Hurricane Frances didn't by-pass. She actually hit us.

We started preparing the Thursday before by filling up gas cans, buying hurricane food, putting up plywood, and putting down hurricane shutters.

We celebrated accomplishing all of those things by having bartender Mike make us a round of pre-hurricane Hurricanes.

On Friday we brought in all the stuff from outside and stacked it anywhere it would fit.

That included all the plants in the spare room...

...in the office...

...and even in the kitchen!

Saturday, when things started to pick up, before we lost power, it was time to prepare the bathtub for water storage.

And anything else that would hold water, as well. Gotta flush those toilets somehow.

We brought in all the animals, whether they liked it or now. Natty didn't seem to mind too much.

We sedated and crated Bogart and Sydney.

Libby stayed out.

Poor prior planning...Mike attempts to cut the lock on the bike chain so he can chain the generator to the post.

Mike filmed everything.

Palm tree, behind the house across the street, bending in the wind.

Hurricane skies on Saturday afternoon

The house is all safe and sound behind its plywood and shutters.

Mike attempts to film a squal through the peep hole of the front door. Nope, it didn't work.

More wind and the beginning of some rain

Andie and Laura invented the "Privacy Potty Poncho" for when the toilet stops flushing.

The privacy fence started to come down long before Frances herself hit. This happened during one of the outer feeder bands.

The Mimosa went down during one of the feeder bands, as well. We were out on the porch and saw it fall.

Downed Mimosa

This dove had her nest in there. She rode the tree all the way to the ground.

When we lost power, Mike rigged up a light so we could play cards to pass the time.

He used a landscape light from the garden...

...a couple of batteries and some duct tape...

...a box knife...

...and an injury, which is nothing new for Mike.

It worked!

Here's our make-shift light on the card table.

Mike also hooked a small TV to a battery. Here he attempts to get better reception with the rabbit ears.

When the wind got really bad, the front door started to shake in its frame, so Mike screwed it shut. A house with no exits.

So we slept a lot. Natty took care of guard duty.

The morning after, we went out to survey the damage. Our palm tree snapped in half and landed on Andie's Jimmy.

That's the Jimmy under there.

Some of it landed in the back of Mike's Jeep.

That was some strong wind.

A lot of limbs in our yard didn't come from our own trees.

The Jimmy escaped pretty much unscathed.

The roots of our Mimosa tree

Reed fencing was torn away.

More of our privacy fence went down...

...in several pieces.

That used to be a Key Lime tree.

The fence in the dog area was smashed.

And a whole lot of our shingles ended up on the ground.

The streets were flooded.

Behind Laura's car is a whole lot of our neighbor's roof.

Andie whipped us up a nice stir fry dinner despite the fact that we had no power.

Here Mike strings some wire for his next lighting project.

More landscape lights

Then he hung them all over the house and connected them to deep cycle marine batteries, to keep us from killing ourselves in the dark.

There were downed trees all over the neighborhood.

This is the park in our development. The lake is full of debris.

This huge Banyan tree went over, bringing up the parking lot with it.

Root ball of the Banyan

The tree is over on its side - look where the ground has come up in one big piece.

It's totally over on its side, and it's still taller than Andie.

You can almost see the clubhouse under there somewhere.

None of the playground equipment was spared.

And neither was the clubhouse.

Since we were lucky enough to have a generator and a camp stove, we had the neighbors over for dinner. These were our appetizers.

Mike, Andie, Russ, and Rene ejoy after dinner coffee - a real luxury.

The next project was to make our driveway useable by removing the palm tree.

Mike tied one end of a tow rope to the tree and the other end to the Jimmy, and then Andie pulled it to the side.

The next night we had dinner at the neighbors, in their RV. They sat up the satellite so we could watch the news.

We had an awsome dinner with lights and airconditioning, as well.

Mike's next project was to hook up the TV to a marine battery that would run it indefinitely.

Getting stir crazy

7.5 days after we lost power, Andie points to the airconditioning vent in joy!

And she does the happy dance as everything starts to come back to life.

All hail to Ginny the generator. She got us through some tough times.

With the return of power, the real work began. Here's our pile of cut up palm tree.

This sad little stump is all that's left of that gorgeous tree.

The next thing we tackled was cleaning up the mess the Mimosa tree left behind.

Russ came over to offer his opinion.

We cut the branches way back and cut them into about 4' pieces.

Then we stacked them into three neat piles.

This is all that was left after we finished cutting.

The next step was to dig some of the dirt out of the hole, so the three would fit back in it.

Then we watered it really good to make the ground very soft.

Tied a tow rope to one of the limbs.

Mike jacked it off the ground a little bit.

Okay...a lot

Carl came over to offer his opinion, as well.

Tied the other end of the tow rope to the Jeep.

And pulled the tree up. The Jeep actually left the ground on its front tires.

PULLLLLLL...

Discover that you didn't dig the hole deep enough...

...and dig some more...

...and some more...

Finally get the thing in its hole and prop it up for extra support

Add more water.

This is how Andie looked after Laura threw an entire shovel full of mud on her. At least we had running water and electricity at that time.