FOTD – May 17- Fire and bouquet
It looked so good today and I had a camera next to me. The sun was shining, even though there is (are you West Coast people ready?) a red alert. For fires. Massachusetts is on fire. This is a small and very heavily wooded state. Just a four-hour car ride from east to west and if you put pedal to the metal, even less.
Not counting the Cape. That would add another three hours because of the insane traffic and that they are rebuilding one of the two bridges that cross the Cape Cod canal.
The two bridges — the Sagamore and Bourne — are bumper-to-bumper from Thursday to Monday May through October. With one of them down for construction and with summer traffic gearing up and fires everywhere the traffic is probably backed up into the Atlantic. So let’s leave Cape Cod out of this equation. You can drive across the widest part of Massachusetts between breakfast and lunch, yet we have more than 700 fires burning and are getting smoke all the way from Alberta. It’s why the sky looks gray in the morning even though there are no clouds. It’s smoke, down from Canada or maybe from Saugus or Harrisburg.
Somehow, spring morphed into fire season in a couple of days. It rained every day for the first 9 days in May, but there has been no rain since and none is predicted. It reminds me of last year — and that is one of the things of which I did not want to be reminded. Also, it’s windy and extremely dry, with humidity at 17% — the lowest I’ve ever seen it in this part of the country. That’s desert humidity, not New England where summer is typically hot and humid with air that feels like hot soup.
The dryness, heat and wind mixed with newly burgeoning trees means we have also have exceptionally high pollen counts. We had to use compressed air to clean out Garry’s hearing aids after he was out for a few minutes cleaning some of the green pollen off the car.
Everything outside is green. If we get any rain and I sure hope we do, things are going to start growing. Who knows what will appear this year? Last year we got kudzu and wild grape vines. What invasive species will show up this year?
Meanwhile, it’s time to start praying for rain.
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Categories: #Flowers, #FOTD, #gallery, #Photography, Cee's Photo Challenge, Flower of the day
SERENDIPITY: SEEKING INTELLIGENT LIFE ON EARTH 
Wonderful photos for today 😀
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Thanks Cee. I’m still experimenting to see what I can do without using “Auto.”
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OMG Bourne. I will NEVER will forget it. We were eating out after a great hike (here in SoCal) and I got a call on my cell from a sad-sounding state trooper in Mass. Long story short but he had found my son’s cell, called “Mom” on speed dial and got me, he was trying to convey to me that he thought my son might have committed suicide on the Bourne bridge, apparently it’s known as “suicide” bridge. Well, I freaked out as you can imagine, my son was at Yale at the time and had gone with his then girlfriend (now wife) to the cape with her parents who were visiting from the UK. I called gf and got no answer, was already home and packing to get on a plane, when I located her parents cell; they handed the phone to my son who had lost HIS phone biking over Bourne bridge. The nice officers gave him back his phone, happy for once that it wasn’t bad news, and I completely fell apart after it was all over. We still talk about that (non) event. It gave this mom a heart attack.
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I would imagine it would! It would have had the same effect on me, too.
I wonder how many people jump off the bridge because of the traffic? After you haven’t moved for hours, jumping might look like a good idea.
But that was nice of the cop to call you, though I think a less alarming message might have been a better choice. Is the a mother anywhere that wouldn’t have panicked at that message? Gads!
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I don’t know if there’s any way to make that kind of a phone call that wouldn’t panic a parent and I’m sure he did it as delicately as he knew how. This experience in no way prepared me for the call I got a few years later where I actually DID run out at 3am to get on a plane for the east coast. Alls well that ends well, I guess, but my phone is always charged and by my side 24/7. At least now I only have to fly for a couple hours straight north to save a life 🙂
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Proximity is a huge help.
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I actually have thought of pre-packing a bag just in case I ever DO get that call again but I haven’t done it. Yet.
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Try not to panic. Yet. There’s plenty of time for panic later!
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