Tree’s Company

Not only has our little girl kept us busy this summer, but we’ve also had some clean up to do. The last few months have seen some terrible thunder storms. One produced the results below on Sunday, June 27. I had just walked in the door (from the garage) a mere three minutes before we heard a deafening boom and “pop” and saw a bright flash. Lightening had hit our neighbor’s tree. I looked outside to find this.
These are not some of our best photos but it was not the time to improve our craft!

So a tree fell through our garage. The bad news – damaged cars, damaged garage, ugly tree, dead grass (from the tree laying on it too long), slightly tilted swing (which Kirk had finished only a few days prior). The good news – I didn’t pull into the garage three minutes later!

The reason for banged up vehicles.

It took a while dealing with IPL (power), their emergency tree crew, and then the power guys, but by 3am we were finally back to normal (and with 80 degree temps we finally had some air). The food didn’t spoil, and Eliza enjoyed watching the tree crew work until 10:30pm when she crashed, despite having to sleep in a very warm house. When the tree fell/lightning hit, it didn't just knock out power on half the block, but it also fried a couple appliances in our house and partly welded the circuit box closed in the basement.

This is not something I ever expected to see in our narrow driveway! The tree guys had some trouble making it to our backyard in their wide truck. They did some damage to our rocks and trim lining the driveway but after seeing all this, that was minor compared to what I thought may happen.

It was close to 11pm by the time they were able to start sawing the tree . Since this was considered an emergency they worked through the night! When IPL has an emergency tree removal, they only remove enough to get the power back on, but fortunately for us they determined the whole tree needed to be removed from the roof for IPL crew safety. But the tree service does not remove the tree from the property, so we had limbs and large trunk pieces all over the yard still.

Just this week the neighbors’ cut down the other 2/3 of the tree, which is better in the long run, but it also takes away some great bits of shade throughout the day (one reason why Kirk built the swing where he did).

Starting this week (we hope) the crew will finally start repairing the garage. We look forward to the new framing, roof, and garage doors, and we can’t wait to finally park inside a garage again after two months. The Buick already spent over a week at the body shop (it must be the nicest 2000 on the road now!), and the Infiniti will get it’s cosmetic surgery soon.