Pick up Sticks and other Woes of the Wind in the Sycamores

Thanks to yesterday's fierce winds, the driveway was littered with sticks and twigs. Our sycamore trees let loose with a shower of little round seed pods. They are everywhere. There's only one problem with that: if you step on them or drive over them they explode into a mass of fluffy fuzz. Eventually, it all settles down into the gravel and collects dirt and rain to feed to ravenous weeds which root up the gravel.




 Turtle and I collected the larger twigs and stacked them near the street. Then I started collecting the seed pods and throwing them into a large bucket. Elijah and Marie arrived and helped me get to one thousand of the little fellows. Doesn't look like a thousand, does it? Well, look, there are plenty more left to collect on the driveway. My estimate is that there are five thousand of the little pelters.



Now here are two thousand, but the driveway still has at least another thousand and the lawn is strewn with them. I know it's ridiculous to collect them and bag them, but I don't fancy hitting them with the lawn mower this summer. Turtle says maybe we should sell them on e-bay. Does anybody want any sycamore trees? Well, if they ever stumble onto this blog entry they probably won't, unless, of course, they have a fireplace and need twiggy detritus.

Here's the pile of sticks. It doesn't look very impressive, but it's almost as tall as I am. Alright. I think I'm going to have to get some more pictures to show you.










There, now isn't that a mess of twigs.

Winds...and Dust...and Dashed Hopes

Today began as a hopeful day
For the skies were swathed in cloudy gray
Then a strong north wind
Came bellowing in
And blew our chance for rain away

...along with a few trees here and there. In fact the air was littered with newly sprouted leaves, blossoms, and sticks. It was dangerous to walk around outside at all. I don't know how high the winds were, but they managed to strip the bark off several trees and leave them naked in the cold.




















A little farther up the street they ripped apart this massive old elm.










Claye was walking to work in all this. After having escaped a few flying objects, she decided to listen to the radio and see if a tornado was in the vicinity.

Nope.
Just Oklahoma wind, a little more than usual. Nobody seemed the least bit impressed.

Befuddled

His eyes confused, befuddled;
His fine logic was all muddled;
His transitions, somewhat addled;
All his sequences seemed rattled.
He was discombobulated;
In a word--twitterpated!





(A silly little poem for a Sunday Scribblings prompt)