November Nor' Easter

As you may have heard, we had a Nor'Easter here this past week/weekend. Like nearly everyone else around, we were affected by it. Although the house is up on a hill, we had water seep up into the basement, and nearly a week later, we're still mopping. Here are a few pictures from the porch...

This is one of the first ones we took when the bottom of the yard was flooding.

At this point, the water was over the driveway, and running into the street.

Our street was flooding quickly, and at the end of the street, the Bay was coming up over the rock wall. The police blocked off access to our street with the exception of home-owners.

This is one of the first pictures of the water starting to recede. Leaving the leaf debris behind.

By Saturday, the street lights were still out, so Officers were directing traffic at our intersection. Good thing, because on Thursday, there was a pretty nasty accident there.

And this was what was left on Sunday. We cleaned it all up, filling 12-15 lawn bags of leaves. If you look real close, you'll notice we don't have any trees to speak of. Yep - All of our neighbor's leaves were in our yard...

We fared pretty well. Without power for 2 days and a flooding basement. We stayed on top of the water coming in, even when it meant setting an alarm every 1-2 hours in the middle of the night to mop. Why? Our heating system is down there, and by us staying on top of the water, we didn't lose the heating system.

Funny thing - nearly everyone we spoke to asked us if we had a sump pump or a shop-vac. We actually have both (although the sump pump is hand-held). But we didn't have power!!! These things don't work without electricity! LOL!

So, now most of the hype is over on the news about the "November Nor'Easter". We also head it called the "Nor'Beaster" and "Nor'Ida". TeeHee. The things the media comes up with....

AMW

Neighborhood Watch?

Well - it's good to know that there are some people out there that notice when things don't look right.

Yesterday, I was getting the trash cans ready to take down to the curb. I noticed the usual things in the area, like the young man across the street getting dropped off after work, other neighbors bringing their trash cans down to the curb.

Then, as I was getting ready to take the cans down, I noticed a truck had stopped on the side of the street. Being in my penguin pajama pants, I didn't want to go down there and look like an idiot, so I waited. I waited for a few minutes, and he was still there, so I got the recycle can ready.

When I turned around to look again - there were 5 police cars with their lights on! 2 in the middle of the road, and the other three scattered around. All of a sudden, there were police officers talking to 3 of the residents from the house across the street.

Slowly they dispersed, but the man in the unknown truck was still out there as well.

By the time the next door neighbor came home and walked over to see if everything was ok, there were the 3 residents, 2 officers and the man from the truck.

I called the neighbor to ask her what she found out, and she said that the man in the truck had seen the young man (who lived at the house across the street) climbing through a window. Seems he forgot his key, and his sisters didn't hear him knocking. So he climbed in.

All the man in the truck knew was that he saw a young guy climbing in the window of a house.

All's well in the end, and it was nice to see that someone would look out for the neighborhood is something didn't look right...

AMW

Long Overdue

I really haven't kept up with this blog like I would have liked. There have been new plants on the porch, and even new landscaping around the porch.

I was trying to remember when the plants had to come in last year, and it was right around October 8th. We've passed that date already here, but now it's really starting to get chilly both during the day, and at night. So, I think they may have to come in fairly soon! When they do, I'll try to get some updated pictures, and see if we can keep them alive during the winter again.

I think I'm definitely going to try some grow bulbs this year to help keep things growing strong.

It'll be nice to have some of these plants inside too. It should definitely boost the oxygen levels in the house with the number that we have!

AMW

What a mess...

I've been inheriting plants from work.  The new building owners don't care for plants much, and sometimes order a ton to be thrown away.  I try to rescue what I can, and see if I can get others to rescue some as well.   

Last week, they wanted a suite cleared out that had about 100 plants.  I called a friend, and she came down with her SUV and loaded it up.  I only brought home 2!   Really!  But one of them was in really sad shape...  See for yourself:

There were actually 2 plants in this one pot.

The roots were a  mess!

I don't know how this plant survived!

I've seen tight roots before, but this was just sad!

I took a knife, cut them apart, and loosened up the roots...

Here are their new potential home in comparison to the one pot they came from!  UGH!

And here they are in their new pots!  Yeah!  It makes me much happier

and I hope it makes them much happier, too!

AMW

Have you seen me???

There was a little mis-hap over the weekend, and one of our favorite pots (this one above) got broken.  Has anyone out there seen these pots online, or know where I can find another one???  She was one of our favorite porch companions..........

AMW

New plants (and some re-pots)!

When I pulled up this blog this morning, I looked at the header picture and thought something was wrong.  It took me a minute to realize that the picture was from last year when I *thought* I had a full porch of pots.  Now that the number has probably close to doubled, the header looks barren.  I'll try to update it sometime over the weekend, not that it's looking good!

And now, some new plants, and some repotted plants:

This is a small "money" tree that D bought at Ikea.

I don't know what the real name is, but she liked it.

She also bought a BIG "money" tree as well.

Anyone have ideas as to what it actually is?

Our sweet little neighbor across the street wandered over 

the other night while we were doing yard work, and 

offered us two plants to add to the porch.  She claimed

she was too old to take care of them.  So not true!

This snake plant is over 20 years old, she said.  She 

had it on her closed in porch in a tiny little pot.

It is taller than I am, and some of the leaves are so

long they don't stand up!

I put it into a larger pot where it will hopefully thrive!

We stuck it on the side of the porch where we

needed a bit of a buffer.  And it sits right behind the swing.

This is the other little plant she gave us.  She said she 

got this one in 1983, which would make it 26 year old!

I hope I don't kill it!!!  Here in it's original pot

and below in the larger pot that the snake plant

came in.

I wasn't 100% sure what it was, but have been informed

it's a type of peace lily.  Kinda looked like the other one we have,

but it's a different variety.

This one came from work.  It was destined to be thrown away.

It's now repotted in the pot that the peace lily came in.

This little spider plant was a rooting from another we have.

I had potted it in this little red penguin bucket when

I didn't have any pots to put it in.  Needless to say, it

needed an upgrade.

It's now in this pretty forest green ceramic pot.

The porch is so lush and bright and green right now, and the weather lately has been fantastic!  I don't remember a July that has ever started out with such low humidity.  It's been such a pleasure to sit and read or relax on the porch!  

AMW

Yard Work

So the plan was to mow the grass last night.  No big deal.  But there is this branch of a crepe myrtle tree that is always in the way.  So D said, I'm tempted to get the chain saw out and cut it off.  Which she did.  

But since the chain saw was out, and running, we figured we'd get a couple other "branches" in other parts of the yard cut that were also in the way.  

Cutting the branches led to cutting a volunteer tree (or 20) that come up throughout the yard.

And somehow through all of the cutting down of trees, 

we still managed to get the grass cut.  Because, of course, the front little strip 

had to be cut before we could haul the crap down there for trash day.

So we have two VERY LARGE piles of cut trees and bushes.  

The piles of trees were so high, I couldn't see D standing behind them.  

I hope the big debris truck takes them all.

The piles of trees and branches that we hauled to the front for trash day, 

but the pictures don't even begin to do it justice! 

The sad part is, we didn't even make a dent in the amount of stuff we 

needed to cut out of the yard.  We maybe got an 1/8th of it done.  

AMW