Hello from a very wet part of the USA. We got a few questions, so we’re here to let everyone know that all of the Hermits are safe and sound under the bands of wetness from Harvey the Hurricane (as opposed to our dog, Harvey, who is not fond of his namesake at all).
The Saturday rainfall of 5.08 inches broke the 2001 record by two inches. Wet.
Frank in San Antonio is the one who had the most rain, for sure. They got hit pretty hard. Carol and Russell in South Austin got a lot of rain, which is what Anita and I up in north Austin also had (note the record amount of rain in the station closest to Bobcat Lair). Lee at the ranch and Mandi at our Cameron office also report rain and more rain. Our ponds have refilled, which is great for late summer. The wind was strong, but not as bad as it was on the “wet” side of the storm. We’re all thinking of the folks at the coast and around Houston.
Looking up the Bobcat Lair’s hill. Wetness.
The weird thing is that not far to the west of us, it hasn’t rained at all. Weather is fascinating!
What’s This Got to Do with Work?
As you might guess, not a lot has been happening on our projects. We sent the guys working in Bryan home. On the other hand, Antonio, the guy working at the Taylor house (which we owe you a blog post on), told Carol he wanted to go over there on Saturday to work on gutters, and asked Anita to meet him there. She said it is not safe to work on gutters in a hurricane, even way at the edge, and that he should go home. He said he hoped maybe to get back to work on Sunday. As I’m writing this, it’s still pouring rain, and we haven’t heard from him.
Weather problems have to be hard on people who only get paid if they work. I really feel for our contractors who need money to pay their bills, but I also don’t want to place them in harm’s way. It was the same way in the spring of 2016 when we had the repeated floods that delayed the Villa Park houses. There were many, many days when people who worked outside were out of luck. You sure don’t want to be working with metal pipes or things that are electrified when there’s lightning going on! Besides, I’m pretty sure the insurance agent would frown on us telling people to work in dangerous conditions!
It’s fine up here on Cat Mountain, but Bull Creek, which is at the bottom of these hills, is filling up. Note we brought in all the plants and furniture, like good citizens.
The rains are predicted to keep up for at least the next few days, and that will slow us down on all the projects, which will not be fun for our contract workers. We’re supposed to be finishing up on Meadow Arbor 2 and Roadrunner, and there are many different contractors supposed to be heading over to the Taylor Homestead to perform different aspects of that job (including taking down the kitchen pegboard that we all have a love/hate relationship with!
We will just have to wait and see. It’s still early.
What We’ve Been Up To
New shelves, display of china, and the table turned sideways. This lets us enter through the garage a lot easier.
Since Anita and I have been confined to the Bobcat Lair, we decided it was a good time to get some more unpacking and decorating done. We successfully hung two shelves up in the breakfast area. They aren’t going to fall down. Wow did we use strong fasteners. That’s good, since some of Anita’s treasured Fiesta Ware is on the shelves. The rest is in Lee’s old china cabinet, where it shines.
We hung up some of my many decorative plates (the purple ones are going into the master bathroom) and arranged my large collection of teapots and pansy mugs to look slightly less cluttered, turned and moved the breakfast table closer to the windows, and declared the room good. We even had breakfast there!
Here you can see all the Fiesta Ware in the cabinet. It sure livens that piece up (we plan to repaint it).
Next we’re going to work on the guest room and hang another set of shelves to hold another of Anita’s collections. It helps with cabin fever if you hang around in different parts of the house. At least we hope so!
We’d love to hear your stories of how you fared in the storm, Texas friends. How did you pass the time?