The heavy rains and winds started around 3PM. Red Salvia is laying on the ground and tithonia is snapped at ground level. Keep reminding myself people have it much worse with loss of property and even lives so it's not the end of the world if the nectaring bunch have to use staked up zinnias to eat! Last 2 chrysalides I brought into garage are getting very dark. Just checked forecast for tomorrow (Sunday) and sun should be out by later in afternoon. After seeing more than a few eclose I know what the chrysalis looks like a day before...and they're going to pop tomorrow. Gotta get them dried out and ready to fly as soon as the sun appears tomorrow. If they aren't ready during that sunny window before nightfall I'll have to "sponge feed" them until Monday when it's weather forecast is all clear. It just occurred to me that I haven't worried about the power going out or some of the Chinese Wisteria choked trees coming down like last storm but it's the Monarchs I've been concentrating on since last night...LOL. Come on, Tracey, spill about what plants you got on clearance at Lowe's! :) I need to get my behind out to nurseries and garden centers to see what I can find on clearance that I won't kill over winter if I don't get to do the 24" deep amending thing again in less than ideal soil/drainage conditions even though I did that last fall. What does this clay want from me...LOL.

Came through ok here as well. Minor damage from winds, couple small trees down, some large limbs down are common. Winds only gusted up to around 50MPH here during heavy rain bands. Only knocked over my 5' windmill in its pot, but no damage. Bananas got a bit of shred, but not real bad. The water came up to the drain tops here, and moved up in the toilet some, but nothing like we saw before. We had sandbagged and prepared yesterday. IT figures we didnt flood. I would put money on it if we had not had the sand bags ready, we would have flooded massively. Just how things go it seems. LOL! Cute citty Jonnieb. I found my cat the night after Isabel went thru. I was helping my friend move into his new house in columbia heights, and i saw this tiny little dot in the yard. Just a couple ears sticking up. I approached but he ran away, but kept coming back, we put water in ice cube trays for him ( its all we had at the time) and he would come and drink, but was very skittish. I finally got him, no mother be found anywhere, no cat calling, nothing. We think his mother may have perished during the storm / flooding. He was flea ridden and terribly imaciated, just skin and bones really. I took him home that night, and took him to the vet the following week. At that point we did not know he was a boy, so I named him Isabel, after the storm. At the vet, the vet said to me.. well, Isable, IS A BOY! LOL! I had to bottle feed him with an eye dropper for a couple weeks. He weighed a whopping 6 ounces and completely fit in the palm of my hand, tail and all. The vet said he was likely the runt, and he was barely 4 weeks old. Hes now 5 years old as of the last week in august, and is a happy, healthy, but lean, and smaller house cat. Hes got the most beautiful ocean green eyes. Hes still got that "WILD" in him tho. He was after all a wild ferral city kitty. Heres a couple of pics of him.

Still busy with the remodeling so I didn't get a chance to upload pictures last weekend. Maybe next? Anyway, finding someone to do the plaster was tough. There aren't many in my area (SF bay area) though more than in other areas: SF has a lot of existing plaster and though people are mostly replacing it, there's enough work to keep folks busy. I don't actually remember where I found someone to do the work. Some mix of Yelp, Nextdoor, Angie's List, and general web searches. I found several people that will do minor repairs but mostly do stucco, no interior. I only found two that actually do interior and one never got back to me. The guy I found is old school: Irish accent and all. He started in London and did a bunch of work in NY before moving to the bay area. He runs a single crew of 3-5 guys and does a lot of the work himself.

Of the 18 roses "too close together" last year, only 11 are still living. Today, I dug up: 4 dead roses 3 roses that had been overtaken by the Dr. Huey rootstock The remaining 11 roses are now far apart. I contacted my city's Public Works Department. They have FREE recycled green waste but they couldn't vouch for the quality of the ingredients. I live in a condo so I can't have a truckload of mulch delivered to my garden. It would have to be dumped in a driveway 200 feet away then I'd have to transport it to my garden. Bagged mulch -- although more expensive than bulk mulch -- is much easier to handle.