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So, we moved from a very lush tropical landscaped house to one void of any greenery besides a rectangular plot of grass.  We wanted to spruce it up a little, but I don't like to spend loads of money on plants that might just die, since we don't really know anything about gardening or landscaping.  When I read stuff about acidity and spacing and soil layering, I kinda go blank and don't really absorb any of the information.   So, I plant stuff with minimal consideration for how it will grow.  I do group things together according to taste.  We have had herbs that all just ended up tasting the same... So, if you're not into gardening at all, you probably want to stop right here.  Because this blog is going to be a complete snooze fest for you.  If you have a huge interest in gardening, this will also be a snooze fest for you, as I am very unknowledgeable.  But, it you have a little interest in gardening and you're just bored already or killing time, then keep reading.....Anyway, here's our additions

The first two are some succulents that we got at the local garden shop.  I have an awful memory, as my early onset dementia has set in.  Ok, so I don't have an official diagnosis, but I can tell.  Anyway, I wanted some hanging ferns, but TFP wasn't totally into the idea, so we compromised and had it his way by getting these succulents instead.  

This pitcher plant was my impulse buy.  I don't know if it gets to eat many flies, but it's a cool Dracula plant.  I need to get a bigger basket for it.

Here's our citronella plant.  I had to buy a pot for it, which was weird to me, because at our home in Fort Lauderdale, we inherited so many planters from the previous owner that we never had to buy one.  I just got a clay pot and painted it with leftover paint from our shed.

Here's our other deck plants.  These are little desert rose plants that TFP bought online.  They didn't do anything for the longest time because the weather wasn't quite warm enough when we first planted them.

This little aloe and the pot it's in came from Fort Lauderdale.  When I drove over, I put a couple plants in the front foot well.  This was an aloe pup which came from a very large plant.  We had started with our first aloe when we lived in Hollywood, Florida.  It was a little smaller than this size.  We kept it in the shaded lanai, so it didn't really grow.  Then when we moved, we left it out front in a sunny spot, and it grew exponentially.  We had to replant it twice in a year.  Then, when we moved to the Fort Lauderdale house, it grew even more.  We also inherited two other large aloe plants.  They all grew & I separated the pups into several smaller planters to give them their own space.  This guy sat in the house for a couple months because it was so cold outside when we first moved.  I put him out prematurely, and for a month or two, it looked like he was just about dead.  And then it warmed up, and slowly, he came back to life.  Now, he's growing and happy again.

The bigger pot by the steps has 2 cayenne plants and a cantaloupe plant.  As you can kinda see, the cantaloupe is a bully, outgrowing the pepper plants and taking up a lot of space.  But it can go vertical at least.  The cantaloupe grew from some seeds that I just threw out when I cut up a melon.  I hope we get melons from this, because I want to know if they will be a little spicy!

Here is our front porch planter.  Once again, the cantaloupe is dominating.  But in the midst of it is a mango sapling, a tamarind sapling, and a few itty bitty lychee plants.  These were all from just being thrown into the dirt and giving them some water.

This is our The Fuzz planter by our front door.  When our beloved cat, The Fuzz, was sick, we bought her a basil plant to chew on.  When she passed away, TFP put her basil plant in this pot.  It eventually died, but we bought another basil plant to put in in.  When we moved here, I brought it, and the basil died.  So I replaced it will catnip for the outdoor kitties to enjoy.  I don't think they are actually eating it at all, but it's there for them.

This is a lychee plant that I brought from Fort Lauderdale.  This one too almost died when I put it outside.  But after a while it found it's will to live.  Lucky little thing.  Too bad we all can't be that resilient.

So that's the lychee in the foreground, then the "garden", then the banana trees that we bought from the garden center.  Then there are a few more little lychee saplings that I planted after I bought lychees from Amazon.  And in the far back right is another little mango sapling.  

Here's the mango.  I know these fruit trees will probably never bear fruit, but it's fun to plant them.  

The closer banana tree is a regular dwarf banana tree, the farther one is a red dwarf banana.  The red one had some kinda little critters eating the leaves at night.  I googled it, and I read that they hide at the base between the fronds during the day.  So you're supposed to hose out between the layers to get them out.  I did this several times in a few days, and it seemed to work.  There are little newts that live in the trees, but they seemed fine.

You probably can't tell the difference from plant to plant, but these are lychees that grew from lychees that I got less than 2 months ago.

So in the foreground are all purchased plants.  There's lemongrass.  This has probably tripled in size.  I had tried to bring a lemongrass plant from Florida, but it died. 😢 ☠️ . 

Moving on, there's sunflowers, a flowering plant with purple flowers, and grapefruit mint. 

The back part of the garden has pineapple tops that are very slowly growing, more cayenne peppers, tomatoes that aren't doing much, Thai basil, cucumbers, more cantaloupe that are much slower to grow because they are in more direct sunlight, and then a lot of black eyed peas. The plant in the middle of the photo climbing up is one of the black eyed pea plants.  I wrapped some twine around the fence boards for the vines to cling to.   The black eyed peas were just grown from dried beans from Whole Foods.  They are doing so well, but it's funny, because are we going to harvest 6 bean pods and cook them?  I guess they would feed a mouse?

When I was planning the garden space, I was going to buy concrete blocks and do a really nice border and stuff.  Then I got tired and didn't want to lug all those blocks or spend the money.  This wooden border stuff cost much less and it was much lighter to carry!  Anyway, that's the end of my garden tour.  You can wake up from your nap refreshed and ready to do something more interesting!

Fizzle

So... Thursday, we were finishing getting ready.  Then we had to go to work.  Thursday is usually my prep day.  I go in several hours early to get ready for the weekend.  So I was scrambling to get ready and leave.  I went to the car, and I noticed the driver back tire was low, and I just filled it the other day.  I looked at the tire, and sure enough...

I think all our tires have magnets on them.  This is a chronic problem.... no matter where we live.  It's not like we go driving through construction sites or anything.... Anyway, luckily, there is the tire shop around the corner.  I drove the wrong way on Iberville to pull into the shop, because I'm reckless like that 🤣.  Anyway, the guy wasn't working on anything, so it took about 10 minutes, and then I was off to work.  It was weird because I wasn't sure what to prep.  We might be closed the next couple of days, the power might cut off.... but then next week was Tales of The Cocktail week. This is like the busiest week of the year for my job.  So it was weird.  But we had a lot of food anyway because we have been slow.

So, this whole time, this stupid storm wasn't really forming the way it should.  So it was just this mess hovering in the gulf.  So, it's like waiting for someone to come beat you up, but they have a nail in their tire so you're just waiting.  You know they are coming, but they should have already been there.

Anyway, this whole weekend was all just waiting for Barry... or #tropicalstormgodot.  Friday, we waited all morning to see if our jobs would be open.  We went and did errands.  We walked Rudy.

Finally, the call came for TFP, the bar would be open, but the kitchen would be closed.  For my job, it would just be a skeleton crew.  So I just went in an hour before open to set up.  I made 3 plates while I was there.  The other cook showed up around 5, a little wet, as he had parked his car in the hospital garage a few blocks away, and he encountered sun showers all the way to work.  So, I left and it was sunny.  So, we just watched local news all night, but nothing happened.

Saturday morning, we woke up to this

Basically, no weather.  We watched as Terrebone parish & Plaquemines parish got weather and storm surge, but we had clear skies.  The radar showed lots of weather, but we didn't get much rain at all... we ate our snacks, TFP cooked meatballs for spaghetti & meatballs for dinner.   We watched local TV all day.  The north shore got some flooding, as they are used to getting.  

Later in the day, when there was some drizzle, I noticed my little creek that I dug on the side of the house to drain onto the street wasn't directing water the way I wanted.  So I started scooping some more dirt out to modify it.  Then our neighbor came by and saw I was digging.  He had just bought tools to dig a trench, so he brought them over to me.  Then he went and mowed his lawn (he's got lots of grass) and a couple neighbors' lawns too.  Then he came over and dug a trench under his house.  He had been planning on putting subsurface drain under his house, because the rain had been pooling under our house.  So, wine glass full of beer in hand, he came over and dug a ditch.  All the while we were still under a "tropical storm warning".

So, later on, I walked Rudy in the neighborhood.  It was pretty ghost townie.  

I took some pictures around the neighborhood.  Some photos are of things that might have been an issue, had a tropical storm come through our neighborhood.

This is the debris line on the neutral ground from the flood on Wednesday.  Not the best perspective, but this was high.

See the blue house across the street?  That's our house.  This wood was in front of our house on Wednesday morning.

Wary little black cat

One of the only houses that boarded up for the storm

aren't banana trees designed to weather really bad storms?

look closely at the base of the darker utility pole on the left.  Would this have been standing if 35mph gusts had come through?

entergy doing some kind of work

my series of leaning utility poles

make sure to put your garbage out before any storm

droopy utility lines

Anyway, luckily, nothing happened, so these things weren't an issue.  This time.

Preparation

So, TFP is an avid storm tracker.  He's been following Mike's Weather Page for years.  So, yesterday morning I was worrying about work.  We were up early running errands.

And then, it was like everything kinda stopped.  TFP said that there was a storm about to form in the gulf & possibly hit us by Sunday!  So, then our day changed somewhat.  We were at Lowe's getting a sander (this is a possible subject for another post).  So, I said, let's get flashlights.  TFP was caught up in the excitement of a storm building.  I was looking in the front by the checkout lines and the entrance for flashlights.  We didn't see them, so we didn't bother to look in the aisles for them.

Then we went to Rouses.  We were getting ahead of the game.  We were getting supplies & no one else was.  We got canned soup, chips & some water.  TFP got stuff to make shrimp creole.  We didn't get a ton of stuff, but enough to last a couple days.  Then we had to drive all the way out to Metairie (again) to pick up our car.  It had a fuel pump recall & we had dropped it off at 8:30 am, then we had to pick it up during rush hour, again.

So, then we went home.  TFP made shrimp creole, and I was in the process of repainting the balcony. We ate some of our Hurricane snacks, but I figured I could go to the store again if needed.  It was hot and I was tired.  I had planned to get up early the next morning and finish the balcony.  We went to bed fairly early.  I had a good night sleep.  And then I woke up to rain.  How was I going to paint?!!?

So, I peaked out the window, and it was pretty damn stormy

So I got up anyway and looked at the rain, made coffee, etc.  A little while later, we were all up.  I looked out the front and said, "It's flooding".  Oh no!  We had had a big flood on Mother's Day, which almost kept us from catching a flight to Fort Lauderdale.  So, hopefully, it wouldn't be that bad....

But it got worse

And the crazy part, was that this storm was not on the radar.  It kind of formed in the middle of the night, and just happened.  No one knew it was coming.  Everyone woke up and started driving to work, but some people didn't make it.  But finally the rain stopped.  But the water wasn't going down.  And people were driving down the road too fast!  Those weren't our cars on the road, but I felt bad for the owners.  The truck is our neighbor's.  Which he came out and looked at the flood and casually said it was crazy, then went back in.  

Finally, after a few hours, which seemed like days, the water started to recede.  Then it was almost gone.  But, we were watching the local news (since we no longer have cable and can't watch The Weather Channel) and they were reporting about much worse flooding in other parts of town that were not going down, and cars stranded all over, and traffic.  And TFP was worried about getting to work, but he didn't even know if they were going to open.  

So, we went to walk the dog.  We walked up to the Canal on the other side of Broad Street & we were amazed at how rough and high the water was.

Anyway, there was scary loud lightweight and thunder nearby, so we hurried home before the next storm system which luckily never came.  TFP got the call that they were going to open, so he got ready and was going to walk, since we weren't sure which roads were clear.  

So, Rudy & I walked him to the corner of Claiborne & Canal.  And the traffic was horrendous.  Th traffic lights were out at the intersection, so cars were backed up from every direction.  So, it was probably better that we didn't drive.  

I went home & read the owner's manual for our generator that we got after Hurricane Irma in Fort Lauderdale.  We had never used it.  So, I saw that we needed 10W30 oil for it.  And we needed another extension cord, because the grounded cords we had wouldn't reach all the way out back where we would put the generator.  So, I remembered there was the auto parts store around the corner.  I walked there.  The guy was helpful & not condescending.  He said they had water to the counter, but then he just cleaned it up & then opened.  I went back & decided it was time to venture out in the car.  I topped off the gas in the Renegade,  I brought the gas cans & filled them.  We went to Rouses.  There were no carts in the store.  I had to go back out and ask a lady for her cart as she was finishing putting her stuff in the car.   I was not quite done when this happened

This was very devastating because these are my only good flip flops.  They helped immensely with my plantar fasciitis.  So I was limping around the store, holding the thong with my toes.  

Anyway, I finished that, then I got cash out and an ATM.  Then I realized I forgot to put air in one of the tires.  And yes, I could have asked at the dealership, but I forgot.  They would have probably tried to sell me a new tire anyway.  

So, here I am, writing this blog post.  And we aren't super prepared for a storm, but as long as the house stays upright, we have enough stuff to last a few days.  Wish us and the state of Louisiana luck!  See you on the other side.  Hopefully, lol.