Beware the Ides of October!

Actually, the storm dubbed the Ides of October, on October 15, was not nearly so bad as predicted. But the cumulative effect of a series of wet and windy storms knocked out power to lots of people, downed quite a few trees, and even spawned several tornadoes, one of which did considerable damage in the coastal town of Manzanita.

Here on the farm we did not lose power, but we did lose part of a tree... a big one... across the whole front yard and driveway. Our hybrid poplar lost a piece of itself in a wind storm several years ago and again on October 15, the Ides of October.

But it was the wet and wild storms in the days preceding that had the most spectacular cloud formations. I could not stop taking photos, as you can see...

The horses were not impressed with the clouds or the fall colors.

Johnny was more impressed with the fallen tree that went down with a loud CRACK! after a powerful gust on the 15th.

I was glad it had not fallen on our house, but sad that it broke my beautiful red maple.

It demolished quite a few other colorful bushes on its way across the driveway.

 Johnny cut the part across the driveway first and hauled it to the goats. They were very appreciative.

The next day, Johnny cut up the rest of the tree.

I salvaged the maple branches and put them in a bucket of water outside the front door.

 From inside the house, I can look through the glass door into the jungle room and see my maple-in-a-bucket outside.

 The storms also tore the netting that was over the garden and knocked down the supports holding it up, so we spent part of today taking all that down and storing it for another year. The garden is still producing like crazy... corn, tomatoes, peppers, squash and lots of pumpkins. The kale and chard are going strong and the spinach reseeded itself and came up thickly. We have not yet had a killing frost and are eating melons and watermelon from the garden.  Because there is no netting over the garden anymore, we have penned the peacock, our chief garden predator.

It's an ill wind that blows no man good, my mother always said. And that is true of the Ides of October wind... at least it made our goats very happy, gave us more firewood, and got us started early on our ready-for-winter chores. And, oh, those beautiful, stormy, October skies.