Windshorn

We get a fair amount of wind here in the Columbia River Gorge. It's part of the reason we're one of the premiere windsurfing, kite surfing, hang gliding et cetera spots in the country. Here in Lyle we have Doug's Beach, which every summer is taken over by extreme athletes cruising the plentiful and robust gusts.

Up at our property where the elevation tops 2,000 feet, we regularly get sustained gusts above 20 MPH, which can make for some howling and house-rattling conditions. Consequences are inevitable: tossed trash cans, relocated lawn gnomes, felled limbs on occasion, and loss of leaf.

Not three days after we put them in the ground, our two new cherry trees are all but bald thanks to high winds over the last couple of nights. There was even the start of a fruit or two, but alas now all are gone and our poor cherry trees are back at square one.

There's not much we can do to protect the trees from the wind - at least that we can think of - so can only hope for fairer conditions as spring tempers into summer. Until then, we roll with the punches and focus on the leaves we have left. That's gotta be a metaphor for something.