The Snowflake Chronicles

Hold Onto Your Hat!

4 Sultan 163 B.E. - Monday, January 22, 2007

For two day in a row I’ve gotten the same weather forecast in my intermind.net e-mail box. I didn’t look at my e-mail yesterday, because it was Sunday and I had a Ruhi book 6 course at the center, so I didn’t know how bad the winds were. However, I found out when I arrived at the Center. I wear my Harley-Davidson leather cap. When I got out of the car, I had to hold one hand on my cap to keep it from blowing away. It was difficult because when I go to a Ruhi study circle I have two bags. One is my purse and the other is to hold the books and writing material. Going into the center I almost lost my cap, OK so maybe I’m a bit attached to the cap (I’m going to have to work on my material attachments).

The forecast for January 21, 2007: “Windy through Sunday night. Lighter winds on Monday….” The forecast for January 22, 2007: “Winds still hanging on to start the week! Gusty Santa Ana Winds blowing into Southern Cal….” Since I’m not going to California I don’t have to worry about the Santa Ana Winds, but the Nevada “Reno Zephyrs” aren’t much better. Of course, this is Las Vegas, so I guess we would call them “Las Vegas Zephyrs” here.

Zephyr sounds like a gentle breeze blowing down from the mountains. The winds lately haven’t come close to gentle. They’ve been so bad that they scatter trash and limbs (small ones) across the streets. I’ve also noticed more palm frowns then usually laying in the streets, so the winds have been anything but gentle.

Of course, the beards on the palm trees are as long here as they are in Palm Springs or Seven Palms in California, but they to get fairly long sometimes. I know that in California the cities don’t trim them, but leave it up to the land or home owner, which explains the long beards there. Here the city and the county trim the beards on the land they are responsible for every couple of years or so, it’s the private home and landowners who don’t trim their palm trees that’s the problem. Of course, it’s expensive to hire someone to trim them or any tree.

I don’t have palms in my yard, when we bought the house and moved in I called someone who wanted the trees. He came with a crew, dug the trees up and hailed them away free. I think I gave his crewman some Mary Kay perfume, I was a consultant at the time and had a lot on hand. All the men in the crew were happy because they had something to give their girl friends and wives. OK, so the guy probably sold the trees for a lot of many, but I didn’t care. I don’t want palms in my yard, when they get tall they are too expensive to take care of because of the beards that have to be cut.

I haven’t been out today yet, so I don’t know exactly how hard the wind is blowing. From the living room window I can see it moving the limbs of the Stone Pine tree in the front yard. That is swaying all the time, but it’s not blowing hard enough to blow the limbs off. Actually (knock on wood) we haven’t lost any limbs of the Pine trees or the Olive Tree. A week or so ago some of the limbs blew off the elm tree, but then I think the elm tree is dying from Dutch Elm Disease so I’m going to have to have it cut down, as soon as I can find someone to do it cheap.