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So grateful you are all safe and prayers for those that have lost so much. As always I appreciate your posts

glad to hear your brother was ok even if rattled.  We were at a funeral and all quickly evacuated to the basement (yes our church has a basement!  Aren’t you surprised Donna!) when the warning went off.  No cell signal in the basement and one man went out far enough to get a signal and check what was happening and heard it was spotted just a mile from our house. Four of us couples live within that one mile so we were all a bit anxious then.  But saw no sign of even heavy wind here when we came home, praise God!

Glad you have been able to get some work done in between our rain.  We have enjoyed the rest from yard work.  Actually I have no choice now with the trigger finger problem I developed after moving those stupid brick!

Yes, the weather everywhere is crazy. I have heard of tornados before, but this is out of order! Little Rock and parts of Tennessee were  badly damaged, Mississippi too. My heart breaks for all of these folk. We had our wildfires and floods in different parts of the state, also high winds that toppled trees on houses (and a few people) in my neighborhood.  L.A. had a tornado blast of all things, as well as flooding. We have an almost 300% increase of our normal snow pack in the Sierras, but the weather people are worried that that might saturate places already soft and flood again. Climate change due to our non-stewardship of our plant earth has caused this, and it is a terrible consequence. I have thought of you often, as the news did not mention Alabama I wondered if it had affected you; but thought it unlikely that it would not. I am glad you are all safe and sound so far. Perhaps springtime will be kinder to us all.

Thank you for the tornado update, I am very glad to see you all are okay!   And the photo of the dogs in your shelter is priceless, how perfectly well behaved they are.   Here in Arizona, the weather is excellent, so I try to spend a lot of time outdoors.   My husband passed away the end of December and I decided our home was too large and too isolated for me, so it is for sale, and I have bought a smaller place in a nearby town.  Now I am going through 31 years of stuff…for me, the feeling of less stuff is a good one  Thank you so much for the blog, I love the photos and the updates on your activities.  

I heard from friends in Arkansas...so sad, so scary.  Everyone I know there was safe though and I am grateful for that.  Glad you and the lot hunkered down safely, too--and your brother.  We have a good stockpile of food, water, and a few household items (like toilet paper) in case we get bad winter storms that keep us isolated.  Fortunately, we don't have to worry about tornadoes much here.

Your springy photos were such a treat to me. 

I'm so glad you didn't have a lot of damage or worse, any injuries or deaths in your family.  Where I grew up, we lived in a shared-weather area that encompassed NE Arkansas, SE Missouri, W Kentucky, W Tennessee and S Illinois.  One memorable spring when I was in high school, that area had 200 confirmed tornadoes - just that one spring. So I've seen this before.  I didn't like it then and I don't now, either. They are terrifying.  Your closet picture was touching.

We had a basement at one house we lived in, but not in others, and I live in Florida now where basements are rare and usually not practical, as the water table is very high.  I have a central closet downstairs that has no windows and is truly in the center of the house, so that's my first choice.  It's a big closet, so I can take my two dogs in with me.  I hope I don't ever have to do that.

I planted dwarf mulberries winter of 21 and they grew to about six feet, which I cut back a little this winter to keep height down and encourage side shoots.  I have not had a single bloom on them, though.  I hope that changes next year.  Your tree looks as though it is loaded with berries.  

Good luck with your garden this year.  I hope it produces well!

It's so good to hear that you were safe from the storms. We live in Iowa and last Friday we had storms come through. We were lucky and didn't have any damage but we know three people who lost their homes and farms. The neighboring town had extensive damage. The last I heard there were 9 homes lost. But thankfully no deaths or even injuries. We did lose power and did get the generator out as during the storm we discovered that our pump switch to our well had shorted out and our basement was filling up with smoke. We had to have electricity to be able to repair the damage so we would have water. Today we're gearing up for another round of storms that are predicted to come through later this evening and again tonight. I'm thankful to have a basement even if it is old and dreary.

Hello GD

We have been reading about storms in your area and so I thought you might have clearing up to do. Glad to read you are safe.

The weather has become more severe everywhere. No doubt about it and it is clearly our lack of care for our planet as already said here. And still we deny it and go right on!

I fear for my children and grandchildren and hope we truly can turn this around.

I am amazed at your closet. I can’t imagine having to do that.How good your little dogs are. Bless them.  ( admiring of the new collar too)

We have severe weather here in NZ and earthquakes. We have earthquakes all the time here although not huge ones.  There will be one or several every day somewhere on one of our islands or close to. We are taught ‘Drop, Cover, Hold’. And this means if there is shaking, we should drop to the floor, cover our heads especially ( get under a table or something like that) and stay there until the shaking stops.   This is best because if ceilings or parts of buildings collapse in a big quake, you can stay safe in a protected space until you can be rescued possibly. Taking your phone with you fast is good too. And keeping it fully charged so its ready.

 We are hit by cyclones sometimes too and we have recently had terrible damage from Cyclone Gabrielle in the north east of our North Island. People dead and homes collapsed and washed away. Roads so badly damaged there are no ways in or out.

We live in the south east of the South Island and not on the coast. I am grateful

We have more bouts of very heavy and persistent rain now too and this causes flooding. We have many low lying areas that are at risk from flooding. People continue to live in these areas though and councils even allow building in risky places. Then water rushes in at times of heavy rain and lives are lost and belongings ruined and houses fall down. I don’t know.

We are urged to prepare for evacuations and disaster at any time.  We maintain a pantry cupboard of supplies - tinned and packaged food, first aid and so on. We have walking shoes at hand and waterproof clothing easy to get. We keep important numbers near, battery powered radio and torches and we have a generator in case there is a power outage. These things are just ‘there’ in case.

We are moving to change any ‘wasteful ways’ more and more although we are pretty thrifty and careful I think. The big thing we need to do is stop using our older diesel vehicles and move to an EV or at least a hybrid vehicle.  I have been wary of having an EV because I have a pacemaker but research has not found any problems so I am more confident and I think we will make this change in the next few months.

I love magnolias too. Really lovely in the south there.  I have lived in both Va and NC and visited Alabama.

Reminds me of the Darling Dahlias - sure you know this book series by Susan Wittig Albert set in Southern Alabama in the Depression years.  The first book is The Darling Dahlias and the Cucumber Tree. This tree is a type of magnolia you will know I guess but I didn’t. We have ones like you show in your photo.

There are many interesting things in this world, GD aren’t there? Beautiful and wonderful alongwith scary and sad.

Kind greetings to you. Hope all is well for you this week.

Felicity 

SO glad you and your brother are both safe.  I am sitting here watching it snow with 12 to 24 inches expected.  The "girls" are adorable.  How precious that they run in the closet when "Hurry" is yelled.  I wish everyone would think of their animals when emergencies occur.  Don't work too hard!

Like the others, glad to hear you are all okay - your brother included.  We don't have tornados out west but we get plenty of snow and weather and are appropriately equipped.  Your meal sounds yummy today for some reason :-)

Your pink collar is so pretty!  I love it.  The dogs look so sweet laying in the closet for cover.  We had that intense blizzard in the CA mountains.  I was pretty well prepared, but should have kept more firewood on the porch, since I heat the cabin with wood.  I had two backup electric heaters that I used.  The stockpile came in very handy, but what we needed most was physical strength to shovel all of that snow.  I was able to do it, but it was exhausting.  We have a crawl space that would work for a tornado.  In CA, our greatest concerns are fires and earthquakes.  We have had flooding, as well, but the county did some work to divert the water, thank goodness.

we have lived in Southern California with the floods, fires and earthquakes. When I was a kid there we had a freak tornado come through our backyard. I had never been afraid of thunderstorms until that day when I saw my mother scared to death. I vividly remember her screaming get in the bathtub to all 5 of us and then seeing it take out the fence, a large tree and such. When we lived in Oregon the town over had a massive tornado and we had several there too. Very scary. I still have things steapped to walls in our home in case of an earthquake. My husband and I lived thru all the big ones...Landers, big bear, Wrightwood, Northridge, etc. We lived as kids in one house where the fault line ran thru the garage. No thanks anymore. I'm so thankful your alright an so is your brother. Much to be grateful for. We have learned to read the weather since forecasters are wrong a lot of times or not cover your area. It's been very helpful. 

I've become very interested in this town:  https://sites.google.com/view/Codell-Kansas-Tornad...

Tornadoes hit on May 20th, three consecutive years (1916-1918).  They were progressively stronger. There are some first party accounts of it on that site. It's not all that far from where I live so I've been able to visit it twice now. I grew up in Oklahoma City, with a storm cellar in the back yard. Was my favorite place to hang out in during the summer. Never got hit by a tornado though. The thing with tornadoes is that they are so unpredictable.  I'm glad you are all okay.

I just read the info on that link you shared. I don't even know what to think. That would've run me out of town after that. I was really surprised more people didn't perish, but also in how the strength of their homes that with stood the storms. Incredible!

One person did leave, as the Geist family lost so many in the last storm. I was a bit surprised by the family that got in the car and outran it. There is an interesting series on You Tube, Tornado Ghost Towns, about why some towns recover afterwards (and some don't). Can't post the link but you should be able to find it by that name.