Roller Coaster

25°f this morning or, _4°C. Heavy frost, which has probably killed off the pear harvest this year. Clear and cold day.

At least we didn't have snow,  like those of you up north. As someone said, snow is more magical on December 25th than it is on March 25th!

It was so hard to leave our son in Miami. Such a long way away, and he is really missing family these days.  But I am grateful for our visit with him, and expect we will be going back soon. No matter how old, sometimes a man just needs his Mom and Dad.

Seems like things are snowballing along (metaphorically speaking, no snow here!) since we got home. We had some real worry when we learned that the wildfires in Eastern West Virginia were threatening my sister's home and that of one of her sons. 

Photo from WBOY website. Read more here

Very scary, with ash blowing, my sister, her husband and family out building firebreaks with dozens of volunteers, firetrucks parked outside their homes, wind that would not lie down spreading the fire. She messaged me at 2:30am Friday morning that the danger had passed, but later that day the fire was back. Finally the federal forest service firefighters were deployed along with the national guard and the fire seems to be contained and the danger for my sister has passed. For now anyway.

One of her sons did lose his getaway cabin,  which burned to the ground along with 7 or 8 others in the same area. Lost River State Park, which adjoins their properties, had hundreds of acres burned but fortunately none of the cabins were affected. 

My oldest son also lives in that area but although they can see some of the fires they are a good distance away. I am hopeful that yesterday's rain and today's frost might have slowed down the fires. 

Such a worry! But there have been good things too. Granddaughter Sarah arrives this evening from Colorado so we are getting ready and looking forward to having her for the next two weeks. Yesterday evening we took dinner to our friend Rachel's house for a pleasant visit. Sarah's parents will be staying at Rachel's little b&b and Rachel wanted us to check it over to be sure it was okay--which of course it was. 

Friday after unpacking from our trip we restocked one of our booths and picked up a few things at the store. Yesterday morning and today I am doing laundry. What a pile we had! I usually do a load almost every day, but we had 6 day's worth from our trip plus the usual household odds and ends. The last load is in the washer, thank the gods.

I have had hardly a minute to get outside, but tomorrow perhaps I will have time for some garden work as the weeds are already getting out of hand in the flowerbeds. We are behind with mulching but I hope we can catch up this week. Fingers crossed!

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