Flower Friday : : California Fuscia

My plan to avoid being struck by lightning succeded wonderfully. I confess that as the red flag warnings started to come through on my phone I was experiencing rising anxiety. I seem to have signed up with every agency in the county from Cal Fire to the Santa Rosa Police Department and they all send alerts. So far I have had very little success unsubscribing from the redundant ones. Although some rational corner of my mind told me it wasn't necessary, lightning started whole complexes of fires in California just over a year ago, and rational thought was overtaken by PTSD.

My plan was to pack a 'go bag' on the theory that if I packed it, I wouldn't need it. This plan has proved to be unsuccessful in the past, as we have been evacuated every year since 2017, but at least it gave me something to do. 

At about 5:30pm, above the sound of the burned log filled dump trucks rattling down the street and the crazy guyworking on his unfinished house  at all hours, I heard an unfamiliar sound, looked out the window and saw actual rain! It didn't amount to much and began drying almost immediately but the smell of ozone in the air lingered on and went quite a way toward relieving anxiety. 

At about 9pm I took Spike out for his 'last call' when there was a great flash of lightning which sent us both scurrying back into the house. Spike is a complete wuss when it comes to strange flashes of light and large claps of thunder. The thunder and lightning began in earnest in the middle of the night. Most of it seemed quite far away as we laid in bed counting 'one mississippi, two mississippi...' between the flashes of lightning and the claps of thunder. Spike was huddled between us with his head on the pillows. With a couple of exceptions, most of the thunder claps were several 'mississippis' away. We all actually went back to sleep when it started to rain again.

We awoke this morning, feeling like we had dodged a bullet, to freshly washed air, bright sunshine and perfect temperature. Apparently lightning ignited one fire north of us in Cloverdale but the rain started and put the fire out. My sense that there was nothing left to burn around here proved to be correct.

I revisited the Fermob loveseat which was still in the local garden store where I spotted it last weekend. So was the Fermob representative who happened to be in there when I came in, and told me not only how everything was made in an environmentally friendly, socially responsible way, but  warned me that the prices on the new pieces would be going up by 25%.

I bought it because I could....