Storm Damage

We've had one of the rainiest springs and summers I can remember and as a result everything is absolutely sodden. The ground never truly dries out. Some of my perennials are actually suffering from getting to much water, their leaves are yellowed and look bad (yellow leaves are a sign of too much water; brown leaves are a sign of too little water).

Damaged maple before it was removed. You can

probably imagine how much privacy it afforded us.

Last Tuesday during yet another thunderstorm our neighborhood was hit with what the weather man calls a microburst. Microburst are similar to but different than tornadoes. We were lucky that we only lost a maple in the front yard and we suffered no damage to our house but I'm heartsick about it all the same. The maple offered us a lot of privacy from the street and now that it's gone it feels as though people can look right into my living room.

Veiw from the front of the house after the maple was removed.

Nice veiw but I would rather have my tree.

I've known for awhile now that we would lose these trees within the next few years because they are mature and they've become rather brittle. Turns out that this particular maple was already cracked down the center almost to the roots, that crack probably weakened it all the more.




John one of the men who did some cleanup work for us a few weeks back took the maple down for us this time as well. This is what he brought me when he was finished working. I was just tickled to get it. I'm going to let it dry out a bit and then I'm going to seal it with some polyurethane. It will make a cute stepping stone.


Because I knew that we would one day lose all our lovely maples in the front yard to storm damage I've put some real thought into what I would replace them with. At one point I had decided on pines because I miss the pines at home in Florida so badly but since I'm very allergic to pine pollen that didn't really seem wise. So after pondering the situation a bit longer I've decided to replace my lost maple with a pecan. Pecan trees are another tree I miss from home. South Ga. is home to large pecan groves and there is no nut as sweet as a fresh pecan from a young tree. Our family eats them like others eat peanuts or pistachios.

As I said we were very lucky to only lose a tree. Other neighbors lost much more. These are some pictures of the damage done to our neighborhood. The first two photos are of the same house. They lost a bedroom and their deck. Their neighbors lost a portion of their deck and there is loads of trees down.