Watch out for Mother Nature, just ask the poor pine tree


Mark Twain

“Don’t know why there’s no sun up in the sky
Stormy weather…”
Can’t you just hear that sultry voice of Billy Holliday..”stormy weather”…
Unfortunately my encounter with stormy weather is never so…”sultry”…more rather like something form Tchaikovsky’s Overture of 1812 complete with massive cannon fanfare…..
Lightning and thunder. The sky grows dark, the distant rumbling growing ever stronger, the flashes of light brighter and nearer. The impressive calling card of the all too familiar summer thunderstorm. And yes I get nervous. I don’t know why but bad thunderstorms scare me to death.

I can remember once when I was little, being in the den with my mom, watching TV. A summer storm blew up as lightning struck something near the house causing a fire ball to explode out from the bottom of the TV. Mother whisked up my brother and me, all three of us screaming, and hurrying us out to sit in the car in the carport—something about how a car was the safetst place during a storm due to the tires….truth or wive’s tale I know not, but that’s where we waited out the storm.

After yesterday afternoon it is with good reason that I get nervous. Mother Nature seems to want to constantly remind me of the power she has over me….I get it, Nature is indeed the greater…I am but a mere player in her great teeming and seething ways…..

I was in the kitchen late yesterday afternoon getting geared up to start supper. A coming storm steadily announcing its impending presence by the ever nearing crescendo of sound. There were several “pops”, those familiar tell tale signs that lightning is too close for comfort, then the earth rattling reverberating booming. I usher the cats in from the deck, once I see and hear the approaching storm, continuing all the while preparing supper.

Suddenly there is a brilliant flash and a terrific snap—a snap of massive energy that sends 5 different pictures hanging on various walls scattered throughout the house crashing to the floor. I am literally dropped to my knees.. then BOOM……….the deafening thunder….Oh dear Lord, it has to have just hit the house! The cats huddle near me eyes wide open. I quickly run upstairs to the attic making certain things are not on fire. I see nothing. Thank God! But it hit something and that something had to be close.

Once the storm passes, and my poor, soaked to the bone husband, gets in from work, we go out to survey the yard. Suddenly I spot the victim. A tall pine that sits, or should I say sat, at the top of our driveway– yet directly across the street in a pasture. The pine tree is no longer what one would call a tree. It looks more like a tall splintered toothpick, with nary a bit of bark.




What was Ben Franklin thinking??!! He’s out tempting fate and I’m hiding under the sheets praying like nobody’s business. Yes Mother Nature is one tough cookie…this cookie however, who is not too proud to admit, is a whimp—and proud of it —-the next time you hear a clap of thunder, just remember that out there somewhere is a normally stalwart woman cowering for cover……..