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Busy. Summer is busy. Last summer we were caught up in home improvements; this year, going places, and much via Prius power. This month we went to Nevada and I to California. Next month: Montana, *wince* Wyoming (but only for Thermopolis and Yellowstone National Park), and probably back again to Montana. August: Nevada again. September: If I’m lucky, Chicago.

In between all of this, there’s the normal stuff like keeping the house clean as well as ‘returning home’ stuff like cleaning up the car and the camping gear. And softball. And gardening. And exercise. And video games! And going to the movies. And creating websites. And my real job.

I enjoy all of these things, but they’ve all hit me hard simultaneously and I’m feeling a bit winded from this whirlwind of activity. My free time interferes with my productivity and my productivity with my ‘me-time.’ Mostly I need more hours in the day!

The last week-week and a half has been mid to upper 80s without a cloud in the sky followed by torrential rain & wind and (normal) rainy drizzle in the 60s. From that basking in 10 hours of sun per day to 48 hours of rain, the garden has exploded. Seriously, I haven’t been out there for 2 days and I thought I walked into someone else’s patch of earth. The tomatoes got blown over by the high winds, but luckily they just bent (no breaking). I hurried down to the local hardware store this morning to purchase cages and got them mostly straightened out. (Note to self: Cage early! Putting tomato cages on when they’re bigger is 20 minutes of bending and weaving and hoping to god that you don’t lop the top half of the plant off by bending too far.)

The peas have baby peas. The peppers have baby peppers. The onions and scallion are looking good. The tomatoes have lots of flowers. The rain barrel is full-to-bursting again! The strawberries are spreading and have lots of white starter-strawberries. Life is abundant!

PS – The yellow roses bloomed as a group this year and look absolutely fabulous! The reds, pinks, and whites are not far behind. Hopefully the transplanted ones have a good growing year so that next year I might enjoy their blooms again.

Yesterday we had one hell of a thunderstorm, and I got stuck in the middle of it. I don’t often get scared in weather, but this had me stressed and worried.

On my way home from work the rain started coming down so hard it sounded like hail. Big, fat drops falling fast. The wind blew it sideways against the car and it was difficult to see even with the windshield wipers going as fast as possible. Lightning chanced about ever 2-3 minutes. I had to turn around two times for fallen trees, and in the air were branches and twigs and raining leaves as well.

By the time I got to NE Salem (I live in far west Salem) the street lights weren’t working and the water was so high that the curbs disappeared. Many of the streets were reduced to one lane either way, and in some spots cars were driving through water about midway up their bumpers. Since I have a partially electric vehicle (a Prius – see my flickr photos), I was considerably more nervous than the average car-owner about partially submersing my underbelly in water. On top of that, there was a 3-car accident in which none of the vehicles were drivable spread across about a block that all the traffic was snaking through. Buckets of water still falling from the sky. I spent 1/2 hour on roughly 1/2 mile of road as rush hour traffic tried to get home as quickly as possible. By the time I got further south to east Salem, the street lights were working and the rain and gathering water had subsided enough not to fear drowning via flash flood, and I made reasonable time back to my house that at the time I was very thankful was at the top of the hill.

Stressed and tired, I walked into my house about 2 hours after the end of my workday.