Going With the Flow

Well, here it is the end of today. It was a gray, damp, dreary day for the most part. Then the sun came out and the skies cleared. The breeze picked up and it feels cooler than it did yesterday, which felt like summer again. I had thought I was going to working in my potting area, but woke up with a sore throat and aching all over, so decided to just more or less take it easy indoors. I did go out to water a plant that needed a good drink, and to my delight saw three Homere blooms, so picked them and brought them indoors. Their scent and color sweetly lifting my spirits.

Yesterday was three years since Wilma blasted over us. We lost our power around 11 p.m. the night before she hit and it wasn't restored until 13 days later. She hit the coast of FL on the west side as a cat. 3 with winds 120 mph. She was a huge hurricane and she blasted us from the evening before until around 2 p.m. the next day. We had sustained winds of 110 mph with higher gusts. We even had a small tornado pass right over head and it sounded just like they say, a freight train. We had gone through Frances and Jeanne the year before, being on the edge of the eye with both, this time we went through the eye. We went out in the eye to get some tarp up over our shed that had a pine come down into it. Right as DH was finishing I said hurry, here comes the back half, you could sense the change coming. We no sooner got indoors that the winds started again with a fury and the back half was worse that the front half. I was terrified. But, the storm passed, our little cottage survived and when we went outside to start taking care of things we had to come back in for flannel shirts as the temp had dropped about 30 or more degrees and was now 58. We basically camped out for the next two weeks as did a lot of FL, some folks for even longer while they waited for power to come back on.

Here's the shed with the tree in it. Our back neighbor said she watched the tree going back and forth in the winds until it just went into the shed. When DH started cutting off the top limbs of tree and parts of the trunk at the top, the tree rose up out of the shed. We left part of it and used it for support for one end of an awning that we put up on the east side of shed, after DH restored it.

After restoration.

This next picture is inside the area.
Stainless steel sink we found curb-side shopping when a restaurant was remodeling.
It is 10 1/2 ft. long by about 24" deep.
DH made braces underneath to hold it up.
You can see a garden window that I use
for a mini greenhouse for starting seeds.

Here is a close up view.
The wrought iron leaf thing on the wall is a wall planter that holds pots. We found this on the next block curbside with a pile of stuff left from a yard sale they had had.
I set two bird houses on two of the pot holders. All the bird houses were made by DH.
They all lost their tree homes.
The round piece is a French table top made up of pieces of bamboo. A friend who has an antique shop asked me if I wanted it as they were just going to throw it away. The base had a lot of termite damage, but the top was fine, just some peeling paint.



That's it for going with the flow. We don't know what each day may bring.
Hopefully we learn and grow from our experiences.

FlowerLady

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Life isn't measured by the number of breaths we take,

but by the number of moments that take our breath away.

Anonymous