Journal: Hay! And Quilts, Of Course.

 

During the last week as I listened to and read online news about the Nebraska wildfires, I saw quite the comments on some of those fire pictures and videos:  

“This should take care of the cedar problem!”

“Calm down everyone; it’s just grass.  It’ll grow better than ever!”  (Never mind what the cattle, sheep, goats, horses, etc., are going to eat in the meantime.)

“It’s Nebraska.  There are no towns or farms in the west.”  🙄

As for the ‘grass grows better after a fire’ theory, that might be true in some places, but not necessarily in the Sandhills, which consist of fragile sand dunes covered by a thin layer of soil and grass.  They can wind up with shifting sand dunes and no prairie grass at all, for possibly two or three years.  Cheatgrass might grow instead of prairie grass, but it harms domestic animals and wildlife (specifically, mule deer and pronghorns) by destroying sagebrush habitat, reducing food and cover, and ... here, I’ll copy and paste from usgs.gov.:  ... “by creating a destructive fire cycle that decimates native plant communities, negatively impacting species like mule deer, sage grouse, and pygmy rabbits through poor nutrition and habitat loss, leading to population declines and ecosystem collapse.  Its rapid growth chokes out nutritious native plants, and once mature, its sharp awns (we called them ‘pokies’, when I was little) become undesirable or even harmful to grazing animals, while its abundance fuels hotter, more frequent wildfires.”

Fortunately, there is a brighter side, especially with some snow or rain – and there will probably be some snow within a couple of weeks.  Grassland is highly resilient, generally recovering to pre-burn vegetation levels within two growing seasons following a wildfire, even during drought conditions.  While initial green-up occurs quickly, full stabilization and recovery of total herbaceous biomass usually take up to three years. 

The vast underground root systems of native prairie grasses are rarely destroyed by fire, enabling rapid regrowth.  Studies show that plant communities in burned areas are nearly indistinguishable from unburned areas after two years, with no significant long-term change in species composition.  Although sand can drift immediately after a fire, the surviving roots prevent long-term destabilization.  The speed of recovery can be enhanced by moisture, though the prairie often recovers even in dry periods.  Trees are another matter, of course.

To this goal, ranchers with irrigation pivots have been keeping them on.  Pivot irrigation systems and water hoses helped save some homes and buildings last week; but the massive scope of the fire, driven by high winds, saw widespread destruction of grazing land, fencing, stored hay – and irrigation pivots.  Rebuilding ranchers’ irrigation systems will be a major long-term recovery effort, and relief funds are accepting donations to help with these types of losses.

Late Tuesday morning, about 11:30 a.m., it was 23°, felt like 0°, and was snowing.

I did some housecleaning, showered, ate breakfast, made a fresh jug of cold brew, and spent the rest of the day sewing. 

By the middle of the afternoon, the snow had stopped.  We didn’t even get enough to coat the ground.  The fires to our west and northwest were still burning out of control.  But people from all over the Midwest were already donating hay and feed for the animals, and fence posts and fencing for the ranchers whose fencing had gotten all burned up.

The bird feeders were busy – there were red-winged blackbirds all over them.  A lone starling tried grabbing a beakful of suet, and was promptly fended off by a red-wing who did not wish to share.  The red-wings seem to like suet and black-oil sunflower seeds equally well.

By a quarter after 7, twelve Star Crossed blocks were done.  There  were four more to go.

A cousin asked the same old question as usual, though slightly rephrased:  “Do you ever get tired of working on a quilt before it is done.”  (She leaves a question mark off of this particular sentence, evidently thinking it to be more of a statement than a question.)

I gave the same old answer as usual, though I, too, slightly rephrased it:  “No, I enjoy all the steps of quilting, from designing to the final stitch on the binding.  And particularly, I then enjoy giving it away.  This one is for Joseph and Jocelyn, and I want to give it to them on Joseph’s birthday on April 24^th.  Don’t know if I can get it done that fast, though.”

I should whip up a quick quilt for this cousin one of these days.  I know for a fact she likes the quilts I make.  She’s in a nursing home, so if I do that, I’d better make sure the label with her name on it is sewn on good and tight, in case someone else likes it, too.

For supper that evening, we had Wood-Fired Roasted Garlic & Rosemary Chicken Pizza by Bettergoods Foods.  Mmmm, good stuff.

That evening, Hannah told me that a preacher friend of ours from Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Daniel Chamberlin, had fallen while cutting a tree.  He had broken his arm and his back, and would be needing surgery.  They had him in a restrictive back brace that prevented him from moving, as they feared vertebrae could press into the spinal cord and possibly cause paralysis.  Pastor Chamberlin gave a message at our church on Christmas Eve.  His son is married to one of our nieces, and they have two children.

Here’s one of the Morrill Fire stories I read that day, along with a couple of ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots.  This was a very close call:

Dusty Wilson, an Arthur County rancher, is used to prairie fires in the Nebraska Sandhills.  But he has never seen anything like the Morrill Fire.  The fire burned countless acres of his land, the Wilson Flying Diamond Ranch.  But the hardest loss, he said, was learning of Rose White’s death as she attempted to flee the fire.  Wilson grew up just miles from White.

Wilson’s wife and children evacuated first.  He stayed behind with his 86-year-old father, trying to move cattle to safety.  When they finally attempted to leave, they found the fire had jumped the road ahead of them, cutting off their exit.  With nowhere else to go, they retreated to a meadow and drove toward a windmill surrounded by a wide sand perimeter, hoping the flames would not cross.

“We just parked the pickup and sat and waited,” Wilson said.  

The sand kept the fire back as it moved around them, sparing their homes and cattle.

The Wilson family has ranched the land for five generations and has seen fires before, including smaller grass fires and a shop fire.  But the Morrill Fire’s size and the speed at which it moved was unlike anything they had ever experienced.

“Never seen a fire of this scope, this size, this devastation, and the speed at which it traveled,” Wilson said.

With some areas still smoldering, Wilson is focusing on what the fire did not take:  his family, their structures, and their cattle.  “There will be rain again someday, and this grass will green up,” he said, “but the damage will not be repaired overnight.”

Support showed up quickly, from first responders on the fire line to neighbors and ranchers offering donations and asking how to help.

Wednesday was a warm, sunny day – 61° in the morning, on the way up to 77°.  Reckon Larry would remember that he still needed to order and install a new air conditioning compressor in the Mercedes, when we headed off to church in a hot vehicle that evening?

Answer:  Yes, he did remember.  And promptly forgot until the next day.  But he got it ordered, and we were surprised when it arrived Saturday, just two days later.  He got it mostly installed, but still needs to add the Freon.

Hester sent me this vital question that afternoon:  “Why do cats only throw up on carpet and rugs?  I just stepped in it on the way out the door. 🫣😼”

“Oh, yikes,” I commiserated.  “You’re describing a good deal of my life:  Wake up, get kids bathed, dressed, fed, go take a bath, come out all squeaky clean – and step in cat throw-up.  On the carpet.”  After a moment’s thought, I added, “Maybe they do it there because it soaks into the rug, and doesn’t flow back onto their nice clean fuzzy slippers?”

“LOL!” responded Hester.  “I never thought of that.  Kinda makes sense.” 😹

 Thursday morning, Hannah texted, “Both of my Flexi Clips (the ones she made when they attended the Lilla Rose meeting and tour in Los Angeles a few weeks ago) made it to the top 9!  We Reps get to vote in two separate rounds to eliminate 6 of them.  Then the public will vote on the last 3.  I chose the top one as my favorite.”

“I thought they would!” I told her.  “They’re both extra pretty.”

I had a little more than two blocks to put together, and I would be ready to start on the sashing for the Star Crossed quilt.

It was sunny and 67°, heading for 83°.  Out west where the fires were, it would get up to 87°, and even hotter through the next few days.  That wouldn’t be at all nice for the firefighters.

The biggest fire, the Morrill, was at 643,074 acres; but it was finally 67% contained.

The next biggest, Cottonwood Fire, was at 128,036 acres, and 78% contained.

The Road 203 Fire, at 35,913 acres, was 76% contained.

And the Anderson Bridge Fire, 17,400 acres, was 60% contained.

We haven’t smelled any smoke at all from these fires, as the wind has been from the southeast for at least a week.

I turned on the air conditioner that day – but the compressor did not come on.  This always gives me a sinking feeling, especially after last year when the air conditioning went kaput during the hottest part of the summer – first in the house, and next in the car.  But Larry obligingly went out and pushed the red ‘Reset’ button on the outside unit, and the compressor kicked in, and was soon blowing cool air throughout the house.

We had a venison roast, potatoes, and carrots baked in the Instant Pot for supper that night.

Friday morning, it was 70° by a quarter after 11, on the way up to 87°.

There was a Northern flicker thumping away at the suet feeder, and the usual diners were keeping him company:  Red-winged blackbirds, American goldfinches, House finches, English sparrows, Blue jays, Eurasian collared doves, Mourning doves, Northern cardinals, Dark-eyed juncos, Downy woodpeckers, Common grackles, European starlings, and the occasional Red-breasted nuthatch, White-breasted nuthatch, and Red-bellied woodpecker.  American robins farther out in the lawn were hunting down insects and worms.  There must be a different menu in the front yard, because out there I’ve seen Harris’ sparrows, White-crowned sparrows (migrants), and Chipping sparrows (which have decided to nest here).

I had half a block to finish, and then I would start on the sashing for the Star Crossed quilt.  By 3:30 p.m., all 16 blocks were done.  I posted this picture on some Facebook quilting groups to which I belong, and soon got the expected responses:  “It’s best without sashing!”  “No sashing!  You’ll ruin it!”  “You mean ‘borders’, not ‘sashing’, don’t you?!”

This, without even knowing what the pattern looks like.  🙄

4½ hours later, all the sashing and cornerstone pieces were cut:  40 irregular hexagons and 160 skinny triangles.  Here’s a screenshot from EQ8 showing the sashing and cornerstones.

Supper that evening was baked potatoes, carrots, and broccoli; peach mango juice; and cherry pie with whipped cream.

By late morning on Saturday, it was 77°, on the way up to 96°.  Quite unusual for this time of year in middle Nebraska.  I cut my hair, shined up the bathroom, washed some dishes, and retrieved the small, contour bathroom rug from the dryer.  The bigger, softer white rug, which some of my offspring’ns gave me for Christmas, went upstairs to the little library instead of into the bathroom, because Larry simply cannot refrain from walking on it with dirty boots.

If I ever say, as he comes in the door, “Take off your boots!  I just mopped! (or swept or vacuumed)”, he’ll look down at those obviously filthy boots, and say, “They’re not dirty!”  ((pause))  “Not on the bottoms!  I haven’t walked in anything!”

Actually, he’s walked in anything.  Everything.  And the tops and sides of the boots are every bit as dirty as the bottoms.  Good grief.

I started sewing triangles to hexagons for the sashing.  Finding I wouldn’t have enough background fabric for the first pieced border, I ordered more from Marshall Dry Goods.  It should be here by the time I need it.

Here’s a photo of some of the hay- and supply-hauling trucks that have been rolling through town on their way west.  These are donations from ranchers in states far and near for Nebraska ranchers who have lost grazing grassland, fencing, etc.

A loaded semi may carry 28 tons of hay, mostly alfalfa.  Today’s market price of alfalfa is $80-$100 a ton.  Each semi is dropping off a donation of around $2,500.  Officials are trying to keep a somewhat accurate count on how many loads of hay have been dropped off.  As of Friday, it had easily surpassed 250 drops.  That equals a hay value of $625,000.  This doesn’t touch the donated trucks, fuel, labor, and more.  And the loads keep on coming.

Anybody who thinks Nebraska (or Kansas, or Oklahoma, for that matter) is flat should see the hilly, jagged area, fraught with canyons and arroyos, that the firemen have to cope with.  It’s a dangerous job.  One crew at an earlier wildfire on the Kansas/Oklahoma line were trying to drive across a pasture to get to the flames, but weren’t able to see where they were going because of dense smoke.  They went over the edge of a deep gully and overturned the truck, injuring the three crew members.  Luckily, some of their fellow firefighters realized they were missing and went back for them – just in time, as they were being rapidly overtaken by flames.  Their truck was destroyed by fire.

When it rains in the Sandhills in the springtime, there are usually flowers all over the place, mixed in with the prairie grasses.  There won’t be nearly as many flowers as usual in Morrill, Garden, Keith, and Arthur Counties this spring.

I went out to get the bird feeders Friday evening – and discovered that the Little brown bats are back.  Furthermore, they were mighty curious as to what in the world I was doing with the bird feeders.  I thought I’d heard those things squeaking in the ceilings above my quilting studio – and I was right!  🤪

Later that night, I heard this encouraging news about Brother Chamberlin:

“Back surgery finished.  All went well!  Nerves unpinched.  Bone decompressed and fragments removed.  Rods and screws added with bone fusion.  Arm surgery yesterday went well.  He is resting comfortably now.  Thank you for praying!”

Larry brought home Mexican food for supper that night.  Mmmmm, it was good.

When I went out to rehang the bird feeders at 7:30 a.m. Sunday morning, I discovered it was “Willy whewy!” out there, as Victoria said when she was just 14 months old, and we nearly got blown off our pegs one windy day.  It was 42° on the way up to 50°, and the wind was already blowing at 36 mph.

After our morning service, Robert told us that Brother Chamberlin had been up and walking, just holding his wife Susan’s hand for balance.  We were relieved and gladdened to hear such good news.

That evening, we had a baptismal service, starting with a number of verses about baptisms recorded in the Bible.  There were 37 young people baptized.  I believe that may have been our biggest baptismal service.

Hannah asked us to stop by and pick up a package of kolaches she got for us at her vendor event Saturday.  There were six in the package, all different flavors.  We divided a couple and shared them after supper, which was leftover Mexican food.  Here are the various flavors:  Blueberry, Cherry, Lemon, Bavarian Creme, Apple, and Poppyseed.  Yummy! 

At 10:30 a.m. this morning, it was 35°, bright and sunny.  Our high was 48°.  After a shower, I shined up the bathroom, then blow-dried and curled my hair while sipping Red Velvet/White Chocolate cold-brew coffee.  The drying and curling doesn’t take nearly so long after I’ve cut my hair.

22 semis loaded with hay and supplies went through Columbus... yesterday, I think; and 28 went through this morning.  

As of Friday, over 850,000 acres had burned.  The fires are now mostly contained.  Two more started yesterday, but were quickly contained.

Perspective:

- Rhode Island is around 677k acres (land only, not including water surfaces)

- Rocky Mountain National Park is 266k acres

- The city of Los Angeles is roughly 321k acres

Too bad we can’t have some of Hawaii’s excess of ‘Kona Lows’ rains!

One of today’s 28 truck drivers called KTIC radio – the Rural Radio station I like to listen to in the mornings – and requested C. W. McCall’s song ‘Convoy’ to be played. 

Trivia:  C.W. McCall (born William Dale Fries, Jr.) lived and worked in Omaha, Nebraska, for many years.  He moved there from Iowa in 1950, working as a TV designer at KMTV and later as a creative director at the Bozell & Jacobs advertising agency, where he created the C.W. McCall character for Old Home Bread commercials in the 1970s.  His commercials were so successful, it turned into a country music career. 

We were once in Ouray, Colorado (the San Juan mountain range there, part of the Rocky Mountain chain, is called ‘The Swiss Alps of North America’), exploring the town – and were quite surprised to happen onto C.W. McCall’s beautiful home, tucked into the side of the mountain.  He called his home ‘The Treehouse’.

I just had a piece of Mozzarella string cheese for my afternoon snack.  I’d have liked some Chicken in a Biskit crackers to go with it; but I had a little more than usual for breakfast, so forewent the crackers.

Okay that wasn’t enough, so I had a few strawberries, too.

Oh, look!  There’s a brown-headed cowbird on the back deck, all mingled in with the common grackles and the red-winged blackbirds!  Brown-headed cowbirds are parasite birds.  That is, they lay their eggs in other birds’ nests, and off they go again, leaving those other birds to care for eggs and hatchlings.  Sometimes the young cowbirds wind up much bigger than their foster parents.  Here’s the variety of funny sounds a cowbird makes:  Cowbird Calls

There are half a dozen female red-winged blackbirds out there, too, which is unusual, as they generally prefer weed seeds to the corn and sunflower seeds their mates like best.

Now to get back to the Star Crossed quilt.  I was sort of wanting to custom-quilt it; but I don’t know if I have time for that.  I do have a lot of very pretty pantographs.  

I already have 111 hours in the quilt.  Those paper-pieced blocks seemed simple, but they took a while!  The sashing looks a little tricky, but it’s going fast.  I’ll remove the newsprint paper after the first border is on.

Th-th-th-th-that’s all, folks!

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,

Journal: Blizzards, Tornadoes, & Earthquakes, Oh, My!

 

Last Tuesday morning at a quarter after ten, the temperature was 39°, on the way up to 56°, bright and sunny, and the front yard was full of robins.  I relayed this to a cousin who is in a nursing home, and she said, “I don’t see many robins; mostly black birds.”

Nursing homes should put up more bird feeders!  There were feeders at Prairie Meadows, where my brother Loren was, and also at Brookestone, where my sister Lura Kay was.  Most people enjoy watching the birds; and if squirrels come along, all the better!  😅

We have three kinds of black birds out here in the country:  Common grackles (above), European starlings, and Red-winged blackbirds.  In town, they have Brewer’s blackbirds, and sometimes crows.

I did a bit of housecleaning, refilled the bird feeders, paid the bills, and then headed upstairs to my quilting studio. 

Someone I know likes to chat with AI ‘characters’.  I asked her, “What happens if you tell it to do things it cannot do?  ‘Bring the car around, please.’  Or argue with it?  You know, such as informing it that it’s wrong about most anything it happens to say.” 

I’ve done that with Windows Copilot and its forerunner, Cortana.  Copilot just quietly subsides.  No fun at all.  Cortana used to say a variety of cheeky things.  “I’ll get right on that, and then I may or may not let you know what I find.”  To my car request, Cortana responded, “I’ll push it off the three-story car garage straight away.”

I suppose unhumorous consumers protested, and caused the programmers of Copilot to make it bland and boring, though it does have a lot more info at its figmental fingertips.

That day started a week of extreme weather across the United States.  At 4:30 p.m., I saw that one to two feet of snow was expected in the Cascades.  Tornado watches were issued for a good part of Illinois.  1.5” hail was expected in Abilene.

Fifteen minutes later, the storms in Illinois were towering at 50,000 feet tall!  Though this did not bode well, and I don’t want to see people hurt or their property ruined, I nevertheless like watching and listening to the weather.  It reminds me of standing in the open garage door under the front eave of our house with my father, holding his hand, watching big storm clouds rolling in.  I pulled up a live stream of Ryan Hall, Y’all on YouTube, and got on with the listening and watching.

Here’s a big, ugly, menacing, rotating cloud, directly in front of some storm chasers near Pontiac, Illinois.  Several of them were chasing the same storm – in fact, there were more than a hundred storm chasers on it, sometimes creating dangerous bottlenecks for each other.

That funnel cloud turned into a bad tornado that devastated Kankakee, Illinois.

Someone posted a picture of one of many destructive, spiky 5” hailstones that broke all previous records – and then that record was promptly shattered when someone found one that was even bigger:  A massive 6.14-inch-diameter hailstone was recovered in Kankakee, Illinois, on March 10, 2026, and is the new state record.  Found by the Denault family and verified by researchers from Northern Illinois University, it breaks the previous 4.75-inch record from 2015.  Unofficial reports suggested even larger stones, with some estimated at up to 8 inches in diameter.  At least two of the storm chasers had their windshields destroyed.

Around 7:10 p.m., a wedge tornado went through Kankakee, south of Chicago.  There were tornadoes all over the place, stretching all the way from Indiana clear down into Texas on the Mexico border.

While all this was happening, I went on sewing.  At 9:15 p.m., I trotted downstairs and got myself a cup of blueberry tea.  Back upstairs, I sipped tea, sewed, sipped tea, sewed...  When the tea was gone, I shut everything down and quit for the night.

Wednesday morning a little after nine, I walked into my laundry room, where the patio door leads onto the back deck, preparing to rehang the bird feeders – and discovered a couple of inches of snow out there.  It was 33°, heading up to 47°.  The sun was shining, and snow was melting off the roof; so I was dodging between drips as I went in and out the door.

Soon I was heading for my sewing room to see how much I could get done before our evening church service that night.

That afternoon, Victoria sent an ultrasound picture of Baby #5.  It’s amazing how detailed ultrasounds are these days, even when an unborn baby is only about 1 ½ pounds.

“Awww...” I wrote back, “a pretty little mouth shaped like Carolyn’s.”

“Yes!” exclaimed Victoria, “I thought so, too!”

I looked at that dear little face that we hope to greet in a few months, and thought how very horrible it is that so many people think nothing of murdering unborn babies.  Horrible, horrible!  What a way to bring down the wrath of God!  There’s not a soul alive who doesn’t know that’s absolutely wrong.  Anyone who says otherwise is just plain dishonest.

After church that evening, we picked up sandwiches from Subway.  Yummy!  It’s been quite a while since we had Subway sandwiches.

Thursday at midmorning, it was 40°, on the way up to 67° – and we were issued a high-wind warning that would take effect at 7:00 p.m. and last until 3:00 a.m. Friday, with winds up to 60 mph expected.  From noon ’til 9:00 p.m., there was a red-flag warning for fire danger.

After he got out of school, Hannah brought Levi to put a new bass string in my piano.  Unfortunately, the string he ordered was the wrong size; he’ll have to try again.

Did you know that a standard modern piano has 88 keys (52 white and 36 black) – but Bösendorfer grand pianos have 97 or even 108 keys?  

Despite the wrong string size, Hannah and I had a nice visit, complete with tea (Bentley’s blueberry for Hannah; Thompson’s black for me); while Levi had blueberry lemonade Celsius.

That evening, Hannah sent pictures from my niece Christine’s property, where she often goes with her dogs to take walks.  “There is a beaver in the lake, and a heron in the sky,” she wrote.

The structure on the right is the shelter where we have our Fourth-of-July picnics.

It was chilly Friday morning when I went out to rehang the bird feeders – just 36°.  Lately, the grackles and the red-winged blackbirds have been hitting the feeders in droves, going through black-oil sunflower seeds like it’s hot soup. 

I ate breakfast, cleaned up the kitchen, and headed back upstairs to my quilting studio.

That afternoon, a lady on Facebook told about seeing so many bluebirds in a fruit tree, the tree looked blue. 

We saw a bush like that once when I was about 13, traveling with my parents in Florida.  The bush seemed to be covered with blue blossoms, and they were all swaying in the wind – except there was no wind.  We stepped closer, the better to look at those flowers – and they all flew away, in a cloud of blue with a slight flash of purple!  That bush had been covered with Great purple hairstreak butterflies.  We had never seen them before.

That afternoon, I began hearing about wildfires in Nebraska.  The largest ones are to our west, while some smaller ones are to the north.  The governor declared an emergency and mobilized the National Guard.

For supper that evening, we had a chef salad, with eggs and chopped pork pieces and crackers, along with yogurt and cran-cherry juice.

At 7:30 p.m., a helicopter went over quite low, which is unusual here.  It had barely crossed over the house before I smelled the jet fuel.  Ugh, my whole quilting studio reeked with the odor!

The helicopter was probably checking on the prairie fires.

I finished the ninth Star Crossed block and got the tenth partly done before quitting for the night.

I sat down in my recliner, looked at the news – and saw that one of the prairie fires had crossed the canal near Gothenburg.  In the video, you can see a pivot putting water on a field, hopefully protecting it from the fire.

I posted this photo of American goldfinches on one of the nyjer seed feeders.

A lady asked, “American?  How do you know?”

“They showed me their passports,” I answered.

I intended to post a picture of a European goldfinch (below) to show her the difference, but I got distracted and forgot.  Fortunately, I have helpful friends who posted links to pages with various types of finches.  We have 17 different finches, here in North America.

Here’s a note someone posted on a YouTube weather channel:  “Ugh!  After 22 hours my electricity just came back on because of wind!”

How ’bout that.  The wind caused the electricity to come back on!

Grammar, she is a dyin’ ember.

Or maybe I’m judging her wrongly, and her electricity is generated by a wind turbine that idled down to a standstill on account of 22 hours of windlessness, and then finally got enough wind to take off again. 😏

Nawww, she meant the wind took out electricity for 22 hours, and it is finally back on.

A friend told of seeing a nice-looking upright piano in a thrift store, and wondered if she should’ve bought it.  The next time she saw it, there was a ‘Sold’ sign on it.

My opinion:  Always assume Laurel and Hardy brought any used piano to a thrift shop, or that they were the direct cause of it actually being there.  For reference, see The Music Box.

Some rain and snow was expected in some of the areas where there are fires; but the trouble was, so were high winds up to 70 mph.  Winds downing power lines sparked the largest of the fires.  Another was from embers from a prescribed burn.  Foolish, to have a prescribed burn in bone-dry areas where the winds were expected to pick up like they did.  Some said the wind was ‘unexpected’, but that’s not true.  It was forecast in various weather apps and on the radio.

That evening, it was reported that someone in the little town of Arthur had been killed trying to flee the Morrill Fire.  Today, they released her identity:  Rose Mary White, age 86.  She was a mother of four, a grandmother of six, and a great-grandmother of 12.  Such sad news.

When I stopped sewing that evening, I had 11 blocks done.  Five more to go, and then I’ll begin the sashing.

Sunday morning as I blow-dried and curled my hair, getting ready for church, I sipped Gingerbread/Vanilla/Red Velvet cold-brew coffee and listened to the wind howling.  It was 29° at 7:00 a.m., with a windchill of -6°.  It would continue to get colder until Monday morning.  The wind was blowing at 42 mph, and would get up to 60 mph in the afternoon.  We got a bit of ice and snow, too.  There were snow squall warnings here and there.

What would my nicely coiffed hair look like by the time I got to church?!

More hairspray, please.

A friend was trying to transfer her phone number and data to her new Galaxy Z Fold7 and have it added to her son’s account.  The staff at the phone company didn’t seem to know how to do it.  The son eventually explained the process, and the task was accomplished successfully.

The story brought back memories of when I couldn’t get Loren’s phone lines set up properly for him, first because he was not an ‘authorized user’ (and they wouldn’t tell me who the authorized user was, and neither Norma’s nor Janice’s credentials worked, and emailing them both women’s death certificates, as requested, had no effect whatsoever); and second, because I was not an ‘authorized user’.  Then they couldn’t get it through their thick heads that I, as his Power of Attorney, had the authority to close his Verizon account, in order to add his phone to our plan, seemingly the only workable option.  They demanded that we bring him in and have him sign the papers.  They were not amused when I asked if they ran into troubles when they had to exhume people in order to close accounts.

After speaking with a variety of ‘upper management’ who refused to be helpful, Larry took Loren in and had him sign the papers.  

I told one of the managers I talked to on the phone, “You could get in quite a lot of trouble, forcing a person with known dementia to sign papers.  Verizon employees need to take some informative classes to learn what ‘Power of Attorney’ means.”    

What I said was so... mild, in comparison to how I felt.  I wanted to tie his ears behind his head.  In a Constrictor Knot.

I should’ve created a Big Stink about it, in order to help all those who come after and run into the same brick wall.  But I had too much to do, and was soooo sick and tired of their baloney. 

Once upon a time when I was wee little, my father came home from somewhere or other, announcing that he had ‘run into a brick wall’.  I’ll bet my eyes were as big as saucers.  I thought Daddy was a good driver!  When I thought nobody was looking [though I don’t imagine my mother missed a cue], I sneaked over to the garage door, opened it quietly, and peered out at our nice car.  ???  It didn’t look like it had been run into a brick wall!  ???

When the snow stopped yesterday evening, I suppose we had about a quarter to half an inch of snow on top of a dab of ice.  Hard to tell, with a 60-mph wind blowing it all into Texas. 

As we headed to our evening church service at 6:15 p.m. last night, it was 22° and felt like -14°.  After the service, we picked up groceries from Walmart.  By then it was 15°, and still very windy.  I felt like a drunken sailor, trying to carry groceries in from the Mercedes.

At 10:30 p.m., it was 11° and felt like -32°, what with the wind blowing at 44 mph.  Weather.com said the wind was Force: 6 – a ‘Strong Breeze’.

A couple of weeks ago, Caleb and Maria’s Great Pyrenees, Marley, somehow found his way out the front door of the garage, avoiding the underground perimeter that works with his collar.  He made his way a couple of blocks to the west – and got hit and killed on the road.

Eva, who hardly ever cries, cried.  Caleb decided they’d better get those little girls of his a puppy – so they got an Anatolian shepherd puppy from Teddy and Amy.

I looked at the weather at a quarter ’til eleven this morning – and saw that there hadn’t been a letup of bad weather.  There were tornadoes in Maryland and Vermont right that minute.  The fires continue in Nebraska despite the snow, which was too scant, with the winds making them all the worse.

The temperature had made it up to 14° from a low of 7°.  The windchill was ‘only’ 2° below 0, since the wind had ‘calmed down’ to 28 mph.  That’s Force: 5 (Fresh Breeze).  🙄

My friend who got the new Fold7 smartphone sent me a text:

“I’m typing from my new smarter-than-me phone with every available ‘correction’ option turned on.  I may have to turn some off.  I apparently can’t string three words together in a manner that satisfies Mr. Fold.  It took me 27 minutes to type this message, including the time I spent debating with the phone just how I would say what I wished to say.  I won; but the phone’s not happy.”

It’s 10:45 p.m. now, and I just checked on the Nebraska fires at the Western Fire Chiefs Association live webpage.  {These numbers have not been updated since afternoon, so they are low, as the fires have grown since then.}  The size of the Morrill Fire northwest of Lake McConaughy (‘Big Mac’) is 572,084 acres, and it’s 18% contained.  The size of the Cottonwood Fire between North Platte and Lexington is 131,259 acres, and it’s 40% contained.  The size of the Road 203 Fire near Halsey (Nebraska National Forest) is 35,386 acres, and it’s 36% contained.  The size of the Anderson Bridge Fire west of Valentine is 17,400 acres, and it’s 60% contained.  That makes a total of 756,129 acres that have burned.

The majority of fire personnel in rural Nebraska are volunteer.  Crews have come from Colorado, South Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming to help.  The Utah crews were stymied for hours on account of blizzard conditions shutting down the roads in Wyoming.

Here’s a video of an airplane helping fight the fires.

The photo below was taken one mile south of the Ponderosa Wildlife Management Area near Crawford.  The fire crossed the road like it wasn’t even there.​

I was so engrossed in weather and fire, it was 4:30 p.m. before I finally remembered to start a load of clothes. 

Oh, and earthquakes!  There was another earthquake to our south.  This one was smaller than the one a couple of weeks earlier.  The U.S. Geological Survey reported a 2.5 magnitude earthquake at 7:15 a.m. on Thursday, March 12, located about three miles east-southeast of Cowles in Webster County.

This makes the fourth earthquake to strike the area in the last month.  The largest was an M4.1 quake that hit on March 1 at 12:59 p.m.  A notable M2.6 aftershock followed around 2:30 p.m., with a third M2.6 tremor around 8:45 p.m. that evening.

Residents near the quake reported the shaking was noticeable, though damage was minor, with nothing more serious than pictures being knocked off the wall.

When I walked into the laundry room, I saw over a dozen male red-winged blackbirds at the feeders on the deck.

All the clothes are done now, folded and put away.  Time for bed!

 

 

P.S.:  One more thing:  The Upper Peninsula of Michigan got nearly three feet of snow.

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,