Update

We are in Gainesville for Barton and Jen’s wedding. Spaulding and Molly flew in Thursday and rode up with us. Dinner at Satchell’s Pizza, then a visit to the UF bat houses for the bats’ nightly exodus. Right on time, with a beautiful sunset and no mosquitoes. I guess the latter due to the thousands of bats, duh.

This morning, Molly is doing a 15+ mile run on the Hawthorn Trail; Spaulding is running for about an hour from the house. Grant and I are lazing and drinking coffee, before our Zoom covenant meeting. The luxury of being old. Although we are continuing the fight against aging. We’ve committed to a bike ride every Wednesday, I’ve graduated to 3# weights for my shoulder exercises, and Tuesdays, Denny comes and pushes us to more core strength. I’ve been really good about doing those exercises at least 2 other times a week. I’m starting to notice the difference that makes.

I’m also gardening 2-3 hours every morning, weeding the front beds for an hour, then working on our vegetable plots the rest of the time. We’ve built a sweet potato plot out front which will either give us lots of sweet potatoes or at least will kill the grass, and I can add to my wild flower bed. After having almost none of my old seeds germinated, I’ve started over with okra, southern peas, beans, and, as a throwaway and recommended by a local seed company, cucumbers, watermelon, and pumpkin. Nothing ventured…

Sunday, we had 1 3/8” of rain and 3/4” more on Tuesday, so I cut the vegetable bed watering back to every other day and cancelled the scheduled thrice weekly of the north side sprinklers from the canal. Perhaps we are moving into the rainy season. Fort Lauderdale had a freak storm Wednesday and Thursday which dumped over 25” in less than 24 hours, the most ever recorded in Florida in such a short time. Streets flooded so quickly, thousands of cars were abandoned. The problem was a rain cell that got stalled over central Broward County by high pressure systems. The storm sewers were quickly overwhelmed. Amazingly, no one drowned or was electrocuted.



Patten left his truck at work, and it had water up to the headlights. He dried it out on Friday. I’m not clear whether he’s going to have it totaled out with insurance or not. His back door neighbor told him that his daughter had seen an alligator swimming past her as she walked in thigh-deep water to get to her job. Our old house had 3” of water throughout. The airport was closed for 2 days; it was flooded so badly that people were trapped there, and they ran out of food. 

Afterwards, the worst hit area, Edgewood, had streets lined with furniture and trash, like after a bad hurricane, but with no tree debris. Of course, that’s a working class neighborhood which doesn’t need this burden. So far, Governor DeSantis hasn’t asked for the city to be declared a disaster area. The plague of not voting blue.

Note: Patten’s truck was totaled out. He bought a F250, but sadly not in the beautiful almost-black green of his old truck. 


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