall. It was in the 80’s up until the day before yesterday. All the leaves were still green, everything was still in bloom. My yard looked like this:

Then last night we had a horrible wind storm. I didn’t sleep from shortly before 1:00 AM until about 5:30 AM. I just listened to yard items and trash cans rolling down the street and airborne things slamming into the house (airborne things including branches, pine cones, dirt, sand, trash, hail, sleet and who knows what else.) Last time we had wind like that we had roof shingles in our yard from our neighbor’s house. It’s trash day, so now trash is strewn all up and down the street.

At one point, around 2:30 AM, the power blinked off and then surged, leaving our overhead light on in our bedroom. (It had been off.) If you’re wondering how that’s possible, it’s because we turn it on and off with a remote, so the manual switch is always on. Whatever the power did apparently mimicked the remote.

The wind blew hard all morning, it was literally freezing and we were getting occasional sleet. From the 80’s to the 20’s in one day.

I made a warm lunch of random leftovers put together into soup.

My friend had sent me a potted flower when I started chemo this spring and John had planted it for me in my little courtyard off our bedroom. It has been faithfully blooming ever since. Here’s how it looked this morning during the wind and freezing temps. Aww! A little bedraggled.

And here’s my cosmos this morning, wondering what in the world had hit it:

By midday the winds finally calmed down and it started snowing in earnest. Here is my poor flower now. I’m afraid it’s not the sort of flower that likes snow.

And my roses:

We knew this big weather change was coming, so we harvested our few home-grown chilies yesterday.

We were lucky to get any at all, because the seeds were leftover from some previous year and I’m surprised they even grew. It was very hard to get plants or seeds this past spring because of covid, so I just used what I had. I remember barely being able to bend over to plant seeds because it was so soon after my surgery, but I enjoyed watching everything grow this summer.

Now it’s time to go to Tucson!

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