Hurricane Irene in my neighborhood

Two blocks away

Across the street

The neighbor to our left. Hard to see but he lost a whole tree.

One block away

Just one fallen branch. That and debris was the extent of the hurricane's effect on our yard.

On Monday morning, a neighbor a few blocks away was already cutting up a fallen tree.

We were very blessed. What more can I say? We have three enormous trees on our lot and any one of them could have taken our house with it. Also, I think the hemlocks across the street are tall enough to hit our house if they fell.

Folks up in the Harvey's Lake area got it much worse than us. Many people in our county are still without power or water.

We lost power for twenty-four hours. One neighbor told me that in forty years, he hadn't lost power for more than an hour in our neighborhood. Another neighbor confirmed this. So for these folks it was a shock. For Michael especially, this was nothing new as he grew up in South Louisiana. For me, the hurricane was new, but the emergency preparation and power loss was not.

There was one amazing benefit of the whole event. Our phone rang at about 1:45 AM in the middle of the power outage. It was Michael's pharmacy. They are supposed to call his cell phone, but, oh well. I had gotten up to answer the phone and had been dreaming about seeing stars in the sky. So I got my glasses and walked outside.  I had never seen a really dark sky before. So there I was, seeing a sky full of stars for the first time in my life. It was astounding. I couldn't even find the big dipper there were so many stars competing with it. Venus was like a flashlight in my eyes. I wasn't disappointed. Just sorry I had to wait so long to see the sky as it really is.