Dodging a wooden bullet

treedown
Originally uploaded by budandmary

Our garage (and our neighbors') are still standing by luck today.

As ice piled up all around us Tuesday night, the big maple that stood between us and our neighbors decided it couldn't stand any longer.

And so one trunk fell just behind the retaining wall for our driveway, also missing the back of the garage. The other fell between the hedge and the neighbors' garage.

(I'm still searching the archives for a 'before' photo. You know there's got to be one around here somewhere!)

The tree used to have three trunks, but we lost one in a windstorm this past spring. Bud talked with the neighbor then about taking the whole thing down, but the neighbor wasn't interested.

We knew at least one remaining side of tree was partially hollow because it was home to our neighborhood bees. Guess which side we got! Bud will do his best bear impersonation soon, prowling the trunk for honey as he saws the tree to manageable pieces.

Anyway, back to the storm. We are fortunate not to have lost power so far. In 2003, during a much worse storm in Central Kentucky (although not as far-reaching as this one), we were without electricity for four days. It was less than fun, even with the fireplace's feeble attempt to keep us warm.

This time, our misery has been a day without Internet access, cable and phone -- all of which returned yesterday evening. Here's hoping that's all we have to report.

At our old house, things seemed in working order yesterday afternoon. At Bud's mom's, we also lost another tree, which narrowly missed her garage. So we're thankful for that too.