Saturday, March 3, 2012

March, a month of many moods

February huffed out of here in a flurry of storms; March came in meek and mild as a lamb.

A day later, March decided she’d rather be a raging lioness, and the weather turned wild and wooly again. Today brought the calm after the storms and reports of devastation throughout Kentucky.  Tomorrow we’re supposed to get snow. 

The stories of demolished towns are heartbreaking and terrifying.  Homes, churches, businesses and lives, all uprooted in an instant.

That could have been us, you know.  We prayed to be spared, and we were, but I’m sure the residents of West Liberty and other hard-hit areas did too.  Some things are hard to understand.  It is amazing that more people were not hurt or killed, though. 

We think we’re safer here in the mountains, that they shelter us from F3 tornadoes.  They don’t always.

Yesterday we worked in the greenhouse, potting bare-root roses at Bick and Harris Nursery, where I’ve been helping out a few hours a week.  We kept checking weather updates on our phones, ready to seek shelter if the warnings became too dire. 

After I got home, while watching the weather forecast grow more and more ominous, I thought, wouldn’t it be a shame if the hundreds of rose bushes we potted blew away?

Sure it would, but that concern seems mighty trivial now, in light of what others are suffering.



 

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