We are under a weather advisory today for severe winds. The winds started, as torrentuous weather is want to do, in the dark of night, requiring Paul to wake up and salvage what remained of the flimsy and fly-away materials around the sanctuary.
Freya, horribly afraid of anything that shakes, rattles, and rolls, ran to Paul for protection. As we are growing accustomed to doing during severe weather, I take Frodo and Lenny inside our home, while Freya and Paul head to the SUV. Freya refuses to use ramps or stairs, so she is unable to join us inside. The SUV is our only vehicle large enough to hold her 160-pound frame. Paul loads her up and sits in the car with her, so she won't be afraid. So, there they sit and here we sit.
The sun rising brings some relief as at least now, I can watch the heavy winds deeply sway, from side to side, the large oaks around us. Paul thinks we are getting gusts up to 50 MPH. I close my eyes and say a silent prayer for The Shire, hoping we don't lose another tree.
I am obsessed with YouTube videos on ways to prepare an off-grid homestead for winter's rain and wind. I worry mostly about Freya. We need to build the dogs a shelter but because of Freya's particular anxieties with noises and the way objects move, we have to plan very carefully. Normal materials won't work - she'll never use the shelter. She tends to cling to our almost-gone wood chip pile, so we had the idea of building her something out of straw bales, which due to their density, make little noise at all.
While Paul focuses on the chicken coop and needed nonnormative dog shelter, I tend to indoor chores and work on some seed stratification that I've been procrastinating on. I have to whip up a batch of face oil, as well. For the past year, I've been using our very own Rivendell body products which now include body butter, hair oil, and face oil. I make the body butter out of the black sage that grows on the property, and the hair and face oils from our sagebrush.
Our solar has been acting up for the past two days. I currently have 42 minutes left on our primary battery. We have a back-up battery, though it will only last so long.
Though the sun is out, Rivendell is about to go dark.
Comments