Hurricane Irene Evacuation and forebearance

broken tree branch hurricane damage

Hurricane Irene ran us out of Shore Side Farm House.  The county ordered us out, so we decided to go. We have so many power failures out here that they are a daily occurrence. Most are a blip, a short outage that causes clocks and electronics go into blinking mode. Knowing what an annoyance these outages are, we thought there was the possibility of being without power for a few days if the storm was bad and strong enough. That threat sealed our decision to go inland. When we left here it was blowing big time. The rain was very heavy and the trees were swaying and flipping in the air. In the winter during the blizzards we have been without water and heat for several days. These experiences made our decision easy. Our relatives took us in over night. It was a long night, but we were grateful for the pretty timid deluge the storm brought inland. When we returned to the farm house, we discovered that mother nature had been kind. Our losses were small.

Fortunately, the damage wasn't too extensive. Two huge branches were broken off a very large full Ash tree.  They crashed onto a nice full Pyrancantha bush full of orange berries.  The Ash tree was lovely, it now looks wounded.  The Pyrancantha will survive, it seems pretty buoyant. We will survive too. Thankfully we were spared any pain. On the phone today I have ascertained that many many of our friends and relatives in the Catskill Mountains of New York State, and the Green Mountains of Vermont have been devastated by floods, terrible terrible devastating floods. Their homes and town have been wiped off the map, a frightful, frightful loss.  Prayers to all. Prayers for us too that those floods don't flood us out further down the line. A bad mix of tide and passing flood waters could mean more disaster ahead. Let's hope not.

In all this hubbub our hummingbirds went elsewhere. We left out food, but they depleted it over our time away. Feeders refilled we thought they would be back this morning, but that did not happen. We found out from our neighbor that they moved to his hummingbird fe,eders where he hasn't had a hummer all summer. As the day went on our numbers increased. We're hoping the number of hummers get back to normal by tomorrow.