D.O.P.-T.

The wind was rising when I walked the dog yesterday at about 4:30, was high by midnight when I took her out in the yard, and overnight became a gale. When I woke at 8:30 the dog was scared to go out to pee and I had to accompany her; when I went out to put out kitty food, the porch was littered with shredded leaves torn from the privet trees, and the chair with the teddy bear on it had walked several feet. I put it back, retrieved the stacked plastic wet food dishes that had been scattered, and put out the new in a cracked café-au-lait cup. Silver came out and tried to eat kibble, and I saw Monty on the fence, huddled in the lee of the neighbors' shed. When I got up again at noon, a brave attempt had been made to eat the wet food; it's blowing less often and less hard now, so I risked a new plastic dish. I retrieved the one that had blown into the middle of the driveway, which has been thoroughly reswept with a tideline next to the house of mostly new stuff from the neighbors' weeping tree. One orange had come down in the rear. Fortunately the huge plum tree is bare, or it might have dropped large branches. The basement door had blown open, snapping the top off the handle of a mop that had been propped against it. The state fire map shows one fire down in Southern California and just "hot spots" dotted in the coast range near Santa Cruz and Boulder Creek. But I see from the Chronicle that those had been fires, that trees fell on BART tracks, and that we were lucky not to have a power outage. The Hunt was clearly riding; I should have thought to greet them.

( Magnolia shadows on a palm tree trunk. In a mild breeze. )