the pines

First and most noticeable effect on nature after HMichael was the tens or scores or hundreds of thousands of tall pine trees folded over, trunks snapped off quarter or third the way up and in a given forest all prostrating themselves in the same direction as if sacrificially slain while in the act of bowing in obeisance to whatever lord or god.


For the most part those have been cleared away. Some vestiges, on unused land, and the other day I noticed a mass of broken and leaning pines still completely cluttering the far east end of Massalina Bayou. Aside, another effect of HMichael is that Massalina Bayou now can be seen from Cove Boulevard, so it's not different neighborhoods at all.

Early morning to the Eye Clinic, both of us. I should go every year, I suppose, but most often it's two or three years between my visits. For eight or ten years I've had reading glasses, package of 3 for $11, on a string around my neck - - problem being that the readers have matching lenses and my eyes do not, so an out of balance-ness that has grown uncomfortable. Discussed with the eye doctor and now have an order in both for reading glasses that are matched eye by eye and for altar glasses (the eye center folks call them computer glasses) for use about 28 to 30 inches out from the missal.

Appliance Center technician is due in about forty minutes to service the ice maker in our refrigerator. We've been doing with ice bought from this grocery store and that, and I've been good with it, but Linda said she wants the ice maker returned to service. So WTH. At the house, the Old Place, in our new kitchen we had an ice machine installed next to a kitchen sink. The ice machine went kaput at fifteen months, and we replace in with a second one, which also went off bad at fifteen months.  The best consumer size ice machine I've experienced is the one at our church, which I would happily replicate here except that this is a little bitty place with hardly room for my extra pair of shoes much less an ice machine. 

But oh the pine trees. Most (did somewhere I read 75%?) of the pine trees in Bay County were broken and killed by HMichael. The rest of them that looked so fine and quickly grew back their green needles, are fast going brown and drying up dead. Someone said they'd heard a briefing by an arborist who said the pine trees that weren't killed outright by HMichael suffered such trauma in the storm that they also will die over the next year or so; and we are seeing that prediction play out. 

Our window shutters are in and Life is Good.

RSF&PTL

T