As quickly as they came, so quickly the love bugs have disappeared.  We are so glad.  Every day I had to sweep up dead ones from the floor beside the windows--inside the house.  When I would go out on the back porch, I felt like I was in one of those horror movies where insects swarm all over you.  I would have to sweep off the door and brush them off myself before I came in.  I had thought all the rain and wind from the hurricane would drive them away, but it didn't.  But now they are gone--until next year, I guess.

Though we are 100 miles from the Galveston coast, our town suffered greatly from Hurricane Ike.  The eye went directly over us and knocked out our electrical power for 5 days.  We had a small generator that we were able to hook up to the freezer and the refrigerator.  We have a gas cooktop, so we were able to cook almost anything we wanted.  We had hot water, and a cool front came in and kept us from suffering without our air condtioning.  In fact, we had our windows open the next day because it was still  so cool.  We had no damage, only a lot of tree debris in our yard.  Some of the damage in our subdivision was quite bad.  One woman died in her bed from a massive tree falling on her house.  We had quite a few light poles down or broken which is why we were without power for so long.  But people further south have had it much worse.  We are very thankful to have been so safe and untouched. Areas less than 20 feet in elevation along the coast comprise most of the severe damage.  The news media focuses on the worst damage and most of the photos in the news will be from the coastal areas such as Galveston and Freeport, Texas.  Houston is 50 or 60 feet in elevation and we are at 300 feet.  The damage in our area is directly related to the wind pushing trees down as you can see from the photos. You can see photos of the damage in our area by clicking on the link to the right entitled "Hurricane Ike".

We are being inundated by love bugs here.  (I don't know if that is the real name; that's what we call them here in Texas.)  They are crawling all over the porch column, hanging out by the door so that they can stick to our bodies.  They must not have a long life span because there are dead ones lying around everywhere.  I even find dead ones inside on the floor.  Maybe Huricane Ike will blow and wash they away.

Here is a close-up of the baby deer from yesterday.  They stayed there several hours.  Later they and two doe were wandering around the back yard.  The song from the movie "Oliver" kept going through my mind:  "Consider Yourself at Home, consider  yourself part of the family..."

Today I went out and took this photo and just as I walked out toward them one of them stood up.  I took the photo and went back into the house. I walked outside toward these two fawns that were resting in our grass.  As soon as they saw me one of them stood up so I took the photo and went back into the house.  They are welcome to sleep in our yard.

I put up two Humming bird feeders and it didn't take long for the Humming birds to find them.  I placed one under the soffit of the back porch in view of Pat's desk in the rear bedroom.  She can see the bird feeder from her chair as she sits and works on her computer.  The other feeder is located under the soffet of the front porch where I often have my coffee in the mornings.  The photo is a view of one of the birds at the feeder on the front porch. These little guys are amazing.  One seems to have taken over the feeder and guards it constantly.  He (or she) will always be near by and will chase any other Humming bird away if one approaches.  I have had a couple incidents on the front porch when I thought they were going to hit me when one was chasing the other away. Try clicking on the photo - it will enlarge and you can see the Humming bird easier.