Coast rebuilding incomplete five years after Katrina - Featured Story - SunHerald.com

Coast rebuilding incomplete five years after Katrina - Featured Story - SunHerald.com: "“It’s been constant rebuilding,” Pat Lobrano said.
“We feel like we were younger and stronger then. I’m not sure we would do it again,” she said.
“It has taken a lot of energy.”
Almost all residents who have rebuilt expressed the same sentiment as Lobrano.
“We’re back, we’re enjoying it, but it’s been a long road.”"

Miss. beaches largely unspoiled by Gulf oil gusher

Miss. beaches largely unspoiled by Gulf oil gusher : "So far, Mississippi hasn't dealt with such messes, largely because of the underwater DeSoto Canyon in the Gulf, which is south of the Florida Panhandle, said Don Johnson, an oceanographer at the University of Southern Mississippi's Gulf Coast Research Laboratory."

Bunny hutch progress

We did some work on the bunny hutch this weekend, I am proud to say.  We aren't finished of course.. but we do have some wire and wood put together on our back porch at the moment.  

I can't feel my hands.

Note to those considering working with wire and J-clips:  Spring for the more expensive 'deluxe' j-clip pliers.

We got off to a slow start Saturday morning.  We're still under a heat advisory and the mosquitoes are doing their very best to enforce it.  Our first attempts at working outside resulted in several thousand bites and some instant bad tempers all around.   We moved the wire part of the project to our back-up workshop....

The dining room.

We never got around to purchasing that dining room table after we moved the pool table many months ago... So why let such a good (air-conditioned, mosquito-free) space go to waste?

We plan on chipping away at the remaining parts of bunny apartment construction throughout the work week.  I'm looking forward to posting the final product -- complete with (hopefully) happy rabbit in place.

The famed oiled pelican of Pascagoula

I've been hearing lots about this guy... but finally (in this day and age of instant photographic evidence, no less) we get a visual -- and the source is not the professional media. Go figure. It was uploaded to the user gallery at gulflive.com.



Link here: http://photos.gulflive.com/photogallery/2010/06/oiled_pelican.html

Some bunny needs a little more patience

Our rabbit hutch project for our deserving bunny, Leo, has hit a few snags since I last mentioned it.

First - the project was stricken by extreme procrastination.

So we had an idea.. we got the materials... and then we played the Wii and watched stuff on Netflix all weekend.

Second - the project was delayed by germs.


With one weekend basically wasted and behind us - of course the next weekend was spent totally immobilized on the couch trying to remember a time when I had the luxury of breathing through my nose.

Third - the project is currently being delayed by something called a 'heat advisory' - a thing of which I have recently learned.


Thirty eight years on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and I can tell you that heat and humidity are no strangers.  However, I don't think I've ever paid much attention to the term 'heat advisory'.  I'm sure that a few thousand heat advisories have been issued here in my lifetime - but I guess I quietly dismissed them.. You know like "Uh.. right - Be advised! It's hot!"  I'm like that.

Earlier today I got a handy alert on my cell phone advising me that it is (and will continue to be) hot.  Undaunted, I slathered myself with toxic bug repellent and went into the backyard anyway.  I lasted close to 5 minutes out there.  I then came inside to find out more about these heat advisory things.

I found the current watch via NOAA's NWS:

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE


NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA


348 PM CDT MON JUN 7 2010


...HEAT ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 9 AM TUESDAY TO 6 PM CDT
THURSDAY...
.HIGHS INTO THE 90S IN CONJUNCTION WITH DEW POINTS AROUND 80 WILL
BRING THE HEAT INDEX IN MOST AREAS TO ABOVE 105 DEGREES AND AS
HIGH AS 115.
Further down in the advisory we get some info on exactly what this means and what to do about it:

PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS...

THE HEAT INDEX IS A MEASURE OF HOW HOT IT FEELS WHEN THE EFFECTS OF
HUMIDITY ARE COMBINED WITH THE TEMPERATURE.  A HEAT INDEX OF 105
DEGREES IS CONSIDERED THE LEVEL WHERE MANY PEOPLE BEGIN TO EXPERIENCE
EXTREME DISCOMFORT OR PHYSICAL STRESS.  THE HEAT INDEX IS MEASURED
UNDER SHADY CONDITIONS...AND DIRECT EXPOSURE TO SUNLIGHT CAN INCREASE
THE HEAT INDEX AS MUCH AS 15 DEGREES.
A HEAT ADVISORY MEANS THAT A PERIOD OF HOT TEMPERATURES IS
EXPECTED. THE COMBINATION OF HOT TEMPERATURES AND HIGH HUMIDITY
WILL COMBINE TO CREATE A SITUATION IN WHICH HEAT ILLNESSES ARE
POSSIBLE. DRINK PLENTY OF FLUIDS...STAY IN AN AIR-CONDITIONED
ROOM...STAY OUT OF THE SUN...AND CHECK UP ON RELATIVES AND
NEIGHBORS.


All of that translates to:  "You won't be building any bunny hutches until at least Friday." 

A common local sentiment

Read more at gulflive.com

Owners Stop Paying Mortgage ... And Stop Fretting About It - Yahoo! Finance

Owners Stop Paying Mortgage ... And Stop Fretting About It - Yahoo! Finance: "For Alex Pemberton and Susan Reboyras, foreclosure is becoming a way of life — something they did not want but are in no hurry to get out of.

Foreclosure has allowed them to stabilize the family business. Go to Outback occasionally for a steak. Take their gas-guzzling airboat out for the weekend. Visit the Hard Rock Casino.

“Instead of the house dragging us down, it’s become a life raft,” said Mr. Pemberton, who stopped paying the mortgage on their house here last summer. “It’s really been a blessing.”"

Ugh. I couldn't imagine feeling relieved in this situation. Wouldn't you constantly be waiting for the other shoe to drop? What about that nagging feeling that something is just morally amiss? No matter how much you try to justify it - can you get around the fact that you agreed to the terms of repayment?

Maybe I would have a better time sympathizing with these folks if they were paying what they could afford toward their outstanding mortgages... Such as the man at the end of the article who says he went to his bank and said "I can afford $1300." He isn't paying $1300 though - he hasn't paid ANYTHING since 2008.

Of course there's probably legal advice at work here.. I'm sure there's some idea that paying anything at all toward the debt is acknowledging the debt -- and it sounds like these guys are operating on the crazy notion that they owe the bank nothing.

We've always wondered how other couples with families and mortgaged homes could afford boats and jet skis and new cars and Disneyworld vacations while we were budgeting for food. At least we now have a working theory.

Monday garden update

The rain isn't giving me any real chance to get out and weed or mulch  - but so far most of the plants are growing well enough to hide whatever isn't neat.  Eventually the rain will stop and the heat will fry my lovely garden... and I know this.  Yet every spring I'm so hopeful.  That's almost poetic, I think.

The water still standing outside the trenched flowerbeds 

long after a morning shower.

The great thing about establishing a perennial garden is that even when things get mostly ugly and struggle to survive the mid-summer droughts - all is not lost.  I know that when the cooler fall months come all of those straggly plants will put down new roots and come back even bigger and even more beautiful the next spring.

My daylilies are a prime example.  Bought exclusively from spring clearance sales or in unsorted bulk from various internet suppliers - the first couple years with my new daylilies usually produce little more than a yellowed strap of a leaf.. marking the spot where there will someday actually be a plant that flowers.  (And how they will flower is a total mystery until it happens.  Even if I did know what variety I planted at the time - after a couple of years I completely lose track.  It's okay. I like surprises.)  

We have dozens of varieties of daylilies in the yard - but this one

 is my absolute favorite. I wait every spring to see this bloom for the first time.  

This year's payoff for my patience includes a pretty little hybrid Lantana in the front yard.  I planted it three springs ago and at the time it was a tiny plant with about four leaves and no flowers.  The label said it was a 'hot pink' variety but I had no way of knowing if this was true or not considering the above-mentioned lack of flowers.  It didn't flower that first year.. or second... Actually it didn't even grow.  It languished.  Today I've got a nice 24" x 24" mounding clump of gorgeous - complete with real hot pink flowers.  It was worth the wait.

My fantastic hot pink Lantana.  It's truly hot pink!  

I've gotten pink varieties before only to end up

 with light orange flowers... But this is the real deal.

I have an enormous amount of respect for gardeners who use annuals in the flower garden.  I wish I could be one of them.  The fact is though - when I try I never get anywhere close to a season out of those plants.  They're totally temporary.. like paper plates.  I plant my annuals and they look great the first day - then they take a couple of weeks (if I'm really lucky) to die.  And that's why I gave up.  I started looking for perennials.. for natives.. for naturalizers.  I need a garden that grows itself.  

There's a trade-off for sure.  I often envy the beautifully sculpted and color-coordinated (and nearly instant!) annual gardens I see around town.  I get no instant gratification...  For all the work I put into the garden I usually just have dreams to show for it.... In a few years - it will be what I hope for - barring drought, flood, holocaust or Japanese beetle invasion.  However, I don't get the sense that I'm sculpting a garden... making a garden.. decorating my yard... Instead - I feel as if I am participating (albeit in a tiny little way) in nature.  

It's not a formal garden - but it is earnest.  Yeah.  I like that.  It suits us just fine.

Suggested resources:

The Color Encyclopedia of Daylilies

Katrina still claiming victims

Katrina still claiming victims �
"Current Mayor Walter “Buzz” Jack, as well as Former Mayor Pat Lightsey and other community leaders attended the school. A number of them gathered at the site at various times throughout the week to watch the demolition and look for anything from the rubbish that could be savaged as a keepsake.

They all hated to see their beloved school, which later became Sandersville Special Consolidated School, demolished. However, former students and employees understood hazardous conditions necessitated the destruction of the building.

“Damage to the roof from Hurricane Katrina and rotting floors made the school

completely unusable, explained Chuck Benigno, director of school improvement for the Jones County School District. “The gym and some newer buildings will remain.”"

The reason I'm not outside at the moment ...

Impromptu field trip

Dave worked 10 hour days this past week so he could take today off for a field trip with the boys.  The plan was to go climb on the rock wall at MGCCC.  A good, solid plan.  

We left early this morning for Ocean Springs to pick up our vacuum cleaner from the repair shop -- Oh! How I have missed my vacuum cleaner.  We even stopped by McDonald's for breakfast with the entire tribe... then returned home to catch our breath before heading over to the community college for that rock wall.

Turns out the rock wall was closed.  But! It all worked out just fine.  We were invited for an hour-long boat tour of the bayou instead.  Despite the temperature -- it was totally pleasant.  The kids were superbly behaved and content... We didn't see any alligators - but even that didn't matter.   It's nice to get out on the water every now and then and remind ourselves that this is a nice place to live after all.  

Boats on the bayou.

Emily on the bayou.

Some bayou.

Yvonne & I had the most fun, I think.

The MGCCC Estuarine Education Center

In the meantime, the lawnmower repair shop had called to tell us that our lawnmower was ready... So we stopped by to pick it up on our way home.  The lawn without the lawnmower is even worse than the inside floors without the vacuum - there's no way we could delay bringing the mower home.  

What this means for weekend project status is -- we are go!  With all of the major errands out of the way (including a little recreation) we should have plenty to time to tackle at least one thing from the to-do list this weekend!  Stay tuned...

NOAA to release its forecast today for Hurricane Season 2010

NOAA to release its forecast today for Hurricane Season 2010 - WLOX-TV and WLOX.com - The News for South Mississippi: "Hurricane season starts Tuesday and today the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration will release its forecast for the 2010 season. WLOX Chief Meteorologist Mike Reader said NOAA is expected to predict a more active tropical season."


Nevermind that these predictions are seldom accurate -- we all seem to get some perverse pleasure from worrying ourselves to death.

Full Moon

Someday I'll actually be able to take a clear picture of this....  In the meantime...

Critters

I can't think of a more appropriate title.  It's not that there isn't a more appropriate title - it's just that it's been a long day and my head hurts - so this one will have to do.

On the recent to-do list I mentioned our plans to build a rabbit hutch... more of a rabbit condo... for our bunny, Leo.  At the moment he's mostly living in his little store-purchased wood hutch.  Poor Leo.  He's a big bunny and the hutch just gets smaller and smaller.  Literally.  Leo is a rodent.  He chews wood.  Who decided to make an all-wood bunny hutch anyway? Ugh.

So this afternoon I received some of the cage parts necessary for the construction of Leo's condo.  (Far be it for the local Lowe's to actually carry anything we might need.... Thank you, Internet.)  We haven't started yet but I have a strong suspicion that the bunny condo project will commence this weekend.

Today's near-constant rainfall is all there is to report otherwise.  The sludge that is our yard reminds me that this area is a swamp.... And lots of swampy critters have been coming out of hiding (lest they drown) for the past couple of days - turtles and salamanders and snakes and this guy:

He was hanging out under a cushion that I'd forgotten to get out of the rain.  I run into plenty of these fellas when I'm rooting around in the garden... And I just have to wonder - is this normal?  Seriously.  When you turn over rocks in your garden you find.. snails.. spiders... worms... doodlebugs...  turtles.. skinks... What about these?

I've lived here on the Gulf Coast my entire life - and some things I naturally take for granted.  The sound of seagulls before a storm... Pelicans on the front porch...  Sassafras leaves...  Catalpa worms... But as I get older - and with the influence of my non-native husband - I have begun thinking about what little day-to-day experiences are local, which are regional, and which are universal.

Monday garden update

We made a change this year to our gardening tactics... We have finally given up on keeping up with pine straw mulch. It's gorgeous. It's fantastic for the soil (if you have acid-loving plants). But in our climate (read: extreme heat and rain) and with all the aggressive soil microbes we've managed to get thriving in our garden soil - we couldn't seem to lay down new straw any faster than the old broke down and disappeared.

Common Yarrow growing happily.

We opted for a nice chocolate-brown shredded cypress mulch from a local gardening center. Delivered by the trailer-full - it's easier right from the start. The mulch is a gorgeous deep brown color when wet. The garden-center fellow warned us that some people don't like it much when it dries out as it tends to look like dirt. We don't mind. Dirt is good. As long as it doesn't look like cotton candy or astroturf - I'm fine with it.

We laid down a nice 4 inch layer throughout the flowerbeds back in January. We actually started running out somewhere in the backyard near the patio -- and really need another truckload to get everything mulched right... But lots and lots of rain delayed our plans before we were indefinitely stalled by incomprehensible insurance premium payments out of the blue.

Yarrow, fig, cannas, iris, taro, amaryllis, heather and other stuff.

The taro is a completely accidental ("natural") addition to the garden -

it apparently crept under our back fence and completely took over in less than a month.

My take on straw versus bark mulch? Well... The bark mulch is not quite as good at keeping the weeds away as the straw initially. The bark tends to pack down and the most persistent weeds find crevices through which to emerge. Straw does keep the weeds 100% away. That is - until it starts to break down... which is right away.

However, unlike straw - the bark mulch makes weeding supremely easy. Most of the weeds are actually growing in the mulch itself. Weeds rooted in nice soft loose mulch are very easy to uproot. This is good. A few minutes per few square yards with a hay fork and my weeding woes are taken care of for a week or so. Nice. With the straw mulch it was necessary to remove the straw -- pull out the weeds and then replace the straw. As you can imagine - this gets pretty tedious pretty fast and somewhere around June and 100 degrees - we let the weeds take over. I have high hopes for winning some of the weeding battles this summer.

We have tried year after year to start berries somewhere in the garden.

We finally found a nice native blackberry and voila -- results.

As noted above, we didn't actually get our mulch down until January. Not that mulch would have helped this winter... We lost several perennials this winter - including a couple of our new banana trees. Overall though - I'm really impressed with how many things came back - and are still coming back out there. Even more impressive - we don't seem to have any sprinkler system leaks despite the many hard freezes.

These guys sat around for years before they decided to do something.

Considering all of the other things we have to do around here on a given day - I have accepted that I can not have a manicured garden. To this end - I have been working for the last couple of years to 'naturalize' our flower beds. This is really just a fancy way of saying I'm not doing much of anything except providing the soil, water, and space for nature to take its course. I've been adding perennials each year and ever-so-patiently waiting for everything to get established and start to spread. Some of the pictures attached to this post show just how much this is happening in some areas - but we have a long way to go.

The new normal

You know, I'd really love to say something cliche like 'Gee - I can't believe it's been almost five years since Hurricane Katrina destroyed our section of the world' - but I can't. The fact is, I have been pretty aware of every moment that has passed. Time drags. Still waiting. Forgot what we were waiting for now.

We had decided for sanity's sake to stop pushing to complete repairs on the house that we couldn't afford... Well, actually, we didn't need to stop pushing to complete those repairs because not being able to afford them did the stopping for us: What we were trying to do is stop worrying about the repairs we couldn't complete and just live. The worrying thing is much harder to stop.

At the end of March of this year we received a letter from MetLife informing us that they were not going to be renewing our wind coverage. (They call it 'wind coverage' now. Pre-Katrina they had the gall to call this coverage our 'Hurricane Policy'. It's good of them to clear up the terminology -- albeit a little late...) Dave spent the entire 30 day transition searching for replacement coverage. Very few companies were willing to offer 'wind' coverage for our address - not a lot of competition going on out there on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Eventually Dave was able to secure some specialty coverage. I'm not even sure of the exact figures because any time the exact figures are given to me I block them out like the trauma victim I have become. All I know is that our premium is somewhere around $6000 per year now. Six thousand dollars per year so that they can find some way to avoid paying us (again) in the event of an actual loss.

Wait - no - that's wrong. Our premium was somewhere around $6000 per year a couple of weeks ago. Since that time - our new insurance carrier sent out an independent inspector... I was pretty nervous about the unfinished repairs as we're in no position (see above $6000 per year...) to finish up a clump of repairs at once to satisfy the insurance company. Luckily for us - they didn't ask us to make a single repair! Nope. Instead they declared the replacement value of our home to be upwards of $451,000 - putting us on the hook for $407,000 worth of coverage (it was previously $290,000) and an additional $1700 in premiums annually. Oh yay for us!

There's not a lot of incentive here to repair or maintain the house at this point.... If we're stuck with $407,000 in coverage as is -- what happens when it's complete??

Let's follow up that happy bit of news with the discovery that we have now been placed in a high risk flood area on the FIRM map and our flood insurance premium is expected to triple at some unexpected but surely inconvenient time in the future. (Yes that's right.. the seven or eight thousand dollars above doesn't include the NFIP premium.)

Hey - did anybody see the news about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? *twitch*

In the meantime - we're going to fix our porch columns. It's an exercise in insanity. We were briefly happy to find that the only rot going on with the columns involved the trim pieces at the top of the foot of the columns -- untreated wood had been used there previously.

All we'll really have to deal with is lots of sanding and scraping and painting and a few mitered cuts. Easily done with a few minutes here and there over a few weekends. And when we're done our porches will look pretty good again... And we'll probably add $100,000 to the replacement value of our home.... And our insurance premium will go up another $1000.

Maybe we should just leave them as they are. :)

More to-do lists than have-done lists

For our sake more than yours it's time for a to-do list:

1. Scrape, sand, repair, and paint porch columns (7 of these)

2. Sand, prime, and paint all exterior trim

3. Scrub porch & patio concrete (it's pretty gross)

4. Build new house for Leo the rabbit.

5. Clean windows

6. Buy more mulch & finish mulching flowerbeds

7. Get lawnmower back from repair shop and use it

8. Buy a dining room table

That looks good. There's not a whole lot of heavy work on this list for a reason. We're tired of heavy work. We're also broke. There's plenty leftover from the previous to-do list that was never done... but I just don't want to include it today - I'm aiming low for some home improvement self-esteem building.

Mysterious boom rattles windows in Jackson County

By KAREN NELSON - klnelson@sunherald.com

PASCAGOULA — A boom that rattled windows in Moss Point and Pascagoula at around 8 p.m. was not from an industrial explosion of any kind, said Earl Etheridge, hazardous materials specialist for the state Department of Environmental Quality and Pascagoula City Manager Kay Kell.

But the event triggered so many calls to the Pascagoula Police Department that the phone line registered a recording that the line had been “disconnected or was no longer in service.” Moss Point’s public police line and the Jackson County Sheriff’s dispatch line were overwhelmed and also registered busy for a period of time from the number of calls coming in from concerned citizens.

“All that we know is that the industry is clear, and we’re checking with Keesler AFB,” Kell said at about 8:15 p.m.

Etheridge said there were no problems with industry anywhere in the county, “and our best guess is that it was a sonic boom from a military plane, otherwise, we don’t have a clue.”

Etheridge did say he received reports that people as far away as north Jackson County heard the boom. However, it did not travel to the western part of the county where he was in Ocean Springs.

Something happens

I thought Ida was gone... Isn't it gone?

We woke up this morning to learn that the storm had been downgraded to a depression. It was still cloudy around the house. However, there was no rain - the streets had dried out and our windows had stopped leaking. There wasn't any wind to speak of either...

Until a couple of hours ago, that is. Oddly enough we started getting some strong gusts this afternoon - some of which were the strongest yet from this whole tropical fiasco.

I was standing in the kitchen during a strong gust and heard a bang and a scrape which called my attention to the front kitchen windows...

(Yes - another video. Don't worry - it's short. OH and you can actually see something in this one.)



So with that I say with confidence: We will never live to see our house fully repaired.

I promised....

Not to upload any more video unless there was actually something to record. I'm keeping that promise. There are some impressively strong winds swishing about around Pascagoula tonight and I'd really like to share the experience with my readers.

One minor problem: It's dark outside.

Apparently, I'm not destined to be a videographer.

Undaunted - as usual - I present to you the view -uh well the sound - from my back porch about twenty minutes ago a la Ida:

If it helps any - that sound out there is not rain but wind. Hmmm.. I guess you'd just have to be here? On that note - I think we're going to go settle down with the television for the night.