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Wednesday, June 30, 2010

A tale of a big wind and a sail and me!

Larry and I are updating our little yard in back. We have planted half of our 15x20 yard in garden and the rest we are making into a patio. Larry has been working or should I say laboring for days laying stones for the extension to the existing cement slab. Yesterday I bought a 10x10 portable gazebo for shade. It is so huge in our yard that it covers the whole patio. It looks great and made laying the tiles in 90 degrees a lot easier than when the sun was beating on Larry and baking him. Well now the story begins... he went to the temple today to do a shift and a little thunderstorm blew in with gusts of about 30 to 40 miles per hour. When I heard the wind I jumped up and ran outside and sure enough the gazebo was blown across the garden. I grabbed my shoes and ran out to save it. Very funny! It was a giant sail and when I tried to move it to stablize it, it nearly blew me away! It would have been really funny to watch me trying to hold on to it so I could secure it without stepping on my new garden. First I tried to hold it down by putting some 10 inch spikes in each leg and hammer them thru a plastic ring into the ground, but it was just like a toothpick and the thing was still trying to blow away. I was hanging on the bar that goes around the top of the roof and the four 8 ft legs were skiddering around the patio. It actually partially picked me up and I was afraid I couldn't hang on to it. By then I was trying to figure out what to do to secure it. So while trying to hold it, one leg blew over the fence and I couldn't move without losing the whole thing in the wind. I lifted as high as I could and the next gust blew it back into the yard and onto it's top. Ah hah that was the answer! I positioned it to fit the patio and put some bricks and a planter on top and just as I got it secured the wind died down and I stood there sweating and panting and laughing!