Note: I wrote today’s piece several days after Hurricane Matthew raked the Georgia coast. It was one of the pieces of recovered data from my failed laptop.

Marlow’s Coastal Empire

Matthew was the kind of storm whose Savannah area rainfall total suggested his moisture laden sky had binged on diuretics before his arrival. Ten inches of rain in 24 hours was tropical rain forest quantity precipitation.

After his whirlwinds and whistles died, the last pinkish blooms from our garden crepe myrtle tree were stripped, twigs, broken limbs, and leaves scattered, smothered and covered our garden, we could finally see the AfterMath(ew).

Bay Street fence in Savannah which Hurricane Matthew’s heavy
winds bent (Courtesy Josh Galemore/Savannah Morning News via AP)

In anticipation of Matthew’s sailing past Savannah, your scribe and his W had storm reefed the sails of their Park Avenue home and garden.

AfterMath(erw) the house was shipshape save for a few dents on the west side from unguided, rocketing tree branch impacts.

The rain had pelted . . . the wind had pushed . . . their garden pretty hard. Matthew had almost smashed flat the garden’s flowers, trellises, vines and arches. They all knelt in deep genuflections. Fortunately, nothing was irreparable or doornail dead.

W spent the next two days tending, straightening, mending, raking, reinforcing, trimming, pruning, propping and caring for her acute care patient. After seven days, you could not tell that a major storm had passed our garden’s way.

There will always be storms, winds and rain. Some gardens live through them. Some don’t. Ours looks to have been made stronger by them.

One week later Savannah’s deeply bruised trees continue to weep into the night. Their shorn leaves have lost their post storm shimmery, dewiness. Piles of leaves and branches and mounds of Spanish moss are now decaying in neat but high piles that litter city square grass, street gutters, back alleys and historic home’s manicured front yards.

Courtesy WSB-TV

There were ever increasing numbers of signs of recovery seven days into the AfterMath(ew). Fewer and fewer traffic signals were dark. More and more gas stations and grocery stores reopened. Roadblocks keeping evacuated residents from returning were lifted. Fallen trees and downed power lines were being cleared and repaired. Most flooded areas dried out.

Forsyth Park’s trees (left courtesy The Atlantic; right courtesy WSB-TV)

The long process of post Matthew recovery in Savannah proper may take only a few days to several weeks more – not months.

Those who chose to stay on Georgia’s barrier islands during the storm are now belatedly reconsidering what they did. After living in the dark through the howling of Matthew, Tybee Island stayers were dumbstruck by the devastation to their homes and businesses and by how close certain death brushed them. Most did not know that this would be the most powerful storm to hit Tybee since 1898. They should have.

Several stayers compared their 12-hour storm experience to living in sealed 50-gallon steel drums that were continuously beaten upon by hammers and 2x4s. Many first time stayers have now concluded that Sticks and Stone might break their bones, but Mother Nature can really tear up their stuff and outright kill them.

Tybee Island’s AfterMath(ew)

Copyright © 2016 From My Isle Seat