Hello all! I thought I would go ahead and share some phone images that I took pre/post Hurricane Irma. We live in an incorporated city called the Village of Palmetto Bay, within Miami-Dade County. For those of you who may not know where that is, we are approx. 45 minutes north of Key Largo and about 30 minutes south of Downtown Miami. 

We were on what was known as the "dirty side" of the hurricane. I am so thankful that Miami didn't sustain a direct hit, as it would have been catastrophic. Instead, we had strong hurricane force winds, the threat of tornado activity and very heavy rains. For us, we lost every tree in our back yard. All 4 avocado tress are down. Our 2 front ficas trees are thankfully still standing, but we lost most of the foliage and many large limbs. We lost most of our patio screens and the structure itself is now quite weak. We are hoping to have the trees cut and cleared by the end of the weekend. Our city had bulldozers go through to clear the roads. We were happy to see that they found our street and were able to clear our downed limb.

We were without power for only 3 days, which felt more like a lifetime. As of today, our Village has only 64% of the power restored. I feel very thankful to be in that group. Temperatures have been in the high 80's and mid 90's here, so it's a bad combination. Cellular phone calling and connections are still a problem, but getting better day by day. We had our internet and tv restored just a day ago, so we can finally see the destruction throughout all of Florida, down in the Keys and throughout the Caribbean. Feeling thankful for what little damage we actually sustained. 

As you know from prior posts, our back yard is full of a variety of birds and many squirrels. They were completely distraught after the storm. You will see a couple of pictures below of our wildlife enjoying the peanuts and seeds we fed them. I have been feeling like Snow White this week, as they now know the sound of the bags and dozens of birds and squirrels come and wait patiently for us to throw more food. It's beautiful. The last picture is of our dog Lily sitting among the downed trees. She doesn't quite know what to make of her back yard right now. 

I hope everyone is well. Be safe. Help one another.