Ida Done It....But....

...we had a great time anyway!!! For those of you who live right here in the Seven Cities, you know exactly who "Ida" is! She's that Nor'Easter that sat right on top of us for 3 (as in "THREE") days and dumped 8 to 10 inches of rain on our heads! We had alot of rain when Hurrican Isabel hit here back in 2003, but the tide rose much higher with this storm.

Our neighborhood was flooded and we couldn't get out, but throughout the worst of the storm we met up with neighbors and walked the street watching the tide come in and trying to guess how high it would get. Some had water in their garages and most had water up to and over their foundations. We were relatively lucky.....it did come up to the foundation, but didn't get underneath the house. It came up over the base of our shed, but because it's so well built, you could only see dampness at the seams of the flooring. It DID completely cover our dock, which was amazing! Here are a few photos from the storm....

Dennis set out early on the first day and this is what he came upon on Bells Mill Road....good thing he didn't "set out" earlier!
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This is our next door neighbor sitting at the entrance to the neighborhood. Yep, he turned around and came back!

This is the view from our deck....on the first day! The highest the water got was up to the flowerbed you see at the bottom right part of the picture.

This is the dock...on the first day! Since the highest tide came in the evening, that picture isn't so great, but you'll get the idea...

This picture, taken from the deck, is the walkway along the back of the house...everything you see was completely under water the next night!

This picture was taken the night of the highest tide....but this was taken 1 hour before it's peak. EVERYTHING was under water...but the battery in the camera was dead! Argh! This was taken about an hour before high tide peak....it went up another 3 or 4 feet into the yard....and left quite a mess....see: The water went up beyond where it left the "mess".....which ended up in more than 20 bags! AND we used alot of it to put our gardens to "bed" for the winter.View from our deck of neighbor's yard....similar to the view in picture #3!This picture was taken the morning after the "peak" tide.....still pretty high, but not as bad as the night before.

All in all, we fared surprisingly well! We didn't lose power or satellite TV....we didn't get wet (other than a little bit our running around the neighborhood) and we didn't run out of food, water.....or cocktails!

Although my office was open EVERY day, several closings were delayed, but everyone was so nice about it! Now that was a first in a long time.....buyers understanding about delayed closings! Success!!!!

Now I guess we need to wait to see how the salty water affected the gardens.....