August was a wet month. On the very last day of the month, the remnants of Hurricane Ida dropped more than 3 3/4 inches on the Hideaway. August ended as it had begun with a day of rain on the 1st totaling 4 1/2 inches. More than 11 inches of rain for the month. 

Our neighbor, Mr. Do, stopped to talk while we were gardening the next day. His two dogs were missing. They get out of his fenced-in yard occasionally, but they never venture far. He asked Judy to check on the internet, and a short time later she saw the dogs picture on Next Door Neighbor. Someone had found the dogs on the road west of us. A quick reunion occurred as the finder returned the lost dogs. 

The next day, Mr. Do rang our doorbell and had a huge basket with potatoes, twice the amount in the photo above, to thank Judy for her help in finding the dogs. Because of the Afghan airlift that shared the news with Ida, I asked if Mr. Do had come to the US at the fall of Saigon. No, he had worked with the CIA for 10 years because he knew the Laotian, Thai, and Vietnamese. They taught him English. He, his wife, and one year-old son was flew out of the country about 6 weeks before the end of the war. He spent 15 minutes telling us of his experience in settling here and the challenges that he faced. Quite a story. My neighbors have stories of being refugees. My Kurdish neighbor, Gelil, spent three years in a tent with his family in a refugee camp in Turkey before they all were loaded into a truck for an all day journey to an airport. My Laotian neighbor escaped the communists by paddling across the Mekong River in the middle of the night during a driving rainstorm. I have received generosity and hospitality from each of them. My neighborhood is more like the real USA than any place I have ever lived. What a blessing it is to hear their stories about why they are Americans.