Married to the Empire

Thursday, September 27, 2007

Problem (partially) solved

Ruf and I were awakened in the middle of the night by a strange sound. Neither of us could figure out what it was, but I said it sounded like a garbage can scraping along the driveway. I thought maybe a raccoon or something had gotten into someone's garbage.

This morning Ruf kissed me good-bye, then I heard him open the front door to do his morning I-love-my-wife ritual of fetching the newspaper for me. (I like to read the paper over breakfast in my jammies.) He came back into the bedroom and said, "Um, I know what that sound was that we heard last night. You might just want to come see."

He led me to the front door, opened it, and I was greeted by this:



I gasped, my hand flew to my mouth, and I just stood there like an idiot. Yes, only one day after discovering that our tree had split, it broke in half and fell down.





Praise God, the roof really wasn't damaged, which was my greatest fear. The gutter was pulled down a bit, but that's easily repaired, and there's some scraping on a few shingles, but overall, the roof is undamaged. God is good!



I really thought the tree was okay for a while, at least until the next major storm. It's hard to believe that in only one day, the tree could split like that, then break in half.

I guess the tree specialists coming out today to give us estimates will now just be looking to see if the remaining half of the tree can be saved. (I hope so!) And I guess we'll see what it will cost to have them cut up the downed half and remove it. If it's too much, I guess Ruf will have an unpleasant weekend of purchasing a chainsaw and doing some major cutting.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a site to see when you open your front door. You are lucky to have so little damage to the house. It could have been so much worse, as you know and were fearful of. Now for the cleanup... I hope the estimates come in reasonable - or that Ruf is very careful. I also hope they are able to safe the rest of the tree. That is quite a gouge though.

*carrie* said...

Ewokgirl,

Sorry to hear you've been facing so many challenges at home!

I was feeling anxious about some things this morning, too, and found comfort in those words from Isaiah.

Cathy VanPatten said...

Thank goodness the tree fell away from the house, save for a sliver of gutter! I hope you can save the remaining half, although if you cannot, just think of it as a chance to get a new tree of your choosing to replace it! (I can turn anything into an excuse for shopping...)

This reminds me of my dad's beloved peach tree. He planted it in our backyard, and once it got "up and running" it gave us peaches galore for nearly a decade. Thing was, it got root borers (I think that's what you call them). One fine August afternoon (peach tree laden with peaches just ready to be plucked), a big afternoon thunderstorm rolled through, and the wind uprooted the tree and sent it rolling end over end like a tumbleweed across our yard, across our next door neighbor's yard, across the alley, and into the city park, distributing peaches all along its route! The whole block was out there with baskets, harvesting!!