Monday, August 29, 2011 I Survived Hurricane Irene

Of course I don't have any pictures to go along with that snappy title. But I did, indeed, survive - so did my garden :)

It's been a rough couple weeks here, I guess I've fallen into the not-postingadamnthing rut. Can't quite put my finger on why - but I'm on it. I shall do better.

Pre-hurricane we went to Silverman's Farm in Easton, CT to do some apple and peach picking. For 29 bucks you get a big bag to fill with as much as you can. We walked out of there with 23 pounds of fruit. My friends and neighbors were the real winners in this situation. I gave a pie to my downstairs neighbor, an apple-peach biscuit bake to my next door neighbor and to my rock star friends down the road (plus a half dozen peach muffins that IMO weren't really that good. Sorry you guys, it wasn't my recipe, but it seemed the two I ate were overflowing with baking soda) and, of course, I made two biscuit bakes for my other neighbor and us to share - so it was a bakeitty bonanza here for a couple days. And I STILL have fruit left! Even after a day without electricity!

We lost our power early Sunday morning, just when the storm was "hitting" - I put it in quotes because it wasn't that bad a storm here. It was in other places - East Haven lost about 25 homes. Very sad. I suppose we lucked out with the landing of the storm and the placement of our building.

Our apartment faces west, so the first half of the storm didn't kick any wind and rain our way. I could see it and hear it going down the road - at 2:00 AM I would have sworn there were cars going down the road, but it was just the wind beating the rain down into the pavement that made the sound of wet tires going by.

I slept on and off and as the sun came up and the lights went out and the day went on. I was only concerned about my tomatoes as I'd moved the garden up against the inner wall of my porch. The tomatoes are tied to the netting that protects my garden from evil squirrels so I was unable to move them, I just tied them up as best I could and kept an eye on them.

The back end of the storm was actually pretty windy for us. And because we didn't have power (and it wasn't raining at all) most of the windows were wide open. I tell ya, a few of those wind gusts picked up the building for a moment. I totally felt it move. The tomatoes were getting pushed around a lot, I had to re-tie some of it, and one of my basil plants got bent over so I had to tie that one up, too.

But that's about it. The building across the way lost half a shutter. The beach where I've been exercising (up to 29 miles a week!) is destroyed - not a total loss, but enough damage that I don't think I'll be able to do laps there anymore. And the private part of the beach where I used to lie in the sun has washed away. It'll be interesting to see what the city does about it. Maybe they can use the money they were going to waste on fireworks to fix the park.

Food wise we did well. We stuffed the freezer with ice and perishables, barely opened anything, had the grill for the hot dogs we had left over from the picnic. I made a bruschetta topping with tomatoes and basil from the garden. We reheated pizza and made tea on the grill. I even bought mini-potatoes for the grill but we never got to them. The power came on this morning.

So tonight I'm having the last few apples from Silverman's with brie kept on ice and mini-potatoes on the grill.

Farewell, Hurricane Irene. You will not be missed.

-HH