Or, at least, try to.

We had a line of severe thunderstorms come through here on Sunday, and along with the seven-hour-long power outage my flagpole decided that it was time to stop being upright. It leaned over, impelled by the wind drag on the flag that I had forgotten to take down, to stop at a 45-degree angle. The US flag ended up buried inside a cedar tree, so it didn't technically touch the base earth.

Still, I took the flag off the pole first thing Monday morning so it could dry out and assessed the damage. The pole is one of the slightly pricey telescoping ones, so I was worried that it might have gotten damaged. It had not, yet despite the 50-odd pounds of concrete around the base of it, the wind (which gusted at times up to 50 mph) managed to heel it over.

So, this morning, I did some excavating. The pole's now a little deeper than it had been, and I'll hoick another sack of concrete in on top of it tomorrow. The goal is to have the entire job done by Friday, and the flag will go back up (it gets replaced with a new one every July 4th).

And the next time it storms, I'll remember to lower the pole and put the flag in the garage.