Months after Hurricane Ian's storm surge covered it with a couple of feet of brackish/salt water, slimy gray silt, and no doubt sewage and other pollutants, my Florida backyard is still there, but it's not a place you'd like to visit.
Other than shoveling debris out of the way of the doors, cleaning up in the yard had to wait for the more urgent job of removing sodden carpet, books, sheetrock, furniture, and ruined appliances. I'd still be standing in the middle of a mess were it not for family and neighbors who did yeoman's service.
With no air conditioning, the black mold didn't wait to make its appearance. I lost most of my sketchbooks, journals and nature studies. Piling them up on the side of the road for the claw trucks to remove hurt. Perhaps they could have been salvaged, but there was no time for that.
It was clear that I either was going to spend a good part of my remaining years trying to reclaim what was lost, or start living anew. I chose the latter, but it's not easy. The past keeps tugging at you, especially as memory fails and there are no photos or diaries to jog it.
Temporarily homeless and carless, we lived first with one sister, and then another, a good hour-and-one-half commute over I-75. There were no rentals or sales of either cars or apartments. Eventually we found a car, and then bought a small condo - a little over 800 square feet plus a reasonable screened patio. This space has become more and more like home, but I want to move back into the house if and when it is habitable.
A host of problems starting roughly around 2020, and steadily worsening, already had interfered both with my engagement with the natural world, and consequently, my blogging. The frequency of my blog posts diminished from slow to a trickle. I lost the rejuvenation that regular interaction with nature can bring, along with the physical benefits of active gardening. I was doing very little, yet was always pressed for time, and bad went to worse.
Then Ian hit, and that was that. I have been consciencious about packing and evacuating since we've lived here, and we've been hit by 2 major storms - Wilma in 2005 and Irma in 2017. Irma should have been a wakeup call, because several homes on our street flooded, and the debris line left by the surge came disturbingly close to our back door. But then Ian didn't seem to be headed our way initially, and already feeling half-defeated I did nothing to prepare, and we made the potentially fatal mistake of riding it out.
Fortunately, a neighbor with a two-story house took us in, so we didn't get wet. Had we stayed, our lives wouldn't have been threatened because the water didn't rise high enough to drown us, but it would have been an extremely ugly experience, and in other worse-hit areas people who stayed died or had very close calls. As it was, looking at the rising water from the safety of a 2nd floor window was bad enough.
Streets and canals disappeared. All was just a gray sea, with the houses and vehicles poking up from it. Yet compared with the destruction experienced by Fort Myers Beach, Sanibel and Matlacha, we got off easy.
As for the yard, the native shrubs and small trees scarcely missed a beat, since we got very little wind, but the herbacious material was all killed to the ground. The bromeliads won't come back, because they have no underground parts or seed banks to regenerate. We didn't even get that much rain with Ian, and this winter has been exceptionally dry, with no flushing rains at all, so some plants, the bougainvilleas for instance, have had a hard time recovering.
Other than removing debris like a stray recycling bin, various bottles of toxic cleaning solutions and fuel additives, a 5-gallon gas can with a mixture of gas and water, and even most of a pizza, I've done little with the yard. An initial cleanup was followed by a regrowth of weeds, and now the front is also littered with construction debris. At least the drought means that the weeds are not as robust as they will be in a few months, assuming seasonal rains resume.
Even with all the work of rebuilding and living out of boxes, I've had time to sketch, but not the will. Now and again I get a little burst of energy, and scribble a little in my sketchbook. Sometimes I've tried to force it, with predictable ininspired results.
I sit with the window open tonight, listening to the chuck-will's-widow calling from the mangroves. Even though we live in a large complex, there are glimpses of the natural world to be had. Alligators swim in the small bay outside, and the oak and mahogany trees lining the streets host a wealth of native tillandsias. Resurrection fern flourishes in the hedges, and I've even seen a good-sized black racer. The winter warblers have gone back north. The swallow-tailed kites, coming from South America, delighted us with their aeronautical skills. These magnificent birds epitomize grace, strength and beauty. Now they have headed back too. We don't see many, but throughout the day and early evening we see wading birds, anhingas, frigatebirds, ospreys and both black and turkey vultures.
The bird's song in the stillness of the night is comforting. Here in Florida we have done, and continue to do our best to wipe out the natural ecosystem. But pockets still resist, and in spots even thrive. We haven't destroyed everything yet. And maybe I will take out my sketchbook tomorrow.