Twenty-four hours later. Lessons learned from Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene.

We lost power from Irene at 7:30 am yesterday, and had it restored around noon today. After being warned that we might be in the dark for more than a week, we're all relieved around here! It was an unpleasant experience, but we escaped mostly unscathed. Our home wasn't damaged, and our gardens only got dinged a little. All our shrubs are fine, even the fragile ones like the mountain laurel and yellow lilac. There are a few small to medium-sized branches lying around, and lots of leaves. No one on our street ended up with a tree on their house. Phew!

Major Lesson Learned: How to flush a toilet without electricity when you have well water. It takes 3 gallons of water to fill up the tank. In the days preceding the storm, fill up lots and lots of large containers with water for flushing. It will probably still not be enough. Pray.

I have two big, beautiful Coleman lanterns that take eight D batteries apiece. I got them last year from Amazon when we were worried about Hurricane Earl, for about $20 each. They were a great purchase. Unfortunately, D batteries were very scarce a few days ago. I was in terror that I'd run out of juice before we got our power back; I think you get like 13 hours of illumination if you run the lantern on the lowest setting. And they told us that it could take longer than a week to restore power! I almost wept from joy when I found two tea light burners and two huge bags of tea light candles in a cabinet last night. Obviously, we wouldn't use them until we put Lucas in his room for the night...but I felt like a starving person trapped in a house during a blizzard who just found a big bag of leftover Halloween candy under her bed. Seriously. Events like this really put things in perspective. I might never buy a doll ever again. Even twenty dollars can save you in an emergency. The joy you feel from realizing you have enough stored water to flush the toilet one more time is even sweeter than what you'd feel from receiving a doll purchase in the mail.

I'm very glad to report that my new roses "Quietness" and "Prairie Sunrise" received no damage from the storm. "Quietness" is actually sending out new growth!