Off Topic: Hurricane Rita

ConroeJoe@aol.com ConroeJoe@aol.com
Tue, 27 Sep 2005 16:02:38 PDT
Hi Gang,

I saw an aerial photo in one of today's newspapers showing several destroyed 
homes in Vidor, TX.  I could help but worry about my friends there, among them 
Marcelle Sheppard and Margie Brown.

I visited with both, just a week ago, on Tuesday, September 20, when 
Hurricane Rita was still only a possibility.  Marcelle had been home from about a 
3-month stay in the hospital for a broken pelvis and some broken ribs.  An earlier 
storm (this year) had weekend a tree that fell on her as she exited a car for 
a church function.  

So, Marcelle was home and wheeling in her chair like a happy kid; she could 
also get about on a walker.  Margie, just a few miles away, has been a longtime 
Gulf Gardener, and often planted many of Marcelle's special Crinum, rainlily, 
or Hippeastrum hybrids--to grow them out and to help Marcelle judge garden 
performance under different conditions.  

Now, for sure, the storm has devastated their towns.  There is really no way 
to get in to visit them or to know how they are doing.  Surely, they got to 
safety in time, and from the reports I'm getting they will not have been allowed 
to return to their homes yet.  In any event, much of the area is without 
electricity and temperatures have hovered near 100 F all week.  Southeast Texas is 
no place to be without air conditioning.  

In time I hope to hear good news from Marcelle and Margie, that their houses 
were spared, and that their gardens remained mostly intact (how could anything 
pull a big old Crinum out of the ground?).  But, I also know that the wind 
could have damaged their greenhouses, or blown away Marcelle's seed crop for the 
year, or totally leveled their homes.  I wish them luck.  


LINK 1:  Marcelle's Crinums
http://marcellescrinums.com/index.html 


LINK 2:  Crinums in East Texas:  Notes From Marcelle Sheppard
http://crinum.iconx.com/ 



Cordially,

Conroe Joe
(100 F today [38 C], humid and sunny, Oxblood lilies in full bloom for 2-3 
weeks now)


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