Wild Wind Causes Chaos

Thursday last week we had the worst wind I’ve ever experienced. Outside of a storm anyway. Which was the weird thing really. It was a sunny day, a few light clouds, and 140 kph winds! That’s not normal where I live. Come to think of it, that’s not normal anywhere I’ve ever lived!

See what I mean, this smallish tree is being blown all in one direction, but look at the sky!

So, very close to this tree was a larger one with dense foliage. I’m afraid the wind did more than just blow it’s branches all in one direction.

This made me very sad because it was such a beautiful tree and it was absolutely covered in flower trusses for next spring. Yet there it lay, uprooted and on it’s side.

Hubby got out there and cut all the main branches off, to give it a fighting chance in the wind, pulled and staked it upright again and gave it a big drink. There’s a good chance it will survive, but I don’t think it will ever have the lovely shape it used to have again.

And here it is, standing up again, but considerably different. Poor thing.

While this was going on, the wind was causing more havoc down in one of our front paddocks. Perry had been burning off some wood earlier in the week, and although the fire was pretty much out, it had continued to smoulder just under ground level. The wind soon had the embers glowing and flying across the paddock. In the far, top end of the paddock were some piles of sawdust and some wood cutting equipment, stored there by a man who used to cut logs into fire wood for sale. The wind decided that the piles of sawdust would be a great place to deposit the glowing embers and the embers took great delight in instantly setting the sawdust and some of the machinery on fire. It wasn’t a huge fire, but there were very tall dry trees close by and some large fuel tanks that were used to run the machinery, so that was a concern.

Water supply to that paddock is totally inadequate for fire fighting, so the local Fire Brigade had to be summoned.

Then, when the wind dropped in the late afternoon, it was time to rake up all the pine needles covering the back lawn. It might seem a strange thing to do, but it makes it much easier for the robot lawn mower to cut the grass if it’s not coated in a blanket of needles. It was a long day.

After living here on the farm for 5 1/2 years, I can confidently tell you all, there is no such thing as the peace and quiet of the country! There is always something going on, something that needs attending to, or something happening that you didn’t expect. It keeps life interesting, and at times, challenging, but never boring!

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