Okay. I was wrong and I freely admit it. Irene does have us in her sights. What a week it has been! First an earthquake; now a major hurricane force is heading our way.

But, who would know? Today we drove to New York (Rhinebeck) for the Dutchess County Fair. We planned this day off for Rick weeks ago. The day was sunny, hot and slightly humid. The sky—a pretty blue with puffy clouds. If we didn’t know any better we would assume the following days would be just as nice. Not so. Irene is bearing down on us. Big time.

New York City as of tomorrow at noon all public transportation will shut down. People are being evacuated. Airports have cancelled flights. This sounds serious to me.

Although where we live we are at no risk of flooding since most everything is downhill from here, the sheer amount of rainfall (even if we don’t get the high winds) is staggering.

We spent the time after we got back from our away time at the fair preparing for the worse scenario. We brought in all the things around the pool that could be projectiles. I took in all the deck flowers. We turned our deck tables (which are iron) upside down. We brought the fig tree inside the garage. (Poor figgy is loaded with about 60 un-ripe figs.) We filled huge jugs full of water. We know where battery powered lanterns are and Rick bought lamp oil at our local Sears store for the oil lamps we have. We have a butane burner for cooking on if the power goes out. We have plenty of food.

Of course, with all this preparedness we are bound now to not have anything happen.

As long as we still have power I will keep you posted. We are hanging in there!

P.S. I just now noticed that Rick and I were doing blogs at the same time. This is his idea of Hurricane Preparedness.

I feel really worried for you as the news is full of N.Y. closure and also mentions N.J.  I do hope you all keep safe and Irene passes without too many problems.

Joyce, thank you for your concern. We live about an hour’s drive north of NYC, and pretty much “up in the mountains” so we should be better off than people who live in the lower lying areas around us. All airports are closing today as well. We are expecting quite a large amount of rain throughout which is a concern for trees falling in the already saturated ground we have. Fingers crossed!

I have been thinking of you guys.  My brother lives in Virginia now, he too has had a busy week. I didn’t sleep last night thinking about the hurricane.  (Did you hear Colorado had an earthquake too!  Crazy….Be safe!