Alternate titles: Lighting Doesn't Strike Twice...or does it?
Oops, it happened again!
Shit. Shit shit shit.
So, on Saturday, Larry and I decided to build some stuff. We hauled out our tools. We went to Home Depot multiple times. We bought more tools. We set up in the backyard. We went back to Home Depot. We measured, sawed, drilled, and cussed. But we made progress:
Look at all those trees behind Larry! Foreshadowing!
A sneak peek of one of our projects:
Yes, it's a doggie dining table...
Late in the afternoon we reached a stopping point, and noticed the sky was getting a little cloudy. We packed up our stuff and went inside. Larry turned on the TV to the emergency signal going off and warning us of a tornado in our area. Within 60 seconds, the sky had opened up with some of the scariest rain and wind I'd ever experienced. We huddled in the middle of the house as the electricity flickered.
A huge branch came crashing to the ground 10 feet from where we had been working five minutes earlier. Luckily it landed in the very middle of our yard where it didn't do any damage.
A minute later a huge leader came crashing off another tree and landed...on our fence. Wop wop. (There was some more cussing and then I went into the kitchen and baked cookies.)
You may recall this has happened to us before. SMASH 2010 did not help my fear of wind. Lightning doesn't strike the same spot twice? If that spot is our backyard, then yes, yes it does. However, the fact that both times the trees missed our house and no one was injured made me realize that we're not the unluckiest, we're actually the luckiest. Whew. As we surveyed the damage and I inspected the crater that the first branch left in our yard, I felt so thankful that the crater wasn't in my head. Scary stuff.
The pictures don't really show the full extent of the damage. Half of the leader was cantilevered into our neighbor's yard so it wasn't visible from the perspective of these photos. And honestly, I am so over photographing fallen trees. But luckily, the leader wasn't nearly as big as the one that smashed our yard two years ago and this time we didn't have to call the professionals to clean it up.
So we didn't finish our projects the next day. We awoke Sunday to perfect September weather, but rather than going on a hike or building furniture for our dogs, we spent the entire day chainsawing, chopping, bundling, hauling, and repairing. It always amazes me how much waste comes from a fallen tree. When we had all the tree pieces (there was actually a third piece that fell on another part of the fence, but didn't cause any damage) gathered up, they pretty much filled our entire backyard.
At least we still got to use our tools...
My mom came over and spent the whole day helping us (really, I think she just wanted an excuse to use the chainsaw!). Thanks, Mom!
We worked harder on this "project" than we have on anything in a while...isn't it amazing how you can spend a whole day on something only to get it back to where you started?
3 comments:
Man, that sucks about the trees! Glad no one was hurt.
I must say the doggie furniture is totally cool. I want one!
We had 2 trees crash in our yard less than 3 weeks after we moved into our house. One fell over our fence into the neighbor's yard (without destroying anything). We discovered that it had actually been pushing up on the roof of our garage, so the fact it got destroyed was good news!
The other tree was a GIANT tree in our backyard, and it literally fell at the only angle possible to avoid damaging our house or garage. Like, even another 3 inches over and it would've crushed something. It fell onto our deck, but in such a way that it missed crushing the roof of our patio off the garage, and only the skinniest branches poked through the deck rails. Not a single thing got broken. Crazy.
Ooof. Sorry, my friend. I'm glad it wasn't worse, but am sorry you had to go through it at all. :(
OMG, I hope insurance will cover the new fence?
Jen :(
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