The Summer season is not my favorite time of the year,
especially when it behaves as irrationally as the present one. Our good earth is so mixed up with the global warming working overtime, that we really cannot tell whether we have winter storms and hurricanes, or spring rain torrents.        
                                          
Be that as it may, I feel housebound most of the time unless a kind soul, with an air-cooled car, will invite me out for a ride.                   

My nephew and his wife asked me to spend a weekend with them in Woodstock and I was happy to accept.
I was picked up Saturday morning, we stopped on the way at a superb supermarket, with the freshest produce I had seen in a long time. Their flower stands displayed the most colorful collection. I would have loved to take photographs of them and savor their scent. They prepared a picnic lunch and took me to a large scenic place, surrounded by tall oak trees. The meal was most enjoyable. My niece offered to take a walk with me, not too far away, to a lovely lake with a few bridges in the background. She was sure I would enjoy the view. We started out.

We reached the lake whose waters seemed very restless, although no wind was blowing. We saw a large group of people running towards us as if the devil were behind them. We looked up to the sky and then we understood their speed and the alarm in their faces. There was the largest, blackest cloud I have ever been close to and we started running as well to get away from it. It  was a thunder cloud which came with horrible speed. There was no shelter we could possibly reach. Lightening struck with a horrendous thunderbolt about half a block from us. The impact was so powerful that the wind almost pushed us down. Only one bolt, and we had escaped being fried by it!  We made it back to the car before the cloud emptied and flooded the entire region.

Beware of Mother Nature

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©Gerta Freeman - July 15, 2009