Paying attention

After bringing another load of wood into the kitchen last night, I took a look at the weather forecast. They were calling for freezing rain, up to a third of an inch in our area. It has been a very wet winter. The sump pump seems to run almost continuously. The sump pump is important because if we were to get a lot of water in the basement, it could ruin the furnace.
I started thinking. If we get a lot of ice as forecast, we could lose power. If we lose power the sump pump will quit. We have a generator for that purpose, but it's in the garage where the garage door operates electronically. If the power goes out, it will be difficult to get to the generator.
So I backed the car out of the garage, and  backed out the generator as well. It had started raining so I covered the generator with a tarp which I held down with four pieces of wood I pulled off the aforementioned stack of wood in the kitchen. Then I rounded up extension cords in order to connect the generator to the sump pump in the basement. As I was doing this, I thought that maybe all this work would act as sort of a good luck talisman to protect us from the freezing rain that was in the forecast.
Sure enough, the rain stopped. When I got up in the middle of the night to fill up the wood stove, I looked outside and there wasn't any rain and there wasn't any ice. We had dodged a bullet-this time.
Living in the country in Vermont is wonderful, but it isn't easy, especially in the winter. Paying attention to the elements isn't a luxury, it's a necessity. Paying attention, an important aspect of life here on the other side of the creek, and as a zen student.
Driving back from the morning's meditation, 32 degrees, and wind from the south.