Dad, of course, could not help himself but comment when he came into the kitchen to get some water. Dramatically swinging and swatting, I could hear him muttering to himself in the kitchen as he both fought mosquitoes and got a glass out of the cupboard. I kept on sewing.

About an hour later, he popped his head into the room where I was working. It had become nearly dark and since the air was still, I imagine the mosquitoes were voracious outside.

“Is she still outside?” I nodded yes. “You need to tell your mother to get in the house before she gets West Nile,” he grumped.

I went to the door, and popped me head outside. “You’re supposed to get in the house, before you get West Nile.”

She eventually complied.

“Whatever you do,” I said to dad as we discussed the situation, “don’t you cut down that tree. I love that tree. It’s huge.”

“I’m not going to cut down the tree,” he said.

“Don’t have Jerry trim it, either,” I said, thinking of how my brother had “trimmed” the trees so well at my grandparents’ where he now lives that there were few trees left. I believe he suffers from Chainsaw-itis, which is a syndrome that overtakes people who are operating a chainsaw, causing them to see everything as needing to be cut.

Realizing how tall the tree was, I felt I needed to offer an additional admonishment. “I hope you don’t plan on trying to do it yourself. That’s way too high. It’s too dangerous.”

He paused. “I was thinking of shooting at the branches with my rifle.”

“Are you kidding me?”

He neither answered yes nor no.

I don’t think he was actually kidding. I began to envision the scenario and the amount of ammunition, planning, and curse words it would take as well as the general fallout from such a method of tree branch removal.

I don’t know.

It might work.

Regardless, it would be great video and possibly even the talk at the lunch table in town.

Last evening, while bumming at her apartment and watching a movie, the weather turned ugly and the sirens went off. We paused the movie, stood outside and looked at the clouds, hopped in my car, and headed to my place, which has easy access to a basement. We were there all of five minutes or so when we headed back to her place to finish the movie. It just didn’t seem like anything would happen.

That’s pretty typical.

Today, the sirens went off again, which caught me by surprise, since it was still somewhat sunny. Naomi showed up, and we, like everyone else up and down the street did the safe thing: we stood out on the sidewalk and watched the approaching storm. I watched its progress on radar on my cell phone. I took some photos.

“Do you think we’ll get struck by lightning?” Naomi asked as the lightning zipped across the sky, deep thunder rolling and crashing overhead.

I was busy trying to focus my cell phone camera. “Well, if we did, we wouldn’t have to worry about a tornado anymore.”

Silver linings, people, silver linings.

Shortly thereafter, the temperature dropped about 10 degrees and the rain and wind arrived, so we stood inside the door of my apartment, watching. I put my impatiens plant inside. I offered Naomi a Diet Coke.

No sense being rude when you have guests.

“It’s nice to have a beverage for watching entertainment,” I said. We stood and sipped our beverages while the rain picked up and hail sputtered about. When the parking lot across the street looked like a hurricane, I mentioned we could run about four feet down the sidewalk to the basement entrance and watch from there.

In less than ten seconds, the time from my door to the basement entrance, we were soaked. Literally soaked.

“Can you believe how hard the rain is coming down?” Naomi asked.

I was wiping my glasses off. “Yep. That was quite a shower. Better pressure than I’m used to in my apartment. Kind of a refreshing treat.”

This may become a regular thing. Sirens go off, and I get a social call from my friend. I’ll keep the fridge stocked in Diet Coke.

There are, however, some beautiful trees that line the sidewalks.

In May, five of the trees exploded into pink blossoms and it was lovely to walk beneath them. As the blossoms began to age and fall, my morning walk had about 30 seconds of what seemed like pink snow. A week and a half ago, a different tree bloomed into tiny white blossoms in clusters that reminded me of a lilac bush. The smell was heavenly, faintly evident despite the overpowering smell of car exhaust and gas. This tree is beginning to lose its bloom, but another section of trees is showing its own flowers.

I feel pretty lucky about it, for some reason.

I got into the habit of reaching up and pulling a branch down each morning to smell the flower bunches and look at the fine detail of the flowers. It made my morning. I miss all of the flowers from the farm, and perhaps these are my surrogate flowers, these scented trees in the middle of noise and machines and concrete.

Yesterday, while walking home from work, I noticed the woman in front of me. It was difficult not to, as she was talking loudly on her cell phone in a tone of voice that suggested she was upset. She’d just gotten off work at the hospital, it appeared, and was striding along oblivious to anything but her own self. Upon arriving at the white lilac-like tree, she impatiently pushed the lowest branch of flowers out of her way, causing some to fall on the ground, and walked on. They were in her way. Perhaps she didn’t see them as anything but a nuisance, and she had other things to do rather than waste time stopping.

Whatever the case, I thought it interesting. I guess you can decide to push the flowers away or you can pull them in and enjoy them.