Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Picture Album #1

It began like any other morning. Sorta. The power was out and that sucked but we figured everything would be back to normal soon enough. The Spouse was going to go to work because they were handing out the Christmas turkeys. He usually leaves around 6am. I got up, too, mostly because I hadn't been sleeping through the storm anyhoo. I was busy trying to figure out how I was going to make coffee without ground beans in the house (hint: a marble mortar and pestle will work in a pinch). He gave me a kiss goodbye and left, only to return 10 seconds later.

"Did you forget something?" I asked.

"The Neighbor's tree came down on my jeep," came the reply.

"WHAT?"














Of course, upon inspection, it hadn't exactly come down on the jeep....














It was mostly just covered in branches.














This is the root ball, as viewed from what used to be our side fence. Never liked that thing anyway.















I was extremely popular, having the ability to manufacture coffee. That will clearly be my assignment in the tribe after the apocolypse. Here I am, enjoying a cup.

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8 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous opined...

That is a BIG ASS tree. Kind of helps us visualize how strong those winds must have been.

Sort of miraculous though, landing where it did. I was thankful enough that the house was spared, but that was mighty cool of the tree to spare the jeep, too.

December 20, 2006 8:30 PM  
Blogger Lorraine opined...

Miraculous, indeed. Given its size, had it gone the other way it could have taken out a third of our house.

December 20, 2006 9:17 PM  
Blogger TWISI opined...

On the bright side...you now have firewood for the next bazillion years.

December 21, 2006 6:13 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous opined...

Wow. You look so little standing in front of that tree.

Or maybe it's the five pounds you lost.

Anyhoo [resisting urge to write "Anyhoodles"], it sounds as though the worst of the physical discomfort is over. Now you just have to wrangle with your insurer--ugh! Good luck with that.

December 21, 2006 6:18 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous opined...

How many big ass trees ARE there in your 'hood? Are the he-man lumberjacks gonna dismantle that monster, too? Hubby saw the pics and now thiks he needs a gas chain saw. You've seen the picture: we have about 3 somewhat large trees on our property - all of them at least 20 yards from the house. I think he's jealous of The Spouse getting to play Manly Man.

December 21, 2006 7:03 AM  
Blogger Br. Jonathan opined...

Is that a frakking sequoia or something?!! My god, you weren't kidding about it being big-assed.

December 21, 2006 7:32 AM  
Blogger Lorraine opined...

Kendall, I have pictures...we'll get to that.

LA: I think that tree would have minimized me if I weighed 200 pounds. And thanks, we haven't gotten to that point yet plus we have to weigh the options: pay for the minimalish repairs ourselves vs ask the insurance company to do it and if they agree have our rates go up as a result of filing a claim. (Someone remind me why we pay for insurance?)

Jlow: I have a friend who works for the Parks department and she said something like 200 trees went down in area parks. And that's just the area parks. In our neighborhood there was literally about one tree down/nearly down on every block. The good news is that the BA Tree in question was the last big one near us. We don't have to worry about a tree like that for another 50 years.

Jon: We think it's a ponderosa pine. We also think it had an accident earlier in life and then started regrowing, because as you can see, it has about 5-6 trunks, any one of which would make a perfectly acceptable tree. We counted rings on one of the smaller trunks and it was 56 years old.

December 21, 2006 9:04 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous opined...

Man that thing would have flattened the house or the jeep or one of you. Your very lucky..

December 21, 2006 10:23 AM  

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