I could handle the pea sized hail bouncing off my car, the rumbles of the thunder and the house-rattling keeee-RACKS when the lightning hit nearby, but then the cats started to wail.

That's when I got scared.

Mr. Man, when the animals start to freak, that's when you know you're in for some shake, rattle and roll.

We don't get storms like this very often. When they happen, I can't begin to tell you how deeply I regret opening up a three acre yard around our house, making the roof of our place the highest thing in our little swath cut out of the woods.

Oh yeah, my need for sunlight and gardens drops big time when Mother Nature starts hurtling mass quantities of electricity and small hunks of ice down around my home.

You want to be one with nature? Might I recommend a log home with a glass skylight during a thunder/hailstorm? Not only can you watch the lightning dance all over the sky above your head, clearly feel the vibration of every nearby lightning strike, but heck, you can also have the fun of wondering just how much hail it would take to break that skylight.

Fortunately this afternoon I didn't find out what that would be.

And then three hours and an equal number of inches of rain later, it's all gone. The thunder, lightning, hail ... the sheets of rain pounding on a tin roof, all gone. The midday twilight leaves, the sky brightens, the birds start singing again.

And if it wasn't for the wheelbarrow that caught all that rain, you wouldn't know anything out of the ordinary had happened at all.

Sometimes you have to look unexpected places to get the whole story.