What blows

I woke up early this morning to the sound of the wind, mad with power, giving hell to the trees out back like some kind of bully saying Stop hitting yourself, stop hitting yourself...

I watched through the gap in my blinds long enough to imagine, several times over, what it would be like to see pieces of that big tree crack and start falling to the ground below. It seemed unlikely that the branches could take that amount of abuse much longer before they snapped.

But when I woke up again at nine, they were fine. Gently swaying.

I have a tendency to be hyperbolic about the weather (okay, and everything else) but this really does seem like the windiest month I've ever lived through.