Gone With the Wind

Yesterday, the Tulip Decapitator dropped by and vacuumed all the leaves off our lawn. Because the Tulip Decapitator always does things in an unorthodox way, he left all the vacuumed-up leaves in a little mini mountain range out in the street about a foot away from the curb. I don’t know why he didn’t cart the leaves away. Perhaps he was planning to come back today? He doesn’t tell us these things; he just materializes when he feels like it, which usually coincides more or less with when the lawn needs mowing or the leaves need vacuuming.

Well, he didn’t return today, but—lucky for him—the job was finished in a matter of seconds this afternoon, as the wind whipped up like crazy and whisked all the leaves in the mountain range to points northward. All afternoon I watched as leaves from our neighbors to the south whooshed down the street as if they were on an out-of-control I Love Lucy-style conveyor belt. It was really quite thrilling. They just kept a-coming—lickety split.

A couple of hours ago, I saw the wind snatch the American flag out of the hands of a school janitor. The flag landed some yards away from him, amidst mucky, partially decomposed leaves. The janitor quickly retrieved it, draped it over his arm, and scurried back into the school, totally failing to observe proper flag protocol. No salute, no playing of "Taps," no folding of the flag into a compact little triangle. Don’t tell John Ashcroft! He’d see to it that the poor guy was burned at the stake.

I must say, I adore a good rip-roaring wind storm, and now that rain is also splattering madly against the windows, I'm pretty much over the moon. Gusts up to 60 mph are predicted. Whoa!

Today's Random NaBloPoMo blog: Sphincterhood