Hurricane Matthew slammed into Jacksonville on October 7 and caused widespread flooding to the beaches, but was not the catastrophic event everyone was predicting, which was a good thing. We have not had a major storm since 1964. We lost power at the house for 4 long days, and the tree removal in our immediate area of Mandarin will go on for weeks. Today I ventured out to the Julington-Durbin Preserve to check out any damage and could find very little in terms of downed trees. There was a lot of standing water making it difficult to get around without getting wet feet (which I quickly succumbed to), and of course the mosquitoes were having a field day. The fall wildflowers were in bloom and all was well in the woods, contrasted with the chaos and disruption on the civilized side of town.