It is with a very thankful heart that I write this post. We had a bit of excitement at our house last night. We went to bed (later than we should have) and about an hour later, awoke to the sound of CRAZY loud wind and rain. I mean, reeeeeeally loud wind. I don't typically freak out about storms. We get crazy weather from time to time and it's been that way my whole life, so I'm not usually prone to freaking out. But given that this storm actually woke me up out of a dead sleep, that alone should tell you how loud this was. I RARELY wake up in the night....for storms or anything else! Ha. At this point, we were starting to be concerned.....
The storm didn't seem to be letting up and by now we were both wide awake, so Bart turned on the tv and of course, the Direct TV was out because of the storm. So I grabbed my trusty iPhone off the nightstand and we looked up the weather online. It said we were under a severe thunderstorm warning and that 80 mile/hour hurricane force winds were possible. I started tweeting about that time.....you can read my middle of the night twitter updates here. It wasn't too long after that, that the wind and rain seemed to be dying down so Bart decided to go look outside and see if we had any damage. I told him to take his phone in case he needed to call me (in bed! LOL!). He went to the front door and called me right away when he saw that the neighbors' tree two doors down was partially snapped off and hanging in the street. I got up and went right downstairs to see for myself.
After that, we decided to check out the back door and as soon as Bart opened the door, we knew we had a problem. There, covering almost our entire deck, was half of our beautiful ash tree. Basically, half of the tree broke off and fell on our deck. You don't really expect to open your back door and have a huge leafy tree greet you, lying on your patio furniture. The tree hit the umbrella that was standing (closed) in the center of our table, and just folded it in half at the table's top.
We walked out into the yard, half stunned at the sight, cold and shivering. The rain was still coming down and I realized we were standing in ankle deep water in our back yard.....in our jammies. The tree was damaged badly enough that we ended up having to remove it entirely today. Bart planted this tree 20 years ago and it was easily 30+ feet tall. We were just marveling earlier this summer about how great the tree was -- so tall and beautiful and in the perfect spot to shade the deck. Such a shock to see it lying there, torn in two!
Not sure yet as to damage to the deck, but quite a few of our beautiful flower boxes sustained damage. Thankfully most of the flower pots on the deck floor are totally fine. While we are so sad to lose the tree, we are extremely grateful that there appears to be no damage to our house. I firmly believe that God protected us and our home........the tops of the tree branches were brushing against the kitchen windows. If the wind had pushed that tree just 2 feet forward, it would have been thru our windows. Here are a few more photos of what everything looked like today in the daylight....
And here is what's left.....see the stump in the lower right hand corner? The tree service will come out again in a few days to grind the stump out. So thankful for homeowner's insurance to cover most of the cost of taking care of the tree! We'll have to see how it all shakes out with regard to the deck and such.
On the bright side (besides the fact that we're safe and our home is safe!), I've always wanted one of those bright red maple trees....you know, the ones that are so spectacular in the fall?? Well, we never had need to plant any more trees, however my hottie hubs came in to me this morning at work and said, "Well, it looks like maybe you'll get your bright red maple after all...."
I love that man. Like I said, I have a thankful heart today.....