Setbacks and recovery at the farmette

It's a sunny, bright day at the farmette. Much cooler this morning at 13C. During the "heat dome" of last week, we didn't get below 23C at night, and up to 46C with humidity during the day. Yikes.

Anyhow. We had lots of interesting weather beyond the hot, hot temperatures. Friday night's thunderstorm brought almost two inches of rain and it was pounding down. We even got an emergency alert on our phones about a possible tornado!!!

I don't think I've ever been as anxious as during that storm. Luckily, we were mostly unscathed, except for a couple of wee setbacks. Our 160 year old house can withstand almost anything except a deluge. The basement tends to flood, and we got a couple of inches of water. It happens, though not too often. Which is why the smartie pants that installed our furnace built a wee platform that raised it off the floor. And why we've put in shelving so nothing that's not plastic rests on the concrete.

We're also prepared with a spanky little pump that we hook up to a hose that's fed through the basement window. Rob takes the inside job, and I make sure the water gets pumped far away outside. Except this time, I forgot that there was a burr bush right where the hose emerged from the moist underbelly of the house. Hence the compromised sweatshirt and a LOT of picking. Cripes.

We also lost the last of our redbud tree in the wind. Boo. We had grown it from a sapling we brought up from Guelph when we moved 13 years ago. Redbuds are notoriously fragile, and this one had already lost half its limbs.

On the upside, I hadn't yet hacked out all of its suckers, so we're hoping that one or two of the heartier ones might flourish. Fingers crossed.

Living in the country has its ups and downs, and sometimes there are setbacks. But we haven't had a really major disaster that we couldn't handle. Yet. Anyway. Until next week.

Gratuitous cat photo courtesy of Calvin, who is pretty chill about almost everything.