i agree with karyn. we never get tornadoes and this year we have had several touch down . the piedmont triad farmers market was hit hard . a direct hit to that area and the damage was massive . many buildings in the immediate area got structural damage , including a few at the market . it took out a 30 foot cinderblock wall , and every building has tons of crack lines going down the walls. hundreds and hundreds of trees are down . trailers thrown over 400 yards from original packing area . huge commercial freezers and refrigerators thrown hundreds of feet from their location too. it was like a bomb hit and destroyed almost everything . friday a group of us went to help clean up. when i arrived i could not believe my eyes . police everywhere , red cross , ems vans, and tons of tv stations . just amazing !! we could not save many of the farmers plants , i would guess a 98-99 % loss. all we could do is shovel everything in a huge pile and let the front end loaders remove it. really a sad day for the farmers . everywhere you looked trucks were pulling trees with ropes and tons of heavy equipment was moving trees . if one tree was down , 300 were . just unbelievable !!! we did get the market back up and ready for the farmers to sell this weekend . due to structural damage , huge parts of the market were off limits . many of the farmers had to use a gravel parking lot . saturaday i did not sell my stuff at the market. instead i decided to help some of the farmers hit the hardest. i went in at 9am and left at 6 pm . i could not help them all but i did get around to 5 farmers. i did everything from bag plants, water , to help give instructions on growing them . i did find one thing out abouut myself, i truely do not know a thing about annuals .lol i want to send special thanks out to everyone that volunteered their time to help save our market , especially the customers who came in and worked hard, and the red cross for helping feed these people and for doctoring up the cut i received cleaning up. my prayers goes out to all the tornado vicits in my state and across the country .

I guess we were all waiting for the other shoe to drop, after all those early summer temps. I didn't think it was going to be this bad. We just came in from covering as much as we had covers for. All our pots of every size, the recycle containers upside down over a few small shrubs. Sheets over four roses that are fully leafed out. The Buddleias are covered. Tried to put a big piece of plastic over one of our Viburnum carlesii that has leaves and flower buds, but wasn't big enough and no amount of bricks and even a cement block would keep it over it with that wind. So we gave up on that one. Didn't have enough to cover the hydrangeas. Good thing they all bloom on new wood. They're on their own. And I didn't try to cover the daffs, which were looking wonderful. I think the fact that they are forecasting low temps all this week and not much warming in sight for the next 10 days, is what worries me. Oh well, what will be will be.

I work out almost every day, and I definitely walk my dogs every day. I think it's great that are you making such a consistent effort to keep active. Strength training is very important, especially as we age as it keeps our bones healthy and is a step is the right direction for preventing fractures.

Oh no say it ain't so Glenda..... bumming out.