Hurricane Isabel hit on Thursday, September 18th. It was a really stormy day, but night got scary. I was at the jewelry bench when the first tree fell - when the second tree went down (through the deck of the pottery studio), we gathered up the animals, and bedding and went to the barn. We built a bed from baled shavings and settled in for the night.
By about 12:30, there were so many scared dogs and cats in the bed with us that we went out to the big truck to sleep - at least the seats recline...
All total, there were 3 breaks in fence line, and about 8 trees down, but all the animals came through fine. They slept better than we did. We still (it's Saturday morning) have no power, and really don't know when it will be back. I'll be posting some photos later in the day - I'm working by generator now.
Just for the sake of reference, a before picture... We knew that the storm would be bad, and had 8 trees taken down the day before the storm, but the storm helped itself to a few. The trees along the driveway will be coming down as well - the one that is still standing straight is holding up the other two, that are hanging by the treetops. We aren't sure at this point if they'll come down before the tree service gets here or not.
We are really looking forward to having some flowers next year, and not having the leafy mess in fall to clean up! All in all, we won't miss the trees - it's nice to see the sunshine in the daytime, and stars at night, but for now, we have lots of cleanup to do... We're just glad they all missed the house!
Before...
It's a foggy morning, I'm shooting into the sun, and I'm not taking the time to doctor photos... sorry 'bout the quality, but there's lots of work to be done here.
These trees by the driveway are slowly leaning more and more...
We had parked the white truck about where the end of the trailer is. You can see where the tree fell in the driveway...
This one is in the middle of the front yard... it came up roots and all.
Just beyond this root ball is a huge Oak, laying across the deck of my pottery studio. It missed the glass door by about a foot, and the top leaves are resting on the side of the house, just outside my jewelry bench. I was working on a chain at that bench when it came down...
This is the back of the house and pottery studio (it's behind that tree)...
The boat broke free and is wandering around the pond - we'll worry about it later. To the right side of the picture, you can see another root ball...
And another one...
And another... this one is in the sheep pasture (who were all safely inside during the storm). There are more, but after a certain point, downed trees look like downed trees...
Well, I hear a chainsaw, so I'm out to help cleanup. At this point, we're still without power, so no email, no answering machine and intermittent phone service... We'll be in touch when the world uprights itself!
