Heather's Garden

I Swear I'm Okay

My mother has been begging me to post, "People are probably worried about you."  And I just got an email from an on-line friend asking if I was okay.  I am, but this fall took a lot out of me.  From Irene to Hogwarts to work, I really didn't have any free time during September and October.  The only gardening I did in October was to pot up some of my herbs and bring them to the Blackstone Library to create an herbology station (photo credit Tricia Bohan Photography):

Here is an incredible video of the kids portion of the Hogwarts fundraiser created by Jess Smith on assignment for our local paper The Sound: http://www.shorepublishing.com/article/20111101/MEDIA0109/111109946/0/media0109

And a few of her amazing photos:

The full slideshow of Jess' photos can be found here.

And if you've always wondering what I sound like you can find links to the TV appearances I did to promote the event on the press page of the Hogwarts event site: http://blackstonehalloween.org/Press.html

I really and truly don't remember the last time I walked into the garden.  It's certainly been warm enough to be out there working, and I imagine there are some plants that think it's spring.  Maybe I'll take a few minutes and wander out there tomorrow.

I Have A Really Good Excuse

How is it possible that I haven't posted since August?  Post Irene we've really just ignored the garden, but I have a good excuse.  I'm co-chairing a fundraising event for my local library. 

 

Please check out the website (I designed it, so don't expect it to be perfect) and if you're local please consider buying tickets and joining us for what is sure to be an incredible weekend of events!

Feeling Lucky

Irene has been a major pain in the you know what, but basically we came through untouched.  One large limb down (which Lee got down to bare wood on Monday):

 

And a tree that fell into our neighbor's yard (but missed their house unlike the branch that came down from another neighbor's tree onto they car and poked through their roof a little):

 

Here's our major property damage.  The heavy duty vinyl cover on the patio furniture (the only thing we couldn't fit in the basement or shed or lay flat) broke off two of it's velcro ties and flapped pretty good in the wind.  Those chairs are pretty heavy though, so they didn't move far.  This reminds me of that photo that made the rounds after the earthquake with the one chair that had fallen:

Like the majority of Branford we still don't have power, but we do have running water and a functioning water heater (gotta love natural gas).  I have more than a few friends without both.  Our neighbors came back up around 5:30pm this evening (who knew we were on different circuits?) and have graciously run an extension cord over to our house. 

What are our essentials?  Well we already had to trash everything in the fridge.  I look lovely in candlelight and the flashlights are holding up well under heavier than normal use.  We decided that we would plug in the cable-box and see if we had internet and telephone.  Shockingly it works.  So we're sitting in our candlelit living room watching the Yankees/Red Sox game and counting ourselves lucky.

We did a few things right during this whole thing.  We did all our laundry on Saturday.  We are not good about stocking up when food is on sale, so it was easy for us to eat what we had in the freezer and fridge that we would be sorry to lose.  Condiments however are goners, but looking at the dates on some of those bottles as we tossed them made me not so sad to see them go.  We brought the coolers up from the basement before the storm and bought 4 bags of ice between us on Friday and Saturday.  That let me give the neighbors a 10 pound bag of ice on Sunday when they couldn't find any, which might have made them slightly more amenable to running an extension cord over to us tonight when they got power. 

I'm not good about saying I need help, so it took a lot for me to ask a friend in North Branford with power if I could come over and charge my electronics on Monday.  But the few hours with her in civilization recharged more than my computer and cell phones. 

May I also say a big thank you to Pacileo's here?  Grabbing a hot pizza and a few cold beers on Sunday after the storm and charging my blackberry there will always be a happy memory after more than 24 hours of extreme anxiety.  Chatting with the other people from the neighborhood there while we waited for our pizza was the only source of information we had after cell phones stopped working that afternoon.

I'm still not convinced I wouldn't have been happier driving out to Chicago, but I do think I would have been worrying about everything and everyone here.  Seeing the scale of the damage to areas not far from us has been shocking.  We went down to Guilford on Sunday to check on SS1 and his grandparents -- all fine.  He told us we had to go down to the docks.  Not sure exactly how this happened, but think the storm surge must have washed away the base of the parking area and picked up the asphalt?:

 

I was very happy to see that Grass Island survived (a lot of things in Madison, Guilford, Branford, and East Haven along the shore didn't).  Anyone who grew up in Guilford has plenty of memories associated with this view:

 

I hope you and yours are safe tonight and if you need a hot shower...

We came through Irene just fine. A tree down, but it fell in neigbhor's yard. No damage to house or garden, but like the rest of Branford, no power. Luckily a good friend in North Branford still has power so up I went up to recharge today. No power at the offIce so I don't even have to feel guilty about not paying attention to work! We have running water and hot water too plus the ability to cook on the gas grill (and side burner) and I keep lucking into grocery stores with ice so life is good.

Should We Stay Or Should We Go?

Hey everyone, first we're alive and well, just very busy and not really gardening much.  But here's something I wrote for my local Patch and thought I'd share here too.  Tomorrow morning we'll be preparing the garden for Irene.  Not looking forward to this at all.  Here's the post from Patch:

I was a few weeks shy of 11 when Hurricane Gloria hit CT and living in my childhood home in Guilford.  We were inland, pretty far east (almost Madison), and on reasonably high ground.  However, I think my fear of thunderstorms, and I'd like to call it almost anything but fear, but that's the only word that fits, must come from experiencing Hurricane Gloria. 

If you remember that age...10 almost 11, you're very innocent, but old enough to pick up on the emotions of the adults around you, and what I was picking up from my parents was disturbing.  I remember my stepfather calling the town and asking where the emergency shelter was if he experienced flooding.  He was told St. George's Church was our emergency shelter, but it was a good 3.5 miles of extremely wooded roads from our house.  It was also considerably lower ground than our home.  He not so politely informed the person with whom he was speaking of those facts. 

During the storm we sat in the living room with the roar of the wind all around us prepared to run down to the basement if it got any worse.  The eye arrived and my stepfather and I went out to survey the damage.  I remember how eerily quiet it was after all that wind.  We found power lines down over the road in both directions from our house -- not at all surprising given how many trees uprooted during that storm.  I'm sure you all remember that the second half of the hurricane never arrived.  For some reason I have no memory of my mom or my little sister at all, but I know they were there.

For years after Hurricane Gloria I remember missing the trees that came down on the Guilford Green during the storm.  I'm not at all sure when I stopped noticing that those trees were missing, but at some point I did.  I was a little girl who didn't particularly enjoy getting dirty, but I thought the caverns that the uprooted trees in our woods left behind were magical places.  I never did have the courage to climb down into one though.

After Gloria hit we were without power for 10 days and since we had well water, which doesn't work so well without electricity to run the pump, no water for 10 days.  I was going to school in New Haven at the time and if I remember correctly we returned to school after only 3 days, while Guilford had a whole week off!  I remember thinking it wasn't fair that we had no power or water at home but I still had to go to school!  We did have a wood stove in the house, so at least there were hot meals. 

Things are a little different now.  I'm reasonably certain that even though our house is only 13 feet above sea level and about 400 feet from Branford River it won't flood, but I have absolutely no idea how long we'll be without power.  Because I'm almost certain that we'll be without power.  So if I can't work from home or travel the 45 miles to my office (and who knows if there will be power there), why shouldn't I head out of town?  My sister lives in Chicago, just a short 14.5 hour drive west and has a spare room for us.

Should we stay or should we go?