Inspiration

It took me this long to talk about this… ALMOST A YEAR…
It is still hard to find the courage to write about what we and our staff went through after hurricane Ian. For months we had prepared for our first unrestricted season after Covid, and we were ready to go. Over night everything changed, our flower store, our home on Sanibel Island for the past 25 years, was gone, out of our reach as the bridges to Sanibel & Captiva partially collapsed during the storm.
The days after Ian hit we had no idea what was left of our store or the real situation on the island. The last message we received from Sanibel before the internet went down was a friends video with feet of water washing over the island streets around the corner from our store.
The next morning we could only see what was directly around us. No internet, no cable, no cell phones, our cars flooded/damaged and good part of our neighborhood still under water with fallen trees blocking all roads surrounding us. We heard stories trough neighbors, that things were worse in other areas and that the causeway to the islands might have collapsed, but nothing was clear or for sure.
However, it became very clear that for a while nothing would be as normal, we would not go back to work anytime soon. No access to our computers, our tools or all those flowers waiting  in the coolers to be used for a fully booked wedding weekend. Our life had changed overnight!
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