Harvest was at one point well under way, but now has been severely stalled due to rain. There was a very windy storm on Tuesday morning with a couple inches of rain. This morning there is a large band of storms moving in from western Kansas--inching slowly eastward as one looks at the radar screens.

I remember so many nights as a child glued to TV screens watching the radar loops and listening to the voices of weathermen (sometimes women) tell about where a particular storm was moving, and who should be taking cover at that particular time. All the while I imagined that suddenly, unexpectedly, our house would be blown off its foundations in some thundering kick of wind and thunder and lightning. I've had dreams about this, even just as recently as a couple of weeks ago, when I was still in Budapest. I had a dream where I was standing out in an open field of grass--short but stout clumps of green grass, like an imense lawn that had not been mowed--and I remember looking back and seeing a large dark cloud with fingers clutching at the ground moving towards me. I remember ducking to let it pass over me, as if that would work, and suddenly there was such a large thump, like a large shoe being stomped on a wood floor, but the noise was so powerful that it almost knocked the wind out of me; the large force of a tremendous amount of air being flung against some resistent barrier. This is all that I recall.

Now it is cloudy; harvest is being delayed, and will not end within this week unless the atmosphere dries out very soon.