Friday Meanderings

rose

rose

It’s been a strange year for my garden.  Almost all of my butterfly plants have died from the surge of salt water during Hurricane Hermine.  Today I noticed that the shrimp plants were dead and a large pink salvia that I’ve had for several years is slowly withering away.  All the cosmos are just about gone and they are in a spot that didn’t get flooded.  I planted them many years ago.  Never feed or watered them but they’ve always thrived.

But the roses, alamandas, and plumerias are all bursting with blooms.  These plants spent several hours in that same flood water.  And what’s really weird is that the St. Augustine grass is thick and green and thriving.

So Hurricane Matthew will be here today.  Since this one is on the other coast, we have the opposite issue with the canal. The water is very low.  We are supposed to get a lot of wind.  Yesterday we went to Sam’s Club and it was crazy.  Seems everyone was stocking up before the storm.  Or maybe they were evacuating.  Guess they learned their lesson from Hermine!

This is what is on my calendar!

Scarecrow Festival in Heritage Village in Crystal River on Saturday, October 8th.  Wondering if that will be cancelled???

Citrus County Commissioner Ron Kitchen will be holding another town hall meeting on Thursday, October 13 at the Homosassa library from 5:30 – 7.  We’ll be there.  These meetings are always interesting.

The Suitcase Party to benefit the Boys and Girls Club is Friday, October 14th.  Better get my tickets!  We haven’t been to this event before but have heard great things.

Refuge Day is a chance to see Three Sisters Springs for free!

refuge day

The 42nd Annual Homosassa Arts, Crafts, and Seafood Festival is November 12th and 13th.  Terry and I, along with many more volunteers, have been working overtime on getting this setup.  I’ve spent most of this week updating the website.  Last week it was working on the graphic design for the t-shirts.  And before that it was getting the advertising at the radio stations and newspapers.  My blogs have suffered from my inattention.  But it will be here in a little more than a month and I will get back to my normal life!

Oh yeah, and trying to figure out all the rules for running for office, getting signs and business cards, etc. etc. etc.  That will be over soon, too.  Yippee!

Have a great weekend!

Kathy

Friday Meanderings

flood debris

flood debris

That’s the debris in front of the house three doors down from us.

And that’s what is in front of every house that is sea level on both sides of the river. And most of the entire Nature Coast.

I was at a “happy hour” last week which was more like a “get together and commiserate hour” and one of the women said, and I paraphrase, ” it could have been worse.  it’s a car.  i’m alive.”  and then she said ” but i might have lost my roses.”

My house is 8 feet above sea level.  We had minor minor minor damage.

But I did lose my purple coneflowers and blue salvias.  They don’t like to be immersed in brackish water for 12 hours.

My roses are fine.

A lot of people have “storm flu” around here.  Probably partly from exhaustion, having storm water touch bare skin, taking cold showers, total stress of losing more than you thought you would.

Just want to make one more statement before I finally get beyond this whole hurricane storm flooding total life changing fiasco.

Like I said, we lost very little.  But those that lost a lot keep hearing, “Why didn’t you prepare? Why weren’t you ready?  You live on the water.  Didn’t you know better?”

No.  We didn’t.  We watched the weather forecast that this storm was approaching for TWO WEEKS!  The day of, we got a reverse 911 call from the Sheriff’s department in the early afternoon that there would be NO mandatory evacuation.  If we were worried about flooding, that the local storm shelter was open.

Then around 8 pm, we got another reverse 911 call saying “Whoops, looks like we got a storm surge coming.  Possibly 8 feet! Sorry.  Hope you’ll be okay!”  No, that’s not verbatim, either. Totally made that up.  But that was the message.

Okay.  Like I said, last post about the storm.

Moving on…..

Terry and I have been to many meetings this week.  Getting ready for the Festival.  Monthly meetings of the groups that we are in.

But we also had a talk from the Citrus County Mosquito Board.

We mainly went because friends of ours asked us to set up the meeting at the Civic Club.  So we had to open up the building anyhow!  But it was amazingly informative!

Mosquito Control Board

Can I bore you with some facts?

There are 84 different mosquito types in Florida.  47 in Citrus County.

Zika has already been here–travel related. But, if that travel related victim is bit by a mosquito, it travels all over the place.  When they have a report of Zika, they do not know the exact location because of privacy issues.  But they do know the cross roads.

So they fog one mile around that location.

For three days. And go door to door.

There was so much interesting info.  You would not believe.  Like, all the bromeliads I have are just mosquito breeding chambers.  I have to flush them out every three days with water.

I need to put mosquito dunk thingees (yes, totally technical term) in my four rain barrels. Even though they have lids, if we don’t put silicone around the pipes and net across the top, it’s a mosquito breeding ground!

And I must scrub out my bird baths every three days.  (Okay, I already knew that and have been trying to keep on that schedule)

So….

What’s going on?

There’s a scallop festival this weekend.

Next week is the “Party with a Purpose”.  (Instead of the Homosassa River Raft Race–still don’t know why?)

But Terry and I will be at the Old Homosassa Heritage Council Booth with raffle tickets for a Golf Cart and we will have some really great t-shirts.  All money goes to painting the Old Homosassa Water Tower.

Scheesh. Everyone wants to get beyond that whole Water Tower thing. It’s been rebuilt. We need to get this thing painted so I can quit talking about that project and start on a bigger and better one.  Yeah, we have other things to save!

Okay.  That’s it for this week.

Have a great weekend!

Kathy

Friday Meanderings

jeep in the water

Just when I decided I’m really going to make a better effort at updating this blog on a regular basis, Hurricane Hermine paid a little visit to our fishing village in the wee hours of last Friday morning.  And there went all my good intentions.

When I woke up that morning, Terry was in the garage.  Me, still kinda sleepy eyed, wondered why my shoes that I had so neatly arranged on their little shoe tray were on the other side of the garage.

They had floated there.  Three inches of storm surge in the garage.  As the sun peeked up, we could see that our house had turned into an island.

The view

But…..

We were one of the fortunate few.  Our neighbors’ and friends’ homes and cars were flooded. Trees came down.  Power was out for 36 hours. Boats, canoes, trash cans and other miscellaneous bric-a-brac just floated away.  The small amount of water quickly drained away.

We headed out in our Jeep late in the morning, thinking that the water had receded enough. Some of our friends that don’t live here full time were a bit anxious about their property. Hey, it’s a Jeep, no problem!

jeep in the water
Don’t drown. Turn Around! And we turned around!  Later an airboat made it’s way down the same flooded streets.

My boots came in handy.

boots

boots

My friend Rosey, that said she tied her canoe on her deck?  Wise advice.  We left ours on the kayak ramp and had to wait until the water receded enough to get out to the kayaks to make our next attempt to check out the neighborhood.  (And Rosey’s house was fine but she lost her car to the flood waters.)

I told another friend yesterday that walking in that water creeped me out.  She said they had to swim across their road to get to her mother’s house.  But she did buy her mother some white boots the day before the storm.

Yeah.  That made me feel like a jerk.

I could show you photos of all the debris stacked along the roads and the storm damage but I’m not going to.  You’ve probably already seen it.  And if you haven’t, it’s bad.  And sad.

The Homosassa Civic Club Campus was flooded.  We’ve got professionals in to clean up the office building.  But members took on the task of cleaning up the Civic Center.

Before
Before
During
During
after
After

Thank you Christine, Rhonda, Dave, Jake, Bill, Clay, Terry, and me. Bleach, water, and 1 1/2 hours of labor.

Some of our regular hard working club members were still cleaning up their own property.

Still have to get in a contractor to rebuild the areas that were dry-walled.

I promise.

Next week.

I’ll post more.

Really!

Have a great weekend!

Kathy