The laptop on which I store most of my photos for processing began malfunctioning about a month ago and when it briefly works, I hurriedly back up files on it so I don’t lose them. That has delayed my processing photos and writing more blogs about wildlife I saw this year in Costa Rica and The Netherlands, so I’m taking the opportunity to focus on some current sightings. As Hurricane Florence neared North Carolina, I got in plenty of cat food and litter, bird seed and some non-perishable foods for humans and then cleared the yard of garden art and bird feeders that could become flying projectiles.

In the meantime, the Carolina chickadees (Poecile carolinensis) checked out bird houses as possible shelter from the storm.

How lucky I and most other people in NC’s Triangle area have been so far! The slowly-moving storm turned southeast and is now going northwest, largely bypassing us with the direct impact that had been predicted. We have had rain every day and the ground is very sodden. As I write this now, we are having one of the heaviest downpours of the last week and I keep my fingers crossed that the large oaks and persimmons in my yard do not topple over. Three people were killed by trees falling on their homes and others have had power outages due to fallen trees the past few days. Our neighborhood usually is one of the first to lose power because of the many large old trees we have but so far, so good.

I just had to go out for a walk in the neighborhood today, after only going outside daily to hang and take down bird feeders. Cabin fever had struck, so I spent 90 minutes strolling along. The neighborhood listserv informed me that a few minutes after I passed a certain intersection, a neighbor was almost hit by a falling pine tree, so I was lucky again. And another tree blocked the street further down but we have not lost power yet.

My first destination was the creek downhill from us, which normally rises above its banks, flooding the street next to it. It was nice to see American beautyberries (Callicarpa americana, about which I wrote my last blog) in several neighbors’ yards along the way. The birds have numerous good autumn dining areas available!

When it rains, water from areas north of us runs through our neighborhood to reach Bolin Creek, which also carries stormwater from neighborhoods further upstream.

When I reached the street that runs alongside the creek, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it had not (yet) flooded. (We had at least another 24 hours of rain coming, so it might go outside its banks some time tomorrow.) Some stretches were relatively calm, like this area with a tree that has apparently been marked for removal later (I’m guessing this).with water rising near the walking path.

In a couple spots, the water was rising quite near the walking path (along which some runners passed by as I walked along).

There were pretty wildflowers growing alongside the creek.

The creek was not only carrying falling rainwater and stormwater from upstream, but also transporting water being funneled into it from our neighborhood as it crossed the street. Not all of the passing drivers were considerate, some going quickly through the water and splashing me as I walked along the sidewalk. In some areas, the water rushing along had to traverse rocks and looked a bit wilder.

I left the creek to walk along neighbors’ yards. One of them had some beautiful spider flowers (Cleome hassleriana), which I have been unable to propagate in my garden, despite a neighbor having given me some to transplant several times.

They had some lovely Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus) as well, which I luckily do have in my yard.

I’m unsure what this particular flower is, but it is lovely.

One neighbor’s large fig tree (Ficus carica) was laden with fruit, which I took as a hopeful sign that my two small fig trees might one day provide this tasty treat as well.

As I walked along, I came across two young children who were examining a neighbor’s large tree that had had several huge limbs crack off onto their lawn. The young girl was thrilled with her father’s large umbrella – I asked if she had seen the film Mary Poppins and she said no, but they were going to see the play! Her brother brought me a rock with a leopard slug on it, very proud of his find. He pointed out that it had a hole on the side of its head and I was able to inform him that this was normal for these slugs (something I only found out when I wrote a recent blog about their mating behavior).

After checking in on an elderly neighbor to see if she needed anything, I picked up small fallen branches in my yard and examined the plants, noting that the pokeweeds (Phytolacca decandra) still had a few ripe and some green berries so that the birds and deer would still be able to enjoy a few of those.

My outing in the rain ended with a few minutes watching the tadpoles in a small container, several of whom were well on the way to becoming frogs. It was a pleasant if somewhat soggy walk and so nice to get out of the house again.

In the meantime, my thoughts are with the many people who have been displaced and lost their homes to Hurricane/Tropical storm Florence and – across the world – Typhoon Mangkhut. If you can spare some funds, you can always donate to a North Carolina relief fund and/or the Red Cross/Red Crescent societies.

An update on 17 September: all night our area had torrential rain and some thunder and lightning. Shortly after posting this, Bolin Creek overflowed and led to evacuation of people from a housing complex. It is now almost 8 a.m. and it is still a torrential downpour with repeated tornado warnings. Florence had saved her biggest impact for our area for the end of her journey through North Carolina!