Hurricane Irene



What a crazy day today has been! The East Coast has been getting hit by Hurricane Irene (turned to Tropical Storm Irene after it moved further north). We have never dealt with a hurricane since owning our home. Really, I can't remember a time that we have really had any problems due to a hurricane. The town I grew up in has signs up from Agnes, but that one was before my time in 1972. 

Our day started at about 3 am in the worst way... as I walked passed our basement steps, you could smell water. Usually it's a small amount that flows across our unfinished basement floor... but the stench was that of standing water. It flowed, but there was too much  and it was coming in everywhere! While we know of a few "bad spots" where the amount of rain was just too much for the old cinder block walls to handle. We also found a new bad spot... right where the steps meet the cement floor. Evidently, they cut into the cement to put the stairs in. They must have dug too deep because the water was coming up faster than we could clean it! It was awful! The hubby and I decided that we should try and sleep at least until the kids get up. So, around 5, I headed back to bed only to have the hubby come in around 6:30 telling me we had a problem. That is such an awful way to wake up!

As it turns out, we had a tree down. Not only did a tree fall, but the tree split in 3. 1/3 was still standing, 1/3 fell in our back yard and the last 1/3 fell right across my neighbor's driveway! Luckily for us, it didn't do any damage to any one's house or other property. We aren't sure if the tree is ours or our neighbors. The property line is unclear in that area. Here are a few pictures from the fallen tree. Hopefully everyone else made it out without any major problems!

The center of what's left of the tree...

This is the 1/3 that fell into our yard.

This is the 1/3 that fell onto my neighbor's driveway.

This is a good picture to show how it split into 3.

Around 10:30am, the neighbor came over and told us that we no longer had to worry about the remaining 1/3 of the tree. Another gust of wind brought it down!  It was leaning toward his garage, but thankfully, it blew the opposite direction. We now have 2/3 of this tree in our backyard! We got the neighbors driveway cleared today, but our backyard will have to wait for another day.

My poor kiwi plants!! OK... this one died a few weeks back in the drought......

.... but this one was very healthy!! The tree snapped my metal trellis right in half! After looking at it from the other direction, I think the plant might be alright. I won't know for sure until we get the tree off of it!