Tornado Hits Gorham & Orphanned Birdies

It is official, the weather service has confirmed that a Tornado set down in our little town of Gorham. This past Wednesday, around suppertime, suddenly the sky got dark, illuminated only by the rapid succession of lightning, and everything was drenched by the ensuing downpour. Then we heard it, the thunder, the kind of deep reverberating boom that makes the dishes rattle and the paintings on the walls shake ... accompanied by an extremely bright flash of lightning. You could see the lightning from whatever room in the house you were in, we knew something got hit, and it was close by. The lights in the house flickered once and then it was just as dark as outside, inside as well. We were without power for the next 4 hours. We were lucky. Come Thursday morning and into the afternoon, many folks just down the road were still without electricity.

***My friend Tiff at Folded Gingham has photos of the funnel shaped clouds (Click here to see).

We found out that trees had been uprooted, roofs pulled off and in one case, the roof of a barn collapsed and caved in, killing 2 cows and injuring several others. There were reports of downed wires everywhere. For us, we lost a tree. One well placed bit of lightning brought down half of a tree. It remains lying across my backyard. It miraculously just missed my lawn swing but the crown of the tree took out half of my ancient lilac tree and my beautiful blooming blue-hydrangea that I hadn't gotten the chance to take a photo of yet bush, flattened to the ground.



As we started to clear away the debris, we find a little nest with two little birdies. Now you know my daughter and her love of all things in nature and you know me, the good mom, so you know that the little sweet things, nest and all, came into the house. Between calls to bird rehabilitation places in the area, and feeding them a mixture of berries, wet dog food and hard boiled eggs, all ground up into mush, my daughter kept busy yesterday, her one day off from work this week. Unfortunately most of the rehab places had no power and were unable to help. So where does that leave the little ones come this Friday morning? Wait for it, you know it is coming, yes, sitting next to my desk at my office is a box with a heat lamp attached to the side, keeping safe and warm these 2 little nature orphans. Did I also mention that I am suppose to feed them every 40 minutes? Once a mom, always a mom, what can I say.

Wishing you all a safe and good weekend. The shop is continuing to do well and somehow it is all working out, running the shop next door to my office, both simultaneously. Thank goodness I have a great secretary and an assistant that are both treasures themselves. I have more photos but I apologize that I am wearing too many hats at the moment to post. I promise they are coming. Thank you again for all the wonderful comments that have been shared with me. Honestly, it has helped me to keep my sanity.

Sherrie