Photo by Jessica Walliser Although our tulip poplar’s branches were scattered around the yard due to last week’s storm, we were lucky not to get the worst of the damage. |
As you can tell from this picture, we had a wicked storm roll through our neighborhood last week. I was upstairs in the bedroom when I saw an entire small tree fly by our second-story window. Needless to say, I grabbed my son and the dog and we booked it to the basement. We camped out in the bathroom there for a good half hour before we came back upstairs to find the chaos that was our back yard.
The tulip poplar lost lots of large branches, and debris was everywhere. Unfortunately, the neighbors had it far worse then we did. When the rain stopped, we took a walk down the street to find a massive maple tree in the neighbor’s horse pasture snapped at the base and lying against an electric transformer. It explained why we had no electricity. Another neighbor’s metal flag pole was lying on the ground in several twisted pieces. And the neighbor across the street had two 60-foot-tall spruce trees sprawled across his backyard. There were several more large trees blocking our little street, and everyone was already out trying to clear the road.
Our garden seemed to survive the storm, though the sunflowers have toppled over and the hail bit little holes through the cabbage leaves. I’ll have to ask my friends at the farmers’ market how their crops fared the crazy weather.
The electricity came back on a few hours later, and the next day the buzz of chainsaws was pretty constant. It took my husband and I a few hours to clean up our yard, but I think everyone felt very grateful that none of our houses, sheds or barns had been damaged—and that everyone was OK.
