blowin' in the wind

As Bob Dylan his song is saying: the answer is.

But for now, here are the trees, the leaves, the birds, everything is blowin' in the wind.

The Ciara storm has ravaged Normandy since this morning and that is the first one we are experiencing here. According to what I can find, the worst storm has been here in 1999, causing a lot of damage in France.

I find that pretty frightening. The past period has been 'too hot' and 'too wet'. I think the trees that have been around us for centuries have been through a lot of storms. AND survived. But the soil is soft because of all the water and some of its trees have shattered the trunk over the years, rotten, soft. Out of the window I see the branches of some trees swinging dangerously. Reminds me of a Harry Potter scene, in which the tree that had to guard a passage swung violently back and forth. Undoubtedly there are no secret passages here, but there are many violently swinging, old branches.

In addition, I have a pretty messy head because of a cold. I sneeze all day, have a drip nose. Is it buzzing in my head now, or is it the storm? Every now and then the wind blows on our front door. The dog barks, thinks someone is knocking. The cats ar running through the house from front to back. To plump down on the bed a little later, to go to sleep. Perhaps the best thing you can do now is sleep. Wait until the storm gets even worse. I keep an eye on the messages from Meteo Basse Normandie on the internet.

I'm glad we don't live right on the Normandy coast. It is really intense there. Last month they already had pretty strong gusts and rain, now they get the full layer again, especially 'on the point' .. Wind speeds of more than 160 km / h have already been measured there. According to the measured wind speeds, we are at a peak of a maximum of 94 so far. But then the worst driving storm seems to have to come tonight.

It is also storming in the Netherlands, everything seems to arrive just an hour later, after we had it first. From our old hometown reports of bus shelters that burst loose, roofs that release, and facades of shops have crashed elsewhere. Even where we first lived there are many trees. In the 1980s there was already a serious storm, which caused a lot of tree damage. I fear that this will be the case again.

Because in France many electrical cables run above ground, including ours, there is a risk that the power will fail. With high gusts of wind a tree can fall over, or break off a piece somewhere, and drag a cable along. As a result, the power after that cable, fails. We are still lucky. However, the electricity had a considerable dip this afternoon. The light went out really seriously and luckily on again. Just to be sure, I have put some candles ready, (we light candles in the evening anyway, because electricity can always fall out here) and put the food on earlier than normal.

During the night the storm got worse again. You could hear it howling around the house, the wind that was blowing through the trees. But luckily nothing happened. This morning on Erik's walk with the dog, he came across a lot of branches fallen to the ground, but no uprooted trees. Everything was still on the roofs of both houses. Our house has original slates that are firmly attached. The gite has roof tiles, they were all still there. All in all, I think we got off the storm pretty well. There is still forecast for strong wind tonight, we are not through it yet.

With this kind of weather, I am very excited to start working on our soil from the spring. It's quite a bit: 16,000 m2 of land. That is hilly, wild and where grassland is most present. Because of the slopes I have to come up with something to make it passable.

I want to make a kind of 'walking garden' at the front of our own house to a large old tree that is standing just down the middle, with wild flowers and plants.

And maybe a bench or something like that beneath that old tree. The tree survived the storm. As he has probably survived many storms ...