Monday, December 28, 2015

The Little Red Ornament that Could

Except to pick up granddaughter’s BFF from the Greyhound on Christmas Day, the frigid cold kept me indoors Friday.

Likewise on Saturday, the frigid cold, in addition to gusty winds, kept me in. The wind was scary strong as it howled through the quad, causing the windows to rattle, patio displays close to being blown away.

On Sunday, the sun came up a little. It was still cold out but not of the frigid variety, and the winds had died down (for a while), so off I went to the market to pick up a container of Melissa’s vegetarian black-eye peas -- for the traditional good-luck in the New Year meal, before all the health nuts in the area bought ‘em out, as they did Bob’s Red Mill organic masa harina.

While out, I saw the previous day’s gusty wind had littered the complex with leaves, tumble weeds and all manner of debris. The gardeners are going to have quite a lot of clean-up work.



As will the pool cleaner.



Further down the street, I saw limbs and branches had been taken down by the wind. Two of the palm trees in front of the church were peeled top down like a banana.




On tap for today was an early morning walk. Inasmuch as I’ve found myself once again addicted to sugar, I wanted to test how much Holiday damage has been done to my stamina by taking the walk up the hills of Shandlin Estate.

I made it all the way to the top, no problem.

Walking by the tree where I’d hung a Random Act of Christmas Cheer on Day 8 at Shandlin, I saw the ornament was gone. Having been by three other locations, I know them to be gone as well, and pretty quick I’m sure. The one with the horse, hung on the 12th, didn’t disappear until just a few days before Christmas.

Believe it or not, I saw this morning that the ornament hung on the 5th by the bus stop not only has not yet been removed but has also weathered the horrendous wind we just had.





An amazing achievement, considering the amount of foot traffic up and down that sidewalk, not to mention people congregating at the bus stop and heavy winds taking down leaves, branches, trees.

2 comments:

  1. We too have had fierce winds. At least it was calm on Christmas Eve and we were able to light candles outdoors, unlike last year when the wind was so bad that it blew out all of luminaria in one area of the town. This year, due to heavy rains, the neighborhood where the luminaria are usually displayed decided to forego the tradition. It was very sad.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I was supposed to have gone by Apache's unit to view his luminaria, but never made it. I'll have to check tonight to see how he handled the wind situation.

    ReplyDelete