The Inauspicious Week Continues

And then the second tree fell over.

I mentioned earlier the Deadfall Maples (still available as the name of your rock band) at the NW corner of our house. The Deadfalls are a combination of dead snags and live trees growing from a common stump. The stump, however, has started to rot, so we have realized for a while that they would have to come down.

On Sunday, one of the snags, a pole about 30 feet long, bounced off the house, and thundered to the earth, missing the patio furniture by a few feet. We sawed up what we could with our dinky electric chainsaw, and called our neighbor, who is a wonderful guy with all these cool tools.

So yesterday, at dinner, I heard something go "thump" outside. I had the chance to turn to Kate and say, "Did you hear something?" when the second tree of the Deadfall Maples fell over. This was a live tree, heavy with leaves and seeds, about 70 feet high, and it thundered to earth in a slow, majestic fashion. It was like watching the Titanic go down.

It didn't hit the house. Instead it smashed the patio set into little plastic pieces.

Here's what happened - the first tree, though dead, was supporting the other trees in the cluster. When it fell over, that support went away. The second tree was OK with its canopy of leaves and seeds, but the added wieght of a day-long rain was too much for it, and brought it down.

So now we have TWO trees knocked over in the backyard- one partially sawn up and the other in full leaf. So that's what I'm going to do later today.

And yeah, we called the neighbor with the cool tools.

More later,