Cleanup starts

Have been away from a computer for awhile, so I am capturing what happens now and will work my way back as time allows.

Today we started the cleanup from Hurricane Irma. First things first, and that means breakfast. But since we didn't have any perishables in the refrigerator, we went to Walmart for a few groceries. It turns out Walmart hasn't recovered from the hurricane, either. No bread. 

No eggs. 

No cheese either, and the only milk on the shelves were a couple of gallons of skim milk. But because the shelves were so bare, we could see back into the stock room behind the shelves where there were pallets of milk waiting to be put out. Randy found a nice person who got him the milk he wanted, although they still didn't have creamer. He was able to get enough stuff to fix a good breakfast, and then we started on the yard. 

The flowering plants by the car port have been laying down for a week. We gently straightened them and tied them up, hoping they will recover.

The row of Marigold along the front of the house won't survive. I originally thought they were just bent over, but they were broken. I guess a gust of wind came along the house and tore through them. Nothing to do but pull them up.

Then it was time to tackle the big job: those tree limbs. Several big limbs fell across the back deck and on the side yard.

The amazing thing is that, although the limb hit the top of the boat dock cover and bent the frame in a couple of places, it didn't hit the boat. It completely fill the dock walkway but didn't damage the boat at all!

Nevertheless, those big limbs were a pain to clean up. We started on the side yard, cutting the limbs into manageable pieces and dragging them up to the edge of the driveway, where we hope they will be picked up. Then Randy got out the saw and cut the bigger limbs. 

After several hours our pile had expanded from the end of the driveway to along the edge. Like many people here, we are building a hedge of yard waste.

Next we trimmed some tree branches that had not fallen but looked likely to next time. Randy stood at the edge of the boat and used a pole chain saw to get at them. When they fell, they usually fell into the canal, so then we had to snag them and drag them up on shore.

Not all of them fell into the water: one dropped down hard on the dock walkway and crashed right through. Good thing this didn't fall on the boat! 

Then we started dragging submerged branches out of the canal. There is no way to tell how big a branch is when most of it's underwater, but all of these were big. And water logged. Eventually we ended up with even more yard waste than we had already cut up. So these will wait until tomorrow. Because it's still mighty hot here in Florida.

That was enough to make us hot, tired and filthy dirty. But after taking a quick shower Randy went out to the carport shed to clean the chest freezer. Over the summer our neighbor across the canal gave us fish, and what we didn't eat we froze. The bottles of ice that Randy packed on top of the food before we left kept most of it from thawing completely, but the fish smelled anyway. Randy threw away all the food that hadn't been moved to Donna's brother's freezer, defrosted the freezer, and sanitized it with bleach.