It's Alive!

Picture taken at 8 a.m. today! 

People! My peony survived the storm!

Remember yesterday when I was so happy that my peony (pronounced PEE-uh-knee, which is the correct way to pronounce it and I don't care what you pee-OH-knee mispronouncers think) was setting on buds but I was concerned because the weather forecasters were basically telling us to put our affairs in order because we were DOOOOOOMED and I was pretty sure there was no peony-zation in my future?

It survived!

We did not have the hail some had to the north of us (I'm so sorry, Wichita) or the winds some had to the south of us (I'm so sorry, Oklahoma City). What we had was torrential rain for just a few minutes and some tiny pitter-pats of hail.

Oh, and we had one monstrous thunderclap of a lightning strike that brought me straight up out of my chair and left me sniffing the air for the rest of the evening because I was convinced it had struck the House on the Corner and that the house was on fire.

This morning I messaged Boy#2, who studies lightning and who (even though he lives half a continent away) can pinpoint where lightning has struck pretty much anywhere. He checked the records for lightning in our area at that time, and sure enough, at 9:23 p.m. a four-stroke flash hit a house less than a block away from where I was just relaxing into an episode of The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.

"Wow! A four-stroke flash!" I wrote back. "That must be gigantic!"

Uh, no. Turns out a four-stroke flash of lightning is a fairly standard, run-of-the-mill lightning, not one that anyone will be writing a scientific journal article about. In fact, the mean number of strokes per flash according to a few small studies is 4.6 and 6.4 so our flash was actually below average. (That is copied verbatim from what Two messaged me. I do not know what it means, except for the final five words.)

But I'm giving that lightning bolt credit for the beautiful blossoms I found this morning. In my mind, the poor plant was giving up the ghost when BOOM! A four-stroke flash, a massive clap of thunder, and

Good job, puny little four-stroke lightning flash. You've made me very happy.