What Do You Do While Waiting For a Tropical Storm?

Stormy Weather and Swaps

www.artjoystuff.blogspot.com

Living in Florida, we know the "Hurricane Season" lasts almost half the year, June - November.  As June approaches we start collecting our supplies: bottled water, non-perishable foods, batteries. Time to check all the flashlights, portable radios, portable generators, etc!

What's this? Work in progress ....

A few years ago after a week with no electricity, constant rain, mosquitoes,  high winds, and fallen trees, I was so jealous of one of my co-workers.  When we finally got back to school and started comparing stories, he said he'd spent the week watching movies on his battery-operated dvd player! 

Note the $.49 price sticker! Many beads left over from the original satin and lace project!

Now there's so much wireless technology available - a big help!  After that storm our local power company put all the electrical cables underground.  Before that we could lose our power any time, just by a small branch falling on one of the lines.

Last weekend we experienced our first 2012 storm - Tropical Storm Beryl - before the official start of the season!  

Jacksonville has been extremely fortunate - blessed - for many, many years by not having any direct hurricane hits, but TS Beryl came straight across our city last Sunday and Monday.  While not a hurricane, TS Beryl had pretty high winds at her peak (up to 70 mph - has to be 74mph for a hurricane).  Lots of rain and wind, but not nearly as bad as it could have been!  

The Mayor and other leaders cancelled quite a bit of the Jacksonville Jazz Festival and all of the Memorial Day activities. That was sad because the Jazz Festival is very popular and we had many visitors here for the US v Scotland Soccer  game too!  

Since Monday was Memorial Day the schools, government offices and many businesses were closed.  Everyone was advised to stay inside and "hunker down", after spending Friday and Saturday gathering supplies and preparing for the storm.

Sewing beads on bits of satin and lace carefully saved from  both my daughters' wedding gown fabrics saved me from just sitting here worrying while watching the treetops wave around in between torrential downpours.

Was it just a week or so ago that we were so thrilled to have some rain after months of drought? Between that week of rain and TS Beryl, everything's looking pretty green around here at the moment!  Best of all,  while there were plenty of downed trees and branches, no deaths or serious injuries were reported. Several dried up lakes a bit further west were filled up as Beryl passed by.

Now that it's June and officially "Hurricane Season" who knows what will come next?  The only good thing I can say about hurricanes, which have destroyed so much in many of the coastal areas of our country and others, is that we do get the warnings ahead of time.

Both my daughters asked me to make their wedding gowns. What wonderful summers those were! Precious memories!  As I collected the fabrics and pearls for these ATCs,  I realized that almost every one of the stores that carried wedding fabrics and lace at that time has since closed. That makes me so sad.

For the Sew Many Flowers ATC Swap, Kimberly asked us to make only three instead of the usual six.  I made an extra one for Kimberly and kept the first one for myself. I almost always make a few changes after the first one for any swap. I forgot that the Post Office would be closed Monday, so had to race out to mail them Tuesday morning - the drop-deadline day!

Looking forward to seeing what everyone else did with this theme. Thanks to Kimberly of ArtJoyStuff for hosting this lovely swap!