Stormy Weather, Scary Weather

Last Friday the wind began to blow and during the day it got stronger and then all night it blew furiously. It continued all Saturday too.  The tin roof flapped and banged and the gutters blew off. It rained as well, horizontally. It came in the bedroom window, flying through the sides of the glass and showered the carpet. It was a very wet and scary weekend. I didn't sleep at all. I lay in the warmth of the bed and listened to the noise, thinking it sounded like someone was up there, and half expecting the roof to fly off at any moment. (Well, it did fly off last summer, so I wasn't just being neurotic.)  The door to the workshop was blown in, and the door frame broken. It was a very stormy 24 hours. (140 kph aparently, in some parts of Portugal, with waves 17 meters high)

When it had calmed down a bit I went down to the garden to pick up all the bits of cardboard and black netting, and the sun shelter I built in the summer, which had blown off completely. The place looked like a war zone, but the plants looked healthy. As for the 'spider' dome, I don't even want to go and look.  I will wait until the weather settles before I start to work on it again. It's too diheartening to have all one's hard work washed away by these mighty storms.

So yesterday we went to do some essential shopping and when we came back we found half the herd of goats up by the windmill. We put them back in the neighbour's field and continued home. I went down to the garden and found hoof marks in the soil.  I looked around... ARGH, the goats had been there and eaten the tops of everything! I had left the gate open of our new fenced-in-against-the-goats-and-chickens fence... I could've cried. Instead I screamed.  All those onions pulled out, all the brocolli gone, and the spinach and the peas and the favas. And it was my own fault!

Meanwhile this nasty, disturbing weather continues.  We have got used to the gentle stuff we've been having for the last few years.  This strong wind and hail and heavy rain is what sometimes happens in winter in Portugal.  At least we are warm and dry in our house. So tonight, we sit near the stove and the wind howls around the house and the roof flaps, but it's not as bad as Friday/Saturday so I'm thankful for that. I think that the very strong winds are a part of climate change. That is quite scary.