Euporhia

Daylight. I can finally see if my imagination during the night matches reality. When the storm comes during the night, the mind goes wild. One thing I imagined was that the tarp I had used to cover my collection of marbles for mosaics had come loose. The tarp was definitely trying its best and making a dreadful noise. I second guessed my decision not to bring all those marbles inside instead of covering them, all night long, into the wee hours when the winds hit 100 mph. If the tarp had let loose, there would have been marbles flying around the patio, pinging the windows to shreds and impaling themselves into me while I feigned sleep. I would have died as my most original mosaic to date.

We all had our fears. My neighbor Christine worried that her house would catch on fire from the sparking she was seeing on the power line in her back yard. She played the scenario of grabbing both kids and rushing out into the storm over and over in her mind.

What I found at dawn was that my pine trees were upright and the whomping willow was missing about 20 feet of its top. That was a big surprise. I would have laid money on the whomping willow over the pines. The wind was still wailing at that point, so it was back to bed to wait for calm.

Around noon, the neighborhood began to venture out between the rains to check things out. You okay? Yeah, us too. Lots of limbs down. Lost my fence. It's gone, don't know where it went. The bayou is really high but not over the road. Looks like Joyce lost her roof. Oh, yeah, I have a few pieces of that in my yard too. Oh, is that the metal I heard flying all night? Whose whirlybird vent is that? Yeah, we have a chain saw. And a chainsaw operator, see video.


In one hour, the street was cleared, with everyone pitching in to clear the street in front of their house and then help a neighbor. Neighbor Margaret invited us all to make one big pile of trees in front of her house. This is when I appreciate where I live, when the neighborhood bands together. Right now we don't care that we don't have power, that the water from the tap is a trickle, and that our relatives in other cities have seen reports that we should boil the water. We have no TV news, just each other and what we have seen and shared. We'll deal the with refrigerators, the tree sitting on the power feed to the house, and the inevitable heat tomorrow. We don't know how bad it is beyond our street. We are safe here.
Thank you National Geographic for this photo. It says what I am feeling.