When I came home Friday evening, the first thing I did was to head upstairs to take down the gate so Wylie could come downstairs. For the second time this week, I reached the bottom of the stairs just in time to see Wylie come out of the bathroom, leading me to chuckle at the notion that I’d just missed catching him with a newspaper.
Wylie’s not a big fan of violent weather; distant thunderstorms upset him and when the big storms come into the immediate vicinity, Wylie heads for someplace safe. Usually this means he comes looking for the alpha dog, but when I’m not around, the upstairs bathroom becomes Wylie’s storm cellar.
We’ve had a few big storms lately; this week they’ve included heavy winds and a bit of thunder.
After a little while I happened to glance out into the back yard and noticed that the storm had broken one of the trunks on the crabapple tree. Looking a little closer, I saw a big pine branch laying on the other side of the fence.
I have a couple large pines near my house. A particularly large one is just to the side.
Going out into the back yard, I discovered that in addition to the crabapple tree, two large pieces had broken loose from the pine next to my house. Along with the branch which landed behind the fence, another was laying in the yard. It looks like they were probably the same branch, somehow falling in two places. Judging by the hole it left in the ground, the piece in the yard missed my deck by less than six inches.
After taking Wylie for his late afternoon walk, I got the ladder out of the shed and checked out the back part of the upper roof. Everything looks to be OK, but I’m thinking it’s a good thing I trimmed those branches last weekend!
So it appears that “clean up storm debris” has been added to this weekend’s list of chores.
Well Dang – the large piece fell into the park entrance on the neighbor’s side of the fence. Throw the other pieces over the fence and the county will clean it up. Maybe they will even offer to repair the bent fence.
And I like to tie Wylie in that section of the yard so he will be in the shade.
Actually, even though the tree is between my house and the neighbor’s, the branch landed straight back in the park behind the house. Something like 20 feet from the house.
I finally spotted where this branch broke away. It must have been a pretty incredible gust of wind that deposited it in the park because by all rights, it looks like it should have hit the deck and possibly the roof as well.
Leaving it for the county to pick up was a tempting idea, but the experience with past branches has been that it would probably still be there next summer. I got the chunk near the deck cleaned up on Saturday. On Sunday I had the crabapple branch in the yard cleaned up and was working on the remaining pine branch when the neighbor on the other side came over. Turns out he has a chain saw Five minutes later it was all over except for hauling stuff to the curb.
While he was there with the chain saw, we also trimmed the crabapple where the one branch had broken off and cut off another dead one. I then borrowed a pole saw and cut some dead branches off the pine and pruned a few more that were still near the house.
There’s now a huge pile of branches out by the curb. As part of the county’s recycling program, they also haul away yard waste. This is the largest pile I’ve ever put out, so I guess by Tuesday evening I’ll know whether they put any limits on the amount.
Ah well. They took the bags with all the small stuff, but apparently the branches were too large.
A friend’s coming over on Friday with a pickup. We’ll haul everything over to the county waste transfer center.