Musings about Ike

I have fallen short of even my lowest expectations for blogging these last nine days, but I am home, safe and sound.

Hurricane Ike. Oh - what a monstrous fellow he was. He came in near Galveston and tore through Houston and then plowed his way through east TX. Can you believe it - he was still a hurricane when he hit our neck of the woods. Even though more devastating than Rita from three years ago, it was easier on me this time.

For one reason, he came through during daylight hours. There's just something unnerving about a storm in the dark. We were ready for him. I washed the den windows (inside and out just hours before he arrived) and continued sorting through my photos! At 8:30 in the morning we lost electricity. That is nothing unusual . . . sometimes we lose it on a weekly basis. I don't know what it's all about, but it's very easy for us in this rural area to lose electricity. Murray and I listened to news updates on the battery-powered radio and waited for him to arrive. And did he arrive!!!

I'm guessing the gusts were between 65-70 mph. The eye passed over Palestine, just west of us, so we were on the messy side. Although we didn't get much rain, we got plenty of wind.

One observation made during the height of the storm - birds are very clueless! The hummingbirds continued to visit the Cypress Vine blossoms! Oh my! The had quite a time of it . . . their feathers all ruffled and bent backward! The looked quite relieved when the wooden arbor the vine is on, took a dive!!! They continued to get nectar - but looked rather relieved they were so much closer to the ground and not way up in the air!

There was a male Cardinal who would go back and froth between the fig tree, the ground and then the porch. When the wind would die down, he'd go back to the branches of the tree and look around. When the wind kicked up again he'd once again get on the ground and hopped onto the porch. What a guy!

The wild roses at the back of the house were loaded with the usual flock of sparrows. There may be as many as a hundred out there at any one time. Anyway - they were chirping and twittering all through the storm. I asked Murray what he though they were saying. He started singing his reply with this refrain,

"I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free,
For His eye is on the sparrow, and I know He watches me."

My prayer for the day was, "Lord, please make me a birdbrain".

Well, there's more to our experiences with Ike, but this is all for now. I need to clean up the messes around here! Something the birds don't have to do!