Three Twisters in Thirty Minutes!

Yesterday was quiet - bright and sunny in the morning, cloudy and cool in the afternoon, with thunder rumbles and light rain in the evening. I would have liked to have seen the Olympics closing ceremony, but Hila's house has no TV and no radio, so I read, as usual. When I returned to my apartment this morning, I found that there had been 3 tornadoes within 30 minutes near Denver - luckily, none caused damage. And when I looked out on my patio this morning, I had to laugh - my neighbor had lined up a dead mouse and a rather tattered dead sparrow on the outer edge of the patio. Her note the other day blamed me for the deaths of any and all critters near my apartment - because I feed the critters.

The hens have laid 4 or 5 eggs for me each day, and I harvested in the gardens yesterday afternoon - tomatoes, cucumbers, 5 kinds of squash, Swiss chard, and, being allergic to them, I did NOT touch the huge red onions that look ripe for pulling. The canatloupe need about 2 more weeks on the vine, but the squash plants are blooming again, and we should get a double harvest of them. The cherry and Roma tomatoes are over-producing themselves - and one can gather almost a quart a day from them.

The Democratic National Convention begins today in Denver. When it was first announced that local people could get a ticket to see Obama's acceptance speech, I toyed with the idea - but my dislike of crowds convinced me not to go - along with the fact that when I went to sign up for the ticket, 5 hours after it was announced, all 50,000 had already gone and I was the 28,657th on the waiting list for cancellations. In a way, I really want to be there for the history, and at the same time, I know I'll get a better view, hear the speeches much more clearly, and be more at ease if I watch from home. And - it's pretty well accepted that if you're below the 5,000 number on the waiting list, that you might as well go whistle in the wind.

I'll be home after tonight for about a week - I can sleep in my bed and schmooze with the kits... then I'll be off with Spike for awhile in Niwot. I will correct the Nocks family tree on-line this week and start putting up the Devine-Boyer and the Lancaster family trees; as well as mailing out (finally!) the Martin and O'Neil family trees to Idaho.