A Morning’s Fury

Little doubt that some readers found the Friday post full of ugly jellyfish a mite off-putting. Well, thankfully such nasties aren’t a frequent sight on this front yard beach I often attempt to describe. The tables can turn quickly and what is Thursday’s goose bump heebie-jeebies by Friday becomes an array of nature’s jewels. Coming on this day it was a surprise, because I awoke to what sounded like the clash of the Titans, and a violent rat-tat-tat of rain on my bedroom windows and door that made me wonder if the glass would hold. Looking through the glass door I saw the heavy Adirondack chair had been blown across the patio and pushed against the table. There was also a missing chair, blown away and nowhere in sight. The exhausted plants were beaten down, limp and curled leaves a soundless cry for shelter from the tornado-like winds.

Impossible to open the glass slider onto the patio without gusts of rain drenching the living room, I could only look out at a churning fog of rain that erased my view of the ocean and everything else more than twenty feet distant. It was too furious and explosive to last more than a half hour and so I waited, crossing off the notion of a morning walk on the beach.

In time, I rescued the plants and found the airlifted chair hanging over a broken light halfway up the walkway, four panes of glass and the bulb as well shattered by force of the wind-driven patio chair. The rain eventually blew away, and the wind dropped off to something less than threatening, or enough at least to make me reconsider a walk. A little wind and rain is okay as long as the beach is not a bog of mushy footing.

By 9:15 it was good to go. No washed up jellyfish or headless fish, but here’s what I found instead…