The calm before the you know what

I was surprised at the number of e-mails and comments I’ve had from so many of you asking if we were prepared for the coming hurricane, so I thought I’d do a quick post to let you know that we are. Prepared, that is.

And thank you for you concern ~

My husband, a former boy scout, has been making preparations for days. (One of them was buying some batteries – well before they sold out). Hurricane Irene has been downgraded to a category 1 storm but it’s still packing a lot of punch (and media hype) and its swath is nearly 700 miles wide. As I write this (around 10 AM Saturday), the skies are overcast and about an hour ago, the wind has began to pick up.

We’re concerned with the amount of rainfall and the high winds because the ground here is already pretty saturated. You can tell just by how green the grass looks.





I took this shot from one of the windows on the 3rd floor. My husband is airing out the Element because I took all the recyclables and a couple of bags of trash to the dump. The scent was quite pungent while driving the 15-minute journey to our local landfill.

He packs the car and I drive to the landfill.

We’re quite the team, don’t you think?





Looking southeast from the same window.

One of the tracks that was forecast yesterday had the eye of the storm moving right up the Chesapeake Bay which would have it going directly over the manor house on the hill here. Who knows what will happen, though.

I don’t plan on stressing over it.




This gives you some idea of how saturated our earth is here. We’ve got mushrooms sprouting up under many of the trees.





When we lived in Pennsylvania a few years ago, near the Mushroom Capital of the World, I took lots of macro shots of the magical fungi. Here are some of my favorites:

I love mushroom macros





And here’s a few I took under the hickory tree in the front yard this morning.





Back to the preparedness . . . my husband even has the garden staked down. I just can’t believe the wall of morning glories he has here.

: : :

And so, to all my friends and readers along the eastern seaboard and inland ~ stay safe, stay smart. And I’ll see you soon. One nice thing is that the weather next week looks like it’s going to be fabulous!
Until later, my friends . . .