Our 31st Non-Anniversary!

And how better to celebrate our 31st non-anniversary than with me contracting a cold and a phone call from our driveway-sharing neighbors to say that there is yet another (!!!!) tree down, blocking passage? We've lost track of how many times the driveway has been impassable...
I was contemplating returning to bed as my throat was scratchy and my nose was stuffy and I just felt generally tired and run down when Bob provided the above intelligence. The tree decided to fall down late; we were in New Haven and didn't arrive home until a bit past 11:00. Our neighbor got home at around 1:00 to discover that she couldn't drive up the driveway. We were lucky!

(This shot is from the other side, by our neighbor's stranded car.) I rallied energy to assure Bob that I'd help drag limbs away, after he'd chainsawed the downed tree into draggable pieces. Fortunately, we have great neighbors and everyone pitched in. Bob sawed the side branches and when enough weight had been removed, we all formed a line and grabbed a rope that had been affixed to the biggest limb and we pulled. The third of the tree that was damaged gave way and no one got hurt and we quickly piled the truck high with debris to cart off into the woods.

You can barely see the truck for all the tree! It took an hour and a half or so but I think everyone secretly enjoyed the helping out and the cleaning up in the mildly chilly morning.
Which, of course, leads back to Bob and I celebrating our 31st anniversary! Yes, the basil was struck dead and blackened and tonight we're having a small occasion. (We'll wait until I feel 100% before we really congratulate each other on attaining a bit over three decades of unmarried bliss.) But I actually feel pretty okay after a low key day of laying around in the sun and getting picture books from the library. Sorry to see the garden go, but I guess it means less work!

Timber!

It's never a dull moment! I was expecting to put up a posting about our recent trip to Vermont, but instead I'm blogging about several large trees that decided to take a nose dive in that storm last night. Driving back from Vermont was wet and a bit windy but when we arrived home, the weather picked up significantly. We even lost power for like three seconds- just enough to disrupt the clock on the stove, the computer etc. I heard that 150,000 homes lost power, so we were lucky!

This morning, I was washing the breakfast dishes when Bob came back in from outside and said, "Go look at the driveway..." I had images of our car or truck smashed to bits or my studio roof being burdened by giant branches. Amazingly, the trees that fell down did minimal damage. (Interestingly, they fell exactly where Bob was saying he was going to drop them as he was planning on cutting them down. Both were dead!) Well, no damage to cars or house but...

One of Bob's sculptures took a bit of a beating, but fortunately, it's nothing that can't be fixed. It really is pretty incredible that these trees fell, missing all of the Japanese maples and a large planter that is located there; the trees even missed the vegetable garden fence. It was like precision landing.
I am surprised that we didn't hear these trees fall, but the remnants of the tropical storm- intense rain, really strong wind- probably masked the crashes of the trees. Nothing like experiencing extreme weather (and on the anniversary of Super Storm Sandy!) to confirm the reality of climate change. What with the fires on the west coast, the drought and extreme heat in California and the multiple category 5 hurricanes, we're fortunate that we received only several inches of rain and some wind...
And we are still waiting to really, truly celebrate our 29th non-anniversary. Even farther north in Vermont, there still hasn't been a hard frost. We keep thinking, "Maybe tonight..."