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The House on Windy Hill is still standing!
Not too long ago, I was on the phone with my manager and I
warned him that we might be disconnected as we had a tornado warning going
on. My manager kindly asked if it was a
question of safety and should we continue later. I assured him it was fine….
Not two minutes after I hung up with said kind manager I
heard the wind take on a strange new howl and things hitting the window right
near my office desk. I leaped up from
my chair and raced towards the basement scooping up annoyed cats as I went and
calling the dogs. The house Dobby
rolled his eyes at me while munching on the last piece of bread in the house
telling me “It’s fiiine.” With that southern drawl of his that is more
pronounced when he is trying to be in command of a situation. Command or not, by the time the cats were
scooped and the dogs had stopped running in circles…everything went
silent.
I though to myself “This is the eye of the storm, we are
about to get plowed.”
Dobby, finishing his
bread wonders directly in front of the biggest window in the house to
say…”Hmmm, you should see the round pen.”
Stupidly, still holding now struggling cats I go to the
window to peer outside into the darkness to see that my round pen was no longer
round…more of a squashed semi circle at best.
Great. The panels were quite
mangled as well. Perfect.
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| squashed round pen March 31 2013 |
It seems that the wind was really gone for good, despite my
staying in the basement for what seemed like a long time with the cats and
dogs. Dobby stayed upstairs and
rummaged through the kitchen for more snacks, hollering down at me every so
often things like “Those cats are going
to get very dirty, and I am not helping you bathe them. The dogs are going to
have footprints all over the house from that dirty floor down there.” And “Where is the syrup?!”
Admitting defeat and climbing up the stairs with filthy cats
in hand and dogs awkwardly following me trying to get back up the stairs, I was
greeting by a smirking Dobby at the landing.
“That big old dead tree lost a limb and that is what crushed
the round pen.” He informs me.
“Looked more like the wind blew it to me.” I argued.
“Nope, it was a really big limb, and I am going to have to
drag it out of there, and it’s going to be a pain, I am going to have to hook a
chain up to it and pull it out with the truck probably.”
I countered with “Well, I didn't see a big limb and leave my
dead tree alone.”
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| Old Dead Tree near my "used to be round pen" |
“Lets go outside and look” he suggests. I gamely agreed to go outside in the now
drizzling rain and check it out.
The horses were looking at us glumly from beside the barn;
having steadfastly refused to go inside of it during the entire ruckus I’m
sure. After a complete checking over,
we surmised that the horses were in fine shape albeit wet and somewhat moody.
The “BIG LIMB” was about 3 inches around and maybe two feet
long at best. That was the extent of
the “big limb.” I refrained from making
any jokes about how men over estimate the size of things like that and pulled
the limb out of what used to be the middle of my round pen ~ no truck and chain
needed ~ ! The wind in fact had effectively smooshed the round pen
together.
On the other side of the house we saw more siding had come
off. Several things were blown off the porch and in disarray as well. This would explain the great
tearing sound I had heard in my semi-mad dash down the stairs to the
basement. The burn pit had been
squashed in similar fashion to the round pen.
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| More Siding had come off and many things blown off porch. |
While Dobby listed of all that he would have to do to repair
the round pen and burn pit and how much time it would take and how difficult it
would be and how he would really like a sock now, I lamented the loss of more
siding. We also noted that much of it
had blown merrily into the farmers field along with the large water trough that
had been standing in the pasture.
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| Farmers field with my water trough and siding |
The
smaller water trough was nowhere to be seen.
We have now lost three small water troughs to the whims of Windy Hill
Windy-ness. Maybe heavy rocks at the
bottom of the smaller trough to hold it down on such occasions? Is there some neighboring farmer scratching
his head saying to his wife “Mabel, I surely don’t understand why someone keeps
dumping these perfectly good livestock troughs here in the yard.” I’m pretty sure ‘Mabel’ will have a very
inspiring “flowering tub garden” made out of them this spring.
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| credit: twomenandalittlefarm.blogspot.com |
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