Gloomy Weather and Happy Music

The big front rolled in all morning. When it arrived, day looked like night over our meadow.

After our glorious weather yesterday (during which We celebrated numerous family birthdays here at Indigo Hill) I was hoping for more of the same today. But the skies were unsettled from dawn onward as a major cold front inched its way toward us. This same cold front had already caused havoc in the Midwest, generating storms that resulted in thee deaths of several dozen people. So when my dad called from town to tell us we were under a tornado watch, we took it seriously.

Living, as we do, on a ridgetop, wind is our almost-constant companion. The sound of the wind whispering through our pines, or sighing through our window screens, is usually quite comforting. Then there are days like today, when we make tentative plans to seek shelter in our basement should really severe weather fall upon us. Julie and I were both working at home today, and we decided that the kids (both at school) would be safer in that well-built brick structure than here in our "house of sticks." So we waited, eyes on the sky, and listened to the howling wind and approaching thunder.

This time the actual weather did not live up to the threat it posed. We got a lot of heavy rain, impressive wind gusts, and thunder and lightning, but no hail, and no funnel clouds.

As a youngster in Pella, Iowa, I remember my folks driving us over to our friends' house, the Butlers, to shelter from a tornado (or cyclone as they were sometimes called) because our ranch house did not have a basement! We sat crouched in the Butlers' basement boiler room, listening and wondering when the roof would blow off. From their son, Chuck's, bedroom the stereo played The Beatles' Abbey Road album. Chuck told us about Paul McCartney's rumored death, and all the symbols associated with it. It was a scary night for little Billy Thompson.

The storm today split and went around us in two pieces. The rain had the creeks and runs up a bit, but not enough to go over the road in the most floody spots.

After the worst of the storm had passed, Julie and I went in to the kids' school to play music for Liam's class. We had a few songs picked out that we thought kindergarteners would like--mostly Def Lepard and Metallica (kidding). But Liam kept insisting that we play the song we wrote for him when he was a baby. We knew better. But Liam kept insisting until Mr. Stillings, the music teacher, finally asked if we'd play it.

Here's the conversation that followed...

Julie: "Well, Mr. Stillings, Liam loves that song because we sang it a lot for him when he was a baby. It's about him wearing diapers."
Me: "And putting those diapers through some pretty rigorous testing!"
Mr. Stillings: "Oh! So this song probably never made it to Number 1 on the charts?"
Us: "It was Number 2 with a bullet!"

The songs we actually played were:
One After 909 by The Beatles (because Liam loves trains)
Winter's Come and Gone by Gillian Welch
The Butterfly a traditional Irish song
Your Sweet and Shiny Eyes as sung by Bonnie Raitt

The kids seemed to like it. Here's hoping we sparked an interest in a few future musicians.

Tonight at home, the wind is still howling and the temperature has dropped 30 degrees from this morning. Somewhere in the multiflora rose tangles along our meadow's edge, a brown thrasher is cursing his luck.

The Song in My Head

The Song in My Head late tonight is
When the Stars Go Blue
by Ryan Adams

This singer/songwriter has been incredibly prolific in the past year, releasing three albums. This song, from his much-earlier Gold album, is my favorite.

Where do you go when you're lonely?
Where do you go when you're blue?
I'll follow you....

Return of the Brown Thrasher

Brown thrasher, by Julie Zickefoose.

Our brown thrasher got back today, or rather last night. Today was a cloudy, dull-gray day with a rumor of rain in the sky that never really materialized. Both Julie and I heard the thrasher sing, separately, but he's not in full voice yet. He sang infrequently, and not from his normal, very obvious perches, but from within the woodland's fringe. I took off out the door this afternoon, intending to digiscope the spring's newest arrival, but he would sing a bit, then clam up and move to another vantage point. I never did get a fix on his location.

Maybe tomorrow.

It was hard to hear our thrasher clearly. The robins have really upped their singing these past few days, and the goldfinches are twittering like school girls, at times at an almost deafening level. There have been April and May mornings here when we could not hear anything other than goldfinches.

Other indisputable signs of spring: five warm, light-blue eggs in our front yard bluebird box; lots more screaming from the resident red-shouldered hawks, major spring peeper action, the American toads tuning up in our patio pond, and Julie asking me to start the tiller for her. Each spring, when the brown thrasher arrives, Julie MUST plant the garden. I could set daylight savings time by it. Sure enough, she not only tilled the garden and re-mulched it, she got the Bird Spa going again, and removed the crusty winter brush pile.

Me? I worked on my taxes, another sign of spring's continual unfurling.