Hurricane Debby says hello

I struggled to wake up this morning--either because I sleep deeper when it's raining, and it rained all night, or because Charley, my ten-year-old mastiff, woke me up to tell me he'd pooped by the side of the bed.  (This is an annoying habit of his, but I'd really rather he tell me than not.)

In any case, I woke up to silence and the sight of a brightening horizon. What? Our forecast called for rain for the next three days, courtesy of tropical storm/hurricane Debby spinning out in the Gulf.  Cheered by the sight of the approaching sun, I got up and stumbled to my office to check emails.

A few minutes later, my husband came in with Babe, our nine-year-old mastiff (who hasn't adopted Charley's annoying habit, thank heaven.)  "There's a tree against the back door," says hubby. "And I can't let Babe out that way."

The view from my back door. 

A tree?   Just how hard did the wind blow last night?  There are no trees in that part of the yard.
A few minutes later hubby appears with gardening gloves on his hands. "The tree has thorns," he announces, "and it's a monster."

Okay, then.  The hubby--who does not care to know the difference between a tree and a vine--is describing our bougainvillea, which is truly a monster and I don't know why I ever planted the thing.  Each winter I pray for a good hard freeze to kill it--or at least beat it down to the roots--but this past winter I must have been asking amiss.

So I go outside to take a look.  Sure enough--the wind or the rain or something--has toppled the monstrous bougainvillea and pushed it against the side of the house, blocking the door and a clear passage to my kitchen window (which I rarely have cause to visit).

After the hubby leaves, I get the electric hedge trimmer and go out in my pajamas, figuring I'd rather sweat now and shower later.  I trim away the flustered plumbago and the moonflower vines, then begin to hack at the bougainvillea.  I trim until I wear away the skin from a rising blister on my index finger, then figure that the job is too big for my hedge trimmers--this calls for a chain saw.  Hubby has gone off to borrow one, but he's so accident prone that I worry about him chopping off a limb of his own instead.

And so far, this is our only damage from Debby.  We still have a forecast of wind, rain, and the occasional tornado, but we're faring quite well compared to some of my friends in Colorado who are literally running from a raging wildfire.

The night blooming cereus bloom. 

One bonus--as I was cleaning up after the storm, I discovered that my night blooming cereus, arguably one of the ugliest plants on the planet, is heavily pregnant with a bloom.  I have to watch it every day in order to find the night when it blooms . . . which means I'll be up late very soon.  :-) The bloom makes up for the unattractiveness of the plant.

The bloom reminds me of that musical/movie with the blood-thirsty plant named Audrey who croaks, "Feed me."  What is the name of that movie?  My mind is blank.

And that's the report from Hunt haven.  I'm off to the grocery store before the rains begin again.

~~Angie