An Uninvited Guest

For the past week or so I've been enjoying working hard in the garden and around the house getting ready for a Labor Day visit from my parents and my beau's mom. Unfortunately it looks like an uninvited guest might beat our expected company and disrupt or perhaps cancel our visit. 

That's right, Hurricane Earl is our very uninvited guest. Living two miles from the ocean seems great most of the time, but Earl has me wishing for the safety of my land locked Western New York home. I guess this is the price we pay for beautiful weather and beautiful beaches here in North Carolina. We are expecting our guest sometime late Thursday or early Friday, right around the time that my beau's mother is supposed to be flying in. Sigh. Right now we are under hurricane watch and have been advised to have an evacuation plan. So today I am packing a bag for the kitties and for myself -just in case we have to leave and preparing our hurricane kit just in case we get to stay.

This is my first hurricane and I must admit, even though I'm shaking in my mary janes, I'm excited too. As long as it is safe to do so, I'd like to stay and experience this powerful force of nature. Looking outside at this beautiful morning, it is hard to believe a leviathan is barreling up the coast towards me. 

Earl has fallen to a category 3 but meteorologists expect it to waver back and forth between 3 and 4 as it makes the drive towards North Carolina. 

A category 4 in North Carolina conjures, for those old enough to remember, memories of Hurricane Hazel. In 1954 Hazel made landfall in North Carolina and drove north wreaking havoc as far north as Toronto, Ontario. 

Here are some vintage photographs of the trouble Hazel caused in North Carolina:

A "whale of a storm"

The damage inland.

Adding insult to injury: a house fire during Hurrican Hazel.

An interesting story about Hazel can be found here.

So, dear readers, all 54 of you, this is the last you'll hear from me for a while as I prepare for and clean up from our most uninvited guest, Hurricane Earl. 

Please look for something very exciting coming soon to this Cardboard Sea!