It seems there is a push these days for everyone to de-clutter their lives. “De clutter your home! You will feel better! It will free up your mind!” Maybe for some people this all out attack is useful, but not so much for me. Sure, I like my home to be clean and organized, but I have plans for that so-called clutter. I am sorting through the filing cabinets and burning outdated, paperwork in the woodstove. When it comes to getting rid of all the random bits of crafty things I have saved though, I draw the line.
I am not a hoarder. I am an artist, a craftswoman, a
collector of weird things. I keep my spare rooms useable for guests while also
using the spaces for writing and sewing and growing fodder for the chickens. I
save some things other people might see as trash and I repurpose them into
usable goods. I will not replace my perfectly functional formica kitchen counter
tops with newly quarried granite slabs, just because it looks nice. My idea of
living green means using what I have as long as it still serves a purpose. My
closets hold remnants of past and future projects that I will eventually use or
give away to someone else who needs it more. The difference between myself and a
hoarder is that I am not waiting for some future that never comes, I utilize
what I have all the time.
I do not want to live in a house devoid of my homey things
and the memories they conjure up.
Yes, I saved dryer lint from my old job. I still save my
dryer lint at home. I have always thought to make paper out of it but never had
the time or inclination until now. My first project was thick seedling starting
quilts. They turned out to be very absorbent but I need to refine my microgreens
setup. I hope to try my hand at fancy writing paper to write poems on next. I
want to try incorporating colorful bits of leaves or threads or even feathers
in to it and make it thinner somehow. It is a project for another day.
I have a hank of tail hair from my old pony, Ranza, that I
saved when he died. It has been stored away in the hat cupboard in the mudroom
and whenever I come across it, I think of him fondly. Some day I will make
something cool out of it, maybe by braiding or macramé. Who knows? There are crafters,
like Tail Spin,
or Spirit
Horse Designs, or Horse Hair
Art on the web who do this for people as tokens of their beloved
companions. Someday, I will make a hatband to remember Ranza by.
I save lots of potentially useful things and almost always
get around to using or even needing them someday. It is quite satisfying to
search for a particular bolt or piece of metal, or a chunk of wood or slab of
rubber, and find it, ready for reuse, right here when I need it. I prefer building
with things that have a bit of history or memory behind them to spending money
at the soulless Home Depot down the road.
My chicken house is constructed from bits of an old wooden-floored
outdoor tennis court, from a favorite gardening client in Great Falls,
Virginia. I think of her every day as I feed my chickens and horse. The heavy
green wire and green painted 2 x 6 ‘s are continuing their life that began in
the 1950’s. Extruded aluminum panels from discarded benchtops in a greenhouse where
I once worked make fairly predator proof chicken yard fence. This was all
destined for the dump.
Salvaged Cedar boards and coat hooks salvaged from during a
friend’s house remodel, now hang my iron pots in the kitchen. I also made some to hang
backpacks and clothing. I have furniture and odd bits saved from the house I
grew up in. My favorite chair came from a neighbor who lived by the dam on the
boy scout lake. I do not remember their name but I remember the pine tree we
used as a launching pad to jump into that lake. I made the cushion for that
chair and some dog beds from an old futon mattress that we no longer needed.
I have an 8 gallon sauerkraut crock I bought at Starks
hardware in Harrisville West Virginia. I will use it to ferment cabbage again,
but currently it doubles as a plant stand in the living room. For many years I
used it as a stool at my old treadle sewing machine. I kept sewing supplies
inside and used a potters wheel bat as a lid and seat. Why would I ever want to
get rid of things like this? Plus, it did not cost me much back in 1975 when I
bought it and would cost a fortune today.
My father used to call my decorating style early attic. I
call it just what I need. I have a corner cupboard that my dad’s mother made,
canning shelves and a cedar chest my ex made, a crocheted blanket my first
husband made, a wood cook stove I got for cleaning out a root cellar. I have a
whole set of little wooden boxes filled with assorted hardware pieces that came
out of a neighbors’ workshop on Mimosa Lake from when I was a kid. All very
useful stuff that I go through whenever I am searching for just the right
thing.
I do not save everything forever. The grandfather clock that
was handed down in my family could not stay with me because I had no safe place
for it. It passed to my mothers late husbands daughter, who takes good care of
it. The potters wheel I bought in Greenwich Village in 1973 will most likely be
passed on to someone soon, since it takes up space in my studio that I need for
other things. However, I may save the round slate flywheel from it since it
makes such a fine porch table when laid across the iron legs I found out in the
woods.
So no, I will not stop collecting things that I can foresee using later in one of my many projects. I enjoy being creative and re-purposing old stuff way too much. I will not feel guilty for cluttering my life space. I will continue to dig into my closets, sorting and coming up with new ideas. I finally have more time to implement ideas that have been on the back burner for years. It would be such a shame to hold on to things and then get rid of them just before you finally retire and have more time to play.
Have you ever given much thought to Shepherdstown’s iconic Crabapple tree in front of the library? Do you maybe wonder who planted it? How old is it? What variety of Crabapple it might be ? Who has been pruning it? Why has it always been pruned in late summer instead of winter? Does it love our town the way we love it? How much longer will it survive? How does it feel about its life?
You might find answers to these sort of questions by sending an email to our tree, like they have been doing in Melbourne Australia . Their trees now receive email from folks telling them how much they appreciate them for being themselves, and for bearing witness to changes over the years. Poems are written to the trees, and letters of thanks, and sometimes questions are asked of them. This has enabled a cross species dialog between people and their favorite trees.
Our town Crabapple has bloomed gorgeously every spring and suffered many winter storms, droughts and sidewalk construction without complaint. It has had many odd things draped over its branches and all kinds of tables set up under its shade. Surely it has opinions.
If you would like to have a conversation with our Shepherdstown Crab Apple, please send an email to: crabapple@edgewisewendy.com and I will see if we can get some answers or you may comment below.
-Wendy Maddox, writing as Edgewise Wendy, past caretaker of Crab Apple.
I have a lot of stories to tell. Some of them hang out on my homesteading blog, some on my travel and hiking blog. All the stories that do not fit into those two categories are going to end up here.
I also have a lot of opinions I would like to share. Sometimes I think I have it all figured out, then I realize that I never will. Still, I think that writing them down helps me , even if no one else reads them.
I usually have too many irons in the fire. It can be hard to stick to one thing. Now, I won’t have to. Readers who are more single minded can now stick to their one thing. I will continue to move here and there and back again, depending on what makes me happy that day. I never was any good at keeping to one track and I don’t see why anyone should have to. Life is too short to limit ourselves according to other peoples whims.
I went to the Speak Story fundraiser last night at the Community Club in Shepherdstown, and something Jim May, the guest story teller, said resonated with me. I cannot remember what words he used exactly , but the gist of it was, that although many writers feel compelled to force themselves to sit down and write, even when it is frustratingly unproductive for them, that he just could not make himself do it. When he gets stuck the best thing for him is to get up and do something else he enjoys. Go for a walk, or work in the garden, or watch the birds, something to totally take his mind off the writing task. Then he gets relaxed enough that the ideas can make their way in and inspiration fills him back up. I was the one in the audience who could not help but clap and say, YES!
I hate being put in boxes. All kinds of boxes. Even cardboard ones . There are stories in me about that. When I cannot settle down to write, there are plenty of other things I can do. I have many ongoing projects to choose from. Some of them make it to a list, others get done and then I put them on the list just so I can cross them off. Sometimes I have to stew on an idea for a good long while before come up with a workable solution. When I finally figure it out though, I get right on it.
For instance, I have been trying to come up with some way to make a raised bed for our strawberry patch. We hate crawling around at ground level to weed and pick them. Growing our own food makes us both happy though, so we persist. It is really nice to have all we need in the freezer.
Originally, I planted the strawberries under the young blueberry plants. That worked for awhile, but then as they grew matted together,it became really difficult to pick them without stepping on the plants.
Then I decided to try growing them in straw bales. That raised them up nicely but the straw rotted over the summer and the straw sunk back down so I had to rescue them. It was a good idea for annuals like tomatoes, but not for long lived plantings.
So next, I moved them to a couple of hilled up beds in the veggie garden. I mounded the soil up about a foot high and 2 feet wide, which made it a little easier to reach them. Then I made wire arches and used remay cloth to protect them them from the birds and frosts. This was working pretty well until some stray cherry tomato seedlings moved in after harvest practically smothered the poor strawberry plants. The plants that survived took a hit with the 0.5F degree temps we had a couple of weeks ago. With all the rain we had this fall (68 inches this year!) I did not get them mulched for winter and the poor things froze to death.
Every year I try an come up with a raised bed system that does not cost too much and I keep failing. Then yesterday I was looking out the kitchen window and saw the old metal, round bale-surround sitting out in the woods. I do not use round bales anymore since I am down to one horse and she cannot be exposed to any moldy hay. The outer edges of round bales can go bad from sitting out in the weather. Small square bales kept in the barn are safer and there is less waste.
I looked at the surround and thought, I could use that as a raised bed frame. We went out and rolled it into the yard and measured it. It is 8 feet across and can be filled 30 inches deep. Seems like a pretty good solution. We will need 14 cubic yards of good soil to fill it, which is my next project. We have it sitting on the back lawn in a spot with plenty of sun, where I will pass by it on the way to the barn twice a day. We cannot see it from the porch, which is good, since it is not the prettiest thing in the world. I might paint the outside green instead of the galvanized grey color.
Since it might be a little hard to reach the center, I am working on ideas for that now. Maybe fill the center with a sculpture like a homemade clay garden gnome? Maybe sink the old water conditioner cylinder in the middle and use it as a water reservoir? Make a fountain? A pole to hold a bird house? Maybe not that since birds love berries and it will need bird netting.
In the meantime I need to find a good source of weed free topsoil, get it delivered, and then get someone with a loader on their tractor to dump it in for me. I cannot get a big truck back there and mine would take about 28 trips. Or I could rent a bobcat. That would be fun. That opens up other possibilities for even more projects, like that path through the front woods or the underground greenhouse I want to build. Way too many ideas now.
On my newest blog at Edgewise Wendy, you will find various stories I have written about events that have happened, like Hurricane Michael,my thoughts and opinions on current events, my take on whatever happens to come flying through my head. https://www.edgewisewendy.com
My Edgewise Woods gardening, homesteading and critter stories will remain on the original site at https://www.edgewisewoods.com/
I have reorganized because, according to other homesteading sites that I wanted to share with, I have had too large a percentage of anecdotal stories and not enough how to stories to share. I am hoping to get more readers by narrowing my focus on each website.
I am including links to my other websites that will each open in a new window so you can easily get back where you started. Clicking Categories on each site will help you narrow your search further.
I hope you enjoy my writings and if you do, I hope you will let me know, by commenting
I was listening to National Public Radio yesterday and an interview with a big mid-western farmer. This guy grows the same rotation of crops as many of our local, much smaller farmers do. Soybeans in the spring, wheat in the fall, corn the next spring. Over and over and over again. No deviation. Sure, they might have some fields in permanent pasture or hay, but that is basically it. Not much diversity there.
The farmer they were talking with plants 5000 acres using the soy, wheat, corn rotation and as usual, ordered next seasons seed last year, to the tune of a million and a half dollars. He is locked in to planting those soybeans this spring. The problem is that China, the largest buyer of United States soybeans, will not be buying our soybeans next year. This is in retaliation of the tariffs Trump has put on steel and many other imported Chinese goods. We are in the midst of a trade war which will probably be getting much worse. China has been smart and working on just this scenario for many, many years. They plan long term, unlike our country. Where have all the steel mills gone that we used to have in this country? China. What are all our cars and trucks and SUV’s made of? Chinese steel. Poor quality Chinese steel. Toyota recently had, yet another recall of SUV’s and Pickup trucks, assembled in America, but made of Chinese steel, because the frames had rusted clear through and were seriously dangerous.
If we get into an actual military war with the Chinese, what will we make our war machines with? Chinese steel? Think again. They have us right where they want us, dependent on them for goods we used to make ourselves. Cheap labor in China lured most of our manufacturing over to them and now we depend on China, and other countries, for many indispensable things. We cannot easily rebuild our steel mills and return to supplying our own high quality steel. How will we repair our bridges without U.S. steel? This has nothing to do with the unions, it has to do with the greed of the companies who moved out of our country, who do not want to pay taxes to help our country, who do not care if our own countrymen even have jobs. Our corporate tax laws and loopholes have enabled this to happen. Our banking industry has enabled this to happen. We are at the mercy of greedy corporations and now we are at the mercy of China and other foreign powers.
Back to the farmers who are locked in to growing soybeans for a non-existent market. The price of soybeans is bound to fall drastically with a glut of unsold beans waiting in silos. Russia has already announced that they will gladly supply China with their soybeans next year, so we can forget about getting that buyer back, even if the trade war were to end.
American farmers have become the latest business that is too big to fail. Just like the banks back in 2008. Are we now going to bail them out with our tax dollars? The farmer being interviewed did not seem to have any creative ways of dealing with his problem. He is so big, and so used to relying on the government telling him what to plant, insuring him against crop failures, subsidizing lime and fertilizers and farm improvements, that he no longer plans for himself. Every decision he makes is tied to cost sharing and the futures market and whatever the big agro seed and chemical companies are pushing. This is no way to farm.
Farmers need to be flexible, basing their decisions on weather, markets, soil health and the peoples needs, not blindly planting the same old crops every year because that is what they have always done. A good farmer looks at all the variables and weighs the cost of seed and planting and harvesting against what the market will buy. These big farmers seem to have lost their natural insight. Smaller farmers live somewhat closer to local market changes and have to scramble year to year to make their crops pay for them to stay in business. They have to be creative and come up with specialty crops that might bring in more money, even though there is more risk. Organic farmers practice this way of life and change their plantings based on what people want to buy each year, a market that is constantly changing. They work on improving the soil and therefore the health of their crops without having to rely so much on government subsidies. They also supply us with healthier food, not chemically laden food that endangers our health. We need to learn the true cost of raising healthy food and be willing to pay accordingly.
Our government agricultural programs have gotten so large and powerful that many farmers do not even try to plan for themselves anymore. They rely on the government to insure they do not go under, even if they make bad business decisions. They plant the latest genetically modified Round Up Ready seeds, then spray Glyphosate on our food crops, and pretend it is all healthy and good for us. It is dangerous to give up your individual power and allow the government and agro corporations to decide what you should plant and what the best management practices are. We will all be paying the price with our health down the road. Multi-thousand acre farming operations, heavily in debt, and dependent on bureaucratic subsidy programs, are not run with an understanding of the connections between soil health, plant health and human health. They are run as a big business. People need to return to thoughtful planning and being responsible for their own destiny.
Wendy lee, writing at Edgewise Woods, Gardens and Critters
My mother has lived in the little neighborhood of Xanadu, near Calloway, just east of Panama City, Florida for about 40 years and she loves it. Many of the residents are retired military, since it is near Tyndall Air Force Base, and they are friendly and look out for each other. Her husband passed away almost a year ago so she has been transitioning to being even more independent and trying to enjoy the process these past few months.
At 88, my mother leads a full and creative life. This summer she got back into her oil painting by giving twice weekly lessons to the neighbor girl, Zoe, who is just 9 years old. The two of them had so much fun that once school started back they continued their painting time on Sundays. On Wednesdays she meets with other seniors at the local community center and takes part in Tai Chi, dance exercises, lunch and visiting. Friday brings the Encore continuing education classes at the Community College, a program she was instrumental in planning for many years, which now supplies her with intellectual stimulation and camaraderie. At home, the covered and heated lap pool and her garden complete her peaceful and calm life.
She still drives with confidence so is able to go wherever she needs and shops at the commissary at Tyndall Air Force base regularly, getting a Philly Cheese Steak once a week. She eats out at Appleby’s and Olive Garden and local seafood places, making a second meal of the leftovers she brings home. She carries a cane sometimes, but doesn’t always need it. She loves to go on cruises and went to Alaska this summer, with two trips planned this winter, one in the Caribbean and one that will travel through the Panama Canal and then up to California.
Mom and Stan, her late husband, have weathered many storms and hurricanes while living in the Florida panhandle. Their small brick rancher has roll down hurricane shutters, which they had installed many years ago, after deciding that evacuation was too stressful for them. The Base sits on a barrier island that protects their area from storm surges, so although you can see East Bay at the end of their street, flooding has never been a problem.
Then Came Michael
When hurricane Michael first formed in October, glancing by Cuba on its way North into the Gulf, it was not expected to strengthen into a category 4 storm. The weather service was calling for maybe a Cat 3, which people have weathered before. Mom and some of her hardier neighbors planned on staying, hunkering down with the usual emergency supplies of food, water, flashlights and emergency radios. When the storm suddenly grew stronger and aimed right at them there was only a small window of time to rethink that decision. The possibility of being trapped in a traffic jam during a hurricane was much scarier to her than sheltering in her house. She had done it many times, although never totally alone.
Meanwhile, up here in West Virginia, I had not been following the weather down in the Gulf. I was not even aware a hurricane was headed mom’s way until she called on Tuesday, October 10 to tell me she was staying home for it. I looked at the weather predictions on my phone but Mom told me not to listen to the Weather channel, saying,
“The Weather channel always blows things out of proportion in an attempt to scare people into evacuating. Then it turns out to be just a normal storm we can all handle just fine. I listen to the local stations instead.”
Later that day, I looked up the NOAA reports and radar maps and what I saw was alarming. Hurricane Michael had started gaining strength and was aiming for a direct hit on my mother. Back on the phone, she kept telling me not to worry. She had weathered storms before. I tried not to worry. She said her neighbor, Jeff, was staying too, so she would not be alone. I did not realize at the time that he only stayed because she refused to leave.
Wednesday morning came and the storm was steadily gaining strength. It was now a category 4 and about to make landfall. Mom and I were texting back and forth every few minutes as she sheltered alone in her hallway with her emergency supplies and a mattress for cover. The wind was howling and she could hear trees hitting the house. She lost electricity, then the land line went dead. We could no longer use voice on our cell phones, but texting still worked, we were still connected.
Her emergency radio warned of tornadoes and flying debris and told everyone to take cover, NOW. The shutters were shaking, the roof was creaking and the emergency radio had gone off the air. She heard the aluminum pool roof tear apart and blow away and the wind sounded like a jet engine at full throttle. She texted,
“I’m terrified! I have never heard anything like this noise before. I am so scared.
We are in the eye wall.
Lp….”
I did not hear from her for 58 minutes and I was frantic. I was getting no answers to my texts and I was afraid she was gone. I was in a panic. Lp? Does that mean help?! I could not even pretend to be useful from this far away.
I paced, I worried, and finally, after what seemed like forever, I got another text. From her neighbor. She was OK. He was OK. They were in the eye of the storm, that small circle of calm just before the wind shifts and the other side of the storm gets you. He was able to get outside and across the street to my moms and talk to her through the downed trees blocking her door. She was Ok. He had to get back inside before the second eye wall hit. Then we lost all cell connection. I was worried sick and unable to function. I kept trying to text both her and her neighbor, but got nothing back.
All this time my husband kept sending me graphics of the extremely low pressure readings and radar pictures of the eye sitting directly over my mother’s house. This was not helping my state of mind. The radio here was saying that the weather stations blew apart at 100 MPH and that the winds were likely over 155 MPH, maybe a category 5. The second eye wall hit, even worse than the first, and I kept texting, Are you Ok?
After a couple more hours, Mom managed to get a brief cell signal and texted that she was Ok. Her neighbor Jeff, had chain sawed enough limbs off the house to get her out and the other neighbors were checking in with each other as they wandered around in shock. All the trees were down, shingles and metal roofing panels had peeled off and blown away, some roofs were just rafters, others had whole sections of house missing. Windows had blown in and broken, power poles were leaning or had snapped clear off and electric lines hung twisted up everywhere. Fences lay strewn about, the roads were blocked, but everyone seemed to be OK. They had survived, even if some of their homes had not.
Grateful to be alive, they starting pulling the debris away from their homes, sweeping nails and broken glass out of the way, assessing the damage. It was obvious there would be no power for a long time. No well water, no air conditioning, no power tools, no refrigeration. Everything in the freezers would be lost after a few days. Those who had them, dug out their gasoline powered generators and were able to plug in a few things. They had all prepared as usual for a few days without power, with water jugs, flashlights, batteries, radios, and camp stoves. They were not prepared for weeks without power.
My mother was camping out during the day with her neighbor, Jeff, who’s Airstream camper had survived. He had a generator and a fan, she brought her coffee pot. They ate steaks and the best goods from her freezer as they melted. The daytime temperature was up in the 90’s, and it was not raining. At night she took her flashlight and slept in her dark hot, house.
Mom assured me I did not need to come down, but I talked to the neighbor, who sent me horrific pictures of the devastation in the neighborhood. Her house was all electric and had no power, no water, no air conditioning. It was 95 degrees during the day and not cooling off much at night. There were holes in the roof. She could not stay there. She said she could drive the 6 hours to my sister’s house, taking all her important papers and things, on Sunday, after the insurance adjuster came out. My sister was away and would not be back until the following week.
Then her neighbor called and told me he had taken her for a drive after a path was cleared on the road. He and Mom were so upset by the ruined homes that they had to pull off and just sat in the truck together, crying. It was unbelievable, the devastation.
There was no way she could pack up and make that drive alone. I booked the last seat on a flight for Sunday morning into Orlando, since the Beaches Airport was only open for emergency equipment and first responders. I would drive from Orlando with my niece and bring Mom back to my sister’s house in her car.
The Drive from Orlando to Panama City
The 2:20 minute flight on Southwest was packed with boisterous people wearing Mickey Mouse ears. My niece, who luckily had a week break from college, met me at the airport in Orlando for our 6 hour road trip over to Panama City. First we had to stop at Lowes and fill the car with bottled water, gas cans, roof tarps and nails, and a tabletop icemaker. When we finally reached I-75N it was crowded with emergency vehicles, police convoys with blue flashing lights, along with power line and tree service trucks. Trailers full of transformers and Rack’em Stack’em type housing quarters for construction workers all vied for position. We got off the busy 4 lane twice to go around the backed up traffic and eventually exited onto I-10 West. We stopped shy of Tallahassee to fill up on gas and ice for the cooler. There would be none available after that.
We turned south onto Route 20 and then Rt 71 and drove down through the little town of Wewahitchka, onto Route 22 West, where we were suddenly surrounded flattened pine trees, stripped of needles and all pointing north. Dodging freshly cut tree tops and all the downed electric poles made it a slow go. Transformers hanging from toppled poles leaned over the road and the sun was quickly going down. We were not going to reach Mom’s before the newly implemented 7:00 p.m. curfew. We started worrying about what we would do if we were turned away at a checkpoint. There was nowhere else for us to go.
The downed trees abruptly changed direction as we drove the long straight road. Convoys of police with flashing blue lights heading the other way paid us no attention. It was creepy driving under power poles held up only by sagging wires, then driving over even more wires snaked across the road. It was full dark now and we could only assume all these lines were dead. The closer we got, the worse it looked. Calloway looked like a war zone. It was horrifying even in the dark, with silhouettes of broken buildings and trees tossed about like trash. It was hard to believe anyone had survived this.
We inched our way up to mom’s house and a small beacon of light emerged from the garage, Mom instantly crying with relief at our late arrival. Jeff came from across the street and after hugs and many thanks for his help, we all toted the ice and gas cans over to his place, where he was cooking us dinner.
Jeff’s Airstream travel trailer, wedged up against his pickup truck, had survived with only a few dents and he was well set up for camping, with a charcoal grill, mini fridge, and a few lights. We ate the last steaks from Moms melted freezer and they enjoyed having ice cubes in their drinks. It was still hot, even with the sun down, and we were glad he had requested we bring the little plug in icemaker because it was obvious the bagged ice in the cooler would not last long.
That night we slept in Moms dark, airless house with sweat rolling down our sides. We remembered the old days when we had no air conditioning and we would sleep in the cool basement or out on the porch in the summer.
Daylight
I woke at first light, grabbed my camera and stepped outside. The backyard was a mess. Trees down everywhere, the pool building torn to shreds and thrown about, all kinds of debris in the pool, the new porch screen ripped off, and the door gone, fences down, roof shingles everywhere.
I went back through the garage to the front and looked up and down the street. Power poles snapped and leaning, roofs totally gone, broken windows, piles of trees and debris, wires laying across the road. I walked down to the end of the street and saw people making coffee on their camp stoves, waiting for the sun to come up and illuminate the wreckage. People were just starting to come back home from where they had evacuated to and survey their damage. The roads had not been opened long. Some people had nothing left to come back to. My Mom was really lucky. Her house and her four closest neighbors had faired better than most. Three of them had gotten new roofs put on in the past few years and they held up better than Mom’s, which was almost due for replacement anyway. She had some holes where trees went through, one corner of the garage roof was missing, and many of the shingles were ripped off, but not much water had come in. The living room ceiling and rug had gotten wet but were dried out already. Down the block though, there were many roofs, both metal and shingle, that were demolished, with major water damage throughout. Entire walls and sections of homes were torn off, leaving everything inside exposed to the weather. Many houses were not livable at all.
I hated to ask anything else of our friend and camping host, but I needed to get up on the roof and get the tarps nailed down before any more rainy weather came. He is the most thoughtful and amazing neighbor, regularly checking on mom, sharing a cup of morning coffee, staying home for her during this hurricane. He is the youngest man in the neighborhood, a Veteran and a retired firefighter, fighting his own battle with cancer these past two years. He offered himself and his chainsaw and I accepted his help. I lopped off the smaller branches and hauled the tree debris out to the road while he cut the big parts. We managed to clear the roof of the magnolia tree before the heat became too much for us and then we sat in the garage drinking ice water. Clouds were starting to form to the south but we were hoping they were not coming this way yet. Tarps would have to wait until the next day.
The 5 plastic woven tarps I had brought were of assorted sizes, blue on one side and dark green on the other. The biggest was 40 x 60 and I was disappointed by how thin they were. Still, it took two of us to spread them out evenly and tack them down with the roofing nails. We did the two ends first, then the porch ell, and finally the center, pulling the tarps tight and having to remove a couple of vents that stuck up too much. The roof was getting hot fast and Jeff’s son was recruited as well. Frequent water breaks were required, which we promptly sweated right back out, but we got it done. For a small house, it sure has a big roof.
Two Month s Later
Now, in online aerial photos, you can still see miles of Blue tarped roofs and huge piles of debris lined up along the roads. Amazingly, electric service has been restored to the houses that survived with an intact service entrance connection. Considering all the giant erector-set-type of high-power lines that I saw toppled, this is amazing. Many, many power crews have worked long days to make this happen. Running water, refrigeration and air conditioning are appreciated more than ever now. The tarps have held up so far and the roofers say it will be a couple more weeks. They keep saying that.
A buyer has been found for the house. Mom does not want to go back. Everything she was used to is gone. A Korean War veteran and his Iraq veteran son, who lost their home to Michael, will move in soon. The Realtor has been really helpful in finding repair people to clean up the mess and fix the house up.
I went back down with my sister and we sorted through everything in the house, giving away everything we could to people in need. Her paintings have been divvied out to friends and neighbors and we each took our share as well. Mom left with two carloads of belongings from my first trip and she wants nothing else. She is staying with my sister outside Orlando, while looking for a CCRC (continuing care retirement community) near her. My resilient mother calls this next step, her 8th life, and is optimistic that there will be new adventures and people to meet. She is a survivor.
The house got the new roof, garage door, sheet rock repairs, the pool cleaned up and fenced, and was turned over to the new owner last week. It all went very fast. It has been only two months.
Her neighbor, Jeff, has also sold his house and is moving closer to family up in Tennessee. We wish him the best and hope to stay in touch.
_The next post will be about our trip to Iceland in September, I promise. Things have gotten sort of in the way.
-Wendy lee, writing at Edgewise Woods, Gardens and Critters