Well Tuesday started out beautiful but that changed dramatically and very quickly from blue skies and bright sunshine to clouds then rain, then gusting wind blowing rain sideways with thunder and lightning. It pored off and on all evening an as I make this post this morning it's still raining .
Well it looking more and more like this horrific hurricane Irma will come up through the middle of Florida. We are hoping our family and friends get out now and head north. Amy and her family are making arrangements to head here for who knows how long and we are hoping Bobby can get here as well with his family. It looks as if GG will spend the occasion in a Miami hospital which is usually built to with stand these kind of storms as she is not healthy enough to be evacuated. Hopefully the storms will be only a glancing blow with less wind than projected after it leaves the Caribbean. The mountains in Cuba should take some of the energy away from the eye and its circulation.
We did get in a hike around noon to the top of the mountain and visited with the Avants(Billy and Paula) and then the Brownings(Joe and Jetta) before heading back down the mountain trail to a lite lunch of salad. I was scheduled to play pickle ball around 6'ish but when the evening storm moved in around 4 'ish and stayed with heavy rain we cancelled until another day. After lunch we settled on the front porch and read for the next couple of hours. I did piddle around in the garden and harvested some beautiful radish tops with just a handful of developed radishes and then sowed more Swiss chard seeds. Hopefully they will mature enough for me to take back to Florida for my winter garden; of course that depends on it we still have a house and a garden to plant after this hurricane passes through.
We may be spending the winter here in the mountains. We are fortunate to have this second home where our family can have a roof over our heads and a warm bed to sleep in. It's been years since I've spend a winter away from Florida; how about since 1963 when I last spent a winter in the north, oh well. I left home in the summer of '64 and never went back to the frozen north except on occasion only when my grandmother died in January and was buried during an extreme cold frozen snow storm. I vowed to myself then I was through with the cold weather, now its kind of fun to get a snow before we head back in November to Florida.
If this storm is anything like Andrew that hit the Miami area years ago it will be devastating to say the least. Huge areas of the lower part of Florida looked like a large lawn mower went through neighbor hoods leveling homes and infrastructure. It will be unbelievable the damage. We troopers where dispatched to the area to keep looters out of the area for months. It wasn't a pretty sight with all the destruction.
Well after my usual morning routines and some quiet time we had a late breakfast before I headed out to check on the gardens. Once again I found a couple fat cut worms who are plentiful this year. Usually it slugs who cause so much havoc with my garden plants but so far they have been null and void. We were on the phone with Amy as she made some small preparations to our lawn furniture moving them into the garage and making sure the garage door is secure as well as picking up a few items to bring with them. I think they are leaving Thursday before the roads get too clogged with folks heading north. Hopefully it will be just a trip for precaution and the storm with turn eastward into the Atlantic and away from land, LATER
