Picking Up the Pieces

Well it may not seem like it, but we are making progress in cleaning up our little yard of devastation. There is still a phenomenal amount of wood strewn about, but order is being imposed. Bob and I are beginning to resemble "knuckle walkers" as our arms are being stretched from carrying all that wood. We'll never have to purchase firewood again!

Truckload after truckload... but the lawn is looking okay after the logs are lifted and the saw dust is raked away. There has even been cause for cheers as- amazingly!- several shrubs and hostas and perennials survived (a bit twisted) but alive. And most of the rhododendrons and the mountain laurel are actually flowering despite being hidden beneath a canopy of destruction...
We also mourn the plants and trees that have been decapitated and crushed.

There is a lot more light coming into the yard, along with an odd optical illusion. The yard appears so much wider that our sense of where the garden beds begin and end is skewed. It's hard to describe, but when sitting on the terrace, the first garden bed should be fifteen feet to the left. Weird. I guess it's the fact that the trees that fell were so much bigger than they seemed. It's all very disorienting.

But we make sure there are rewards after all that hard work, like these tropical coolers concocted with the coconut rum that Bob received from John (of Beatrice and John fame) for his birthday. Mix in pineapple and orange juice and a bit of seltzer and add an umbrella and you're transported to the tropics. It also helps to dull the memory of all that wood moving, and maybe even explains why the garden beds are shifting.