Goodness Gracious Great Balls of Fire

I try to make time for blogging but, sometimes, my time is not my own. I've had a lot of things to do lately so although I have posts in mind and a lot of photos which scream "Blog about me!", that's as far as it gets. And then Mother Nature tosses a curve ball and, well, I think it was John Lennon who said, "Life is what happens when you were making other plans."

I had to go into the city very early last Thursday. We had a huge job which I needed to help do installations on. It was really cool in the city, and I don't mean temperature, although that hovered around 62 degrees. The fog off the lake was thick, like cotton. I love fog. I have photos. I'll get around to posting them.

Anyway, there was a phone call about a meeting Thursday night for this society to which my company belongs. My boss sighed and asked if I would go. He was too tired and he's got a 3 year-old who is being, well, a 3 year-old. Sure. It's overtime.

We've been going through a period of unstable air. It doesn't feel humid but the air is coming from the Gulf of Mexico and mixing with cool, dry Canadian air and we're seeing a lot of rain and thunderstorms. I kind of forced the meeting to break up when the setting sun suddenly disappeared behind a wall of blue black. I wanted to be home. Pilchard hates storms so I really wanted to be there for her. I managed to get home about 10 minutes after the line came through. Plus, I had been up since 5 a.m. I was tired and driving in a pounding rain was not my idea of fun. I got soaked running from the car to the house, but no matter. I was home.

The storm lasted about 30 minutes. I gave it another 10 minutes and logged onto the Internet and into World of Warcraft. I had a nice conversation with guild members until the corner of my left eye registered flashes. Uh oh. Another line of storms was coming. I decided the better part of valor was turning off the computer while this next wave passed.

The computer was off. I turned to my left to turn off the floor lamp. I have a lovely view of my backyard from my home office windows. Suddenly, there was a blue-white ball of light in the middle of my back yard. It had a band on the top that was snow white and a band around the bottom that was blood red. The rest of it was a swirling blue white. It looked like Sauron's eye, without the eye part, or a portal that you'll see in a video game. There was a sound with it like the sound of that firework which will be shot into the air before fireworks to let people know the show will start soon. I think it's an M80. It shook my house. It was all over in a split second. I can still see that swirling blue ball in my memory. It was about 3-5 feet in diameter.

My house never lost power, it didn't even blink. The neighbors behind me, however, lost power. In fact that whole west side of my block was without power after this. The flash was so bright, the street lights on either side of me went out. They came back in about 5 minutes.

I just sat here, blinking at the back yard. I thought to myself, "Ohhhh....kay. I'm just gonna go read a book." I turned off all the lights except the bedroom light, grabbed my book and read 3 more chapters before calling it a night. In the morning, I went into the back yard. No sign of anything scorched, nothing. I was pretty sure it had been ball lightning, but I was very surprised there was no sign of any scorching.

Friday, I come home from work and try to log onto the Internet. Nothing. I realize that my modem/router has no lights on it. The phone runs through the router so I have no phone either. Mike, the nice guy from AT&T who helped me was thrilled with my story. He is writing a book about lightning and said it was ball lightning. I called the meteorology department at College of DuPage and the student I talked to said it sure sounded like ball lightning. It doesn't usually leave scorch marks, either. It's a spot of concentrated electrical energy released. Well, this is all nice, but I want my phone and Internet back. AT&T would have someone out on Sunday.

Joe came out on Sunday. Step one is to make sure the signal is getting to the box. Because wasps like to nest in the boxes, he opened it up very carefully.

Looks pretty normal, doesn't it? This is what we saw when he opened it up.

Lightning had traveled down the phone line and into the box, completely frying the contents. It's charred. The wires inside are all fused together. The box acted like a ground, however, and the energy never went into the house. The modem/router took a surge and the power supply was toasted, but my phone, my computer, my TV, my electrical is all good. There is also no fire or scorch marks inside. I have had my miracle for this year and I'll take it. He jokingly said, "A new router isn't going to connect you to the Internet." Ya think?

The problem was that the pole where the phone line comes off was energized or "hot". Com Ed, our highly responsive electric company, and yes, that is sarcasm, needed to come deenergize the pole before AT&T could climb it. I was going to need a complete new line from the pole to the house, as well as a new box and he felt they should just string a new line to the office. He said I'd probably need a new modem/router, just to be safe. But, there was nothing he could do on Sunday until the pole was deenergized. He put in a ticket, took some photos, and we began the waiting game.

This morning, when I still didn't have phone or Internet I gave AT&T a call. Customer service was very apologetic. She couldn't see the status of my ticket, but she gave me a $35 credit because of lost service and a $25 Visa gift card. That will buy a number of lunches. She also said, "You don't have line insurance. I know it's at your discretion, but if they are telling you they need to string new line, you need to get this insurance. It's $6 a month and it means that if any line needs to be replaced, we do it for free. Otherwise, you're paying $93 an hour for the tech to be there. I'll make it retroactive to Thursday, when the lightning hit." I usually get upset when something is pushed like that but knowing that I would have to have a new line, I jumped on getting that. I can always call and cancel it, but it will have saved me a lot of money.

I called tech support and they had not heard from Com Ed. Also, my ticket was not expedited so that a tech would check on the line on Monday. So, the guy did that and Sherwade was at my house today at 8:45. Com Ed had done their part so he strung a new line to the house, installed a new box and ran a line directly to the office. No going through the basement with a phone line. He was at the house for 90 minutes. At $93 an hour, that would have been a bank breaker. It won't cost me a thing.

In a case of "some days you're the pigeon and some days you're the statue", the tech had finished everything, cleaned up and had just pulled away from the curb and ... the power went out. Seriously. I thought about running after him waving like a maniac, but, instead, I called Com Ed. As I was explaining to the gal what had happened, she said, "Oh ma'am. I see that 1700 people around you are without power. It's not AT&T or you." According to the flashing on the clock in the bedroom, power was restored about 45 minutes after I left for work.

Here's the new box. The tech said it's less wasp permeable. The brown on the siding is from the lightning. My vinyl siding probably helped prevent a fire, too.

I missed an eye appointment because I couldn't get the voice mail notice and I didn't know how to get my voice mails by calling in from another location. (It's also my fault for losing the card on which the time was written and not calling the clinic to verify the appointment.) I spent the weekend and the first 2 days of this week reading, cleaning, writing a letter that I discovered I couldn't print because my printer is hooked up, wirelessly, to the computer through ... the dead modem. /sigh I also finished the stitching on a wedding present. Now to finish the sewing on said present. I also cleaned. There is value to being without this modern contraption.

The tech said today that this end of spring beginning of summer has been horribly rough on phone and Internet. "We'd rather be out doing installations. Instead, we're climbing poles and doing repairs." I guess it's the price we pay for living in the Midwest.

So, I'm back. I have a lot of blog posts to get done. I will say that "Brave" looks really good when played on my computer. The only bad part is that I don't have space in my lap for Pilchard when I watch a movie on the computer. (Oh yeah. My TV is dying, too.)

Beverage:  Water

Deb

We're Okay

To say there was "a little weather" in Chicagoland yesterday is a profound understatement. When I went to bed on Saturday night, I was aware we were to have rain, potentially heavy, on Sunday. Around midnight, the weather service changed our "moderate" risk to "high risk" of damaging winds and hail, heavy rains and the potential for tornadoes. I didn't hear any of that.

Sunday, I decided to bring in the deck chairs, finally. I opened the back door and, whoa. The temperatures were hovering around 70 degrees, in mid-November, in Chicagoland. It was so nice, I decided to bring in a chair and then grab my next scarf project and sit on the deck. The sky was heavily overcast so I knew any enjoyment of the mild air would be fleeting.

By the time I collected the next skein of yarn and made it to the back door, it was raining. It was a spotty shower but contained lightning and thunder. I logged onto the computer to check the weather. It was 11:45. The first tornado of the day had hit Washington, Illinois, a suburb of Peoria, a good 2 hour drive south of me.

Concerned, because there was a tornado watch issued for me, I turned on the television. NBC, Channel 5, came up since I'd watched them the last time I'd watched TV. They had graphics and drawings and 3D models. They had been on the air; on the air; since 10:30 a.m. watching this storm. They had red and orange and purple and yellow images. I haven't seen that much of those colors since the psychedelic 1960's. They had charts and arrows and models showing tornadic rotation, all of it heading toward Chicago. I watched, sitting snugly in my recliner. At 12:10, NBC announced another tornado, spawned from the same cell that had passed over Washington, Illinois, was on the ground south of Chicago. It was moving north northeast. The storm track took it well south of Wheaton.

At 12:15, a large cell of this storm line passed over me and started pouring rain. You couldn't see across the street. The lightning was nearly constant for about 5 minutes and the wind made all the trees in the yard groan. But, as quickly as it hit, it passed.

That's what was quite amazing to me, how fast this whole system blasted through Chicagoland. It was moving at 55 to 60 miles per hour.

I turned to Channel 2, CBS, to check on the Bears' football game. There was nothing going on at Soldier Field other than the Baltimore Ravens were leading, 20 minutes into the game, 10 to nothing. Ah yes. It's just another sorry football game in the life of a Bears fan. Normally, I wouldn't care about the Bears but I was curious about the weather in Chicago. They cut away for a commercial and the Channel 2 meteorologist came on screen with updates.

This projected track, the red box, took the storm dangerously close to downtown Chicago and Soldier Field, where there was a football game in progress. My location is in the center of the box, which is the outline of the county where I live, where the "12:00 PM" ends. I wasn't going to be affected by this cell. I would have to deal with heavy rain.

When they cut back to the game, the evacuation order had been given to get people out of the stands as lightning had hit a skyscraper in visible proximity to Soldier Field.

I don't remember the last time I saw a pro football game in Chicago suspended for weather. Baseball gets this all the time, and high school foot ball games can find themselves, in those early season late August and early September Friday night games, running afoul of thunderstorms, but not the Bears. Then they panned the camera skyward.

That's not what went over me. I realized that the cell that went over me had moved, as the whole line of storms moved, north northeast. These clouds were the advance wave of what was in that above red box. I've sat through my share of downpours, sleet, and snow at Iowa football games but there is no way anyone should be in the stands at any event when the threat of severe weather with lightning, hail and high winds are incoming.

For the next 2 hours, the news told of tornadoes destroying sections of towns, perhaps even whole small towns in eastern Illinois. I watched as the rain and wind pounded Soldier Field. At one point, you couldn't see across the field, it was raining so hard. News reports were coming in of tornadoes reported in the south suburbs but it was moving east, more than north. By 2:30 p.m., I had sunshine. The first band of storms well to the east and moving out across Lake Michigan and into Michigan.

Another, smaller, band of showers came through around 4. It was accompanied by extremely high straight-line winds and the cold front arrived around 8. It had been 68 at 11. It was 43 by 8 p.m.

The girls started the adventure with me, Pilchard in my lap and Mija next to me on the recliner. But the thunder scared them so that they found more comfort just sleeping on shirts I left on my bed. I would get up, every 15 minutes or so, and check on them, but they stayed there through the whole afternoon. When the winds picked up, around 4, the power started to flicker, dim and finally went out completely. It would be out for a minute or two and come back on. I'd fix the time on the microwave only to have the power go out. I was also trying to cook supper so I really needed some time without the flickering. I quit fixing the time (in fact, I think it's still wrong) and got supper cooked when the power went out for a good 45 minutes. I wound up eating spaghetti and meatballs in the dark.

Rooting in the closet, I found my flashlight, propped it up on the back of the recliner and spent the time after supper crocheting the next scarf.

Between watching the news and crocheting by flashlight, I got a lot done on this particular scarf. The power came back on for good about 20 after 6.

The devastation is terrible. The stories of survival are incredible. While the latest tornado on record in Chicago is December 4, 1957, and there is a potential for this kind of weather any month of the year, you can't tell me there's not something to climate change. It shouldn't be 70 degrees in November in the Midwest, maybe in Louisiana or Arkansas, but not Chicago. We should be thinking that 50 is balmy at this time of year.

I have some small branches to clean up is all. We're okay. My heart aches for those who lost everything with Thanksgiving only 10 days away.

Beverage:  Irish Breakfast tea

Deb

The Cult of Weather

This is going to be something of a tidy rant. You've been warned. (wink)

If you were anywhere near a TV or radio or the Internet and checking the weather yesterday, you know about the cold front that moved through the midwest last night. That front is currently in New York.

It's late spring and summer is next week. You'd have to be pretty dense not to realize that living in the mid-section of the country exposes you to some of the most rapidly changing weather on the planet. We get the cold air from Canada and the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico. When they meet each other, particularly in the spring, the churning dance produces some of the most violent weather ever seen. We choose to live here. As much as my knees acted up in March and April with the damp chill of spring mornings, I cannot imagine living in San Diego with weather that is uniform. It has its place, but it's not me.

So, I'm attuned and have been for most of my life, to the changes wrought by the weather in the land where I choose to live. But yesterday's events brought something to the forefront of my mind, something that is not, I think, a positive. We have developed a "cult of weather", as I'm calling it.

It started in the morning with announcements that thunderstorms with high winds and heavy rain would develop in the afternoon. Scientifically, we know this will happen because the sun heats the atmosphere. Heat rises where it meets the cold air of the upper atmosphere. The air doesn't have to be from Canada. Air temperatures at 30,000 feet up are not the same as in your back yard. We know what happens. We've known for decades. This mix breeds thunderstorms.

But what we've seen, with the advent of social media and the ability to make movies with a cell phone, is the rise of the everyman storm chaser. Once the province of people of science, now the average person can hop in a car and, with a computer or just a smart phone, keep tabs on the National Weather Service's radar and warnings and The Weather Channel's on-air personalities pointing to green screens and making prognostications. You, too, can be rightthere, when the winds start circling and the funnel forms. You, too, can get your name and your video shown on the nightly news. We think this is normal and we are addicted to it. We want more.

I followed the weather yesterday. I do want to be informed, make no mistake about that. If I had places to go last night, I would have wanted to know if heavy rain would have interfered with those plans. From Tuesday night onward, however, a graphic was sent around the Internet with the following information, "There is going to be a derecho Wednesday night that starts in Iowa and heads east. This weather event will impact 65 million people. Share this with those in its path." Huh?

Last year, a derecho that formed west of DeKalb and roared east caused billions of dollars in damage. I was, at the time, in a movie theatre with Pam watching "Brave". The thing about this event was that it sprang up 45 miles west of me with little to no warning. Millions of people were inconvenienced and thousands were without power. What did we learn? That yelling the equivalent of "there could be fire" in this crowded country is the way to go. We demand immediacy and the talking heads about weather are our new prophets and preachers. Let me take a moment here and let out a heavy sigh.

"Sixty-five million people are in the affected area." As yesterday went on, the rain predictions grew. Eventually, it was locally heavy rainfall totals of inches. Back in April, we had an inches event that flooded the neighborhood and the street by the office. We knew the potential existed, at the time, for heavy rain. There's no place for inches of water to drain when it comes down in minutes. So the prospect of inches again last night made me check the house and yard and batten down the hatches. The garbage cans were shoved next to the deck. The flower pots on the front steps got moved off the steps to the ground and I tipped over the deck chairs to prevent them being lofted and tossed.

In hindsight, as I was walking out my back door this morning and righting a couple of them to get off the deck, where they are isn't going to cause them to become airborne unless there is a tornado in my back yard. At the most, they would have been shoved next to the house or into the flower pots, but I believed the sentences about the forming of a derecho.

I'm embarrassed. I believed. From March through November, professional and amateur storm chasers will fan out from Texas through Wisconsin, Colorado to New York, Oklahoma to Georgia, all trying to see the elusive weather phenomena known as a tornado. We will sit, glued to our maps and our talking heads, watching them tell us, in ever increasingly shrill voices, about potentials and probabilities. We will believe. We analyze their maps, hoping we can figure out what they, who may have years more training than us, cannot; just where the storm cells will "pop". We grab our cell phones and stand in our doorways with them aimed at the heavens, when we should be seeking shelter, hoping for that one bit of film footage that gets the Channel 4 News Team to interview us on camera. We. Will. Believe.

Again, allow me a moment to sigh. The deaths of 3 professional and 1 amateur storm chasers in Oklahoma last month are now a footnote to the weather. I feel they and the manner in which they died have been forgotten in the drive to be in the right place at the right time. We have gone from, "This afternoon, conditions are right for strong thunderstorms with locally heavy rains and high winds to develop. Some of these storms could produce hail and may have the potential for tornadoes. Please check in with us and be prepared to move to a place of shelter should conditions deteriorate" to "OMG! ZOUNDS! 65 MILLION PEOPLE ARE GOING TO BE IMPACTED BY THIS STORM!"

You know what my impact was? It rained. That's it. It rained. No high winds. No hail. Not even inches of rain. It was a cloudburst and then it went away. Pilchard was fine all evening. We had a few flashes of lightning but she never ran to hide. There were heavy rains and winds south and west of me. Tornado sirens went off in various Chicagoland communities. It was nasty in places out there.

Increasingly, we are sounding alarms for potentials that never show, but we believe they will because we are believing what our prophets are telling us. We have developed, thanks to the awfulness of the past, warning systems that reduce death tolls from these major storms. This is tangible proof, life-saving proof, of what the early prophets, preachers, teachers and diviners worked to prove. I feel, however, that we have also removed the ability of people to make informed choices on the weather's impact. "Tut tut. It looks like rain" is now "Take cover! It could be the storm to end all storms!" The only thing missing is the running around waving our collective arms in the air. It's not quite Chicken Little, but it's so close.

I am a very small voice calling for a return to reasonableness. I do need to know if conditions are right for the development of severe weather. I do need to know if that weather impacts me. I do need to know at what point to head to the basement. I don't need my senses bombarded with ZOUNDS! and OMG! and graphics in reds and purples. At some point, the weather will become the little boy who cried wolf. I hate to see the result of that.

For the record, it's a beautiful day today, clear, sunny, mild. I didn't need the weather man to tell me that. I could see it when I walked out by back door. 

Beverage:  Yorkshire Gold Tea

Deb

For a Crappy Night

We are in the midst of a winter storm. It hit Iowa overnight and this morning, coming up from the southwest, spreading pink across the radar like a bad dye job. We're under the storm warning until midnight. The air temperature hovers around the freezing point but the ground is cold so we're getting sleet which is freezing on contact. The salt truck has been by at least 3 times this afternoon.

It's not a night fit for man or beast, to paraphrase W.C. Fields. I spent the afternoon in bliss; a large black cat asleep in my lap, a brown cat asleep next to me, and "The Lord of the Rings:  Two Towers" on TV. I had plans but the need to have my lap all afternoon shattered those. Now night approaches, a soggy, cold, icy night and I'm a bit hungry. What to eat?

I had intended to finish dishes today. A batch here, let another batch soak, maybe blog or maybe crochet, but Pilchard had other ideas. So, technically, my window of 'wanting' to do dishes has evaporated. I really don't like doing them at night, which is why there are sometimes a couple days worth in the sink. It gets late and I'm not inclined and they won't get up and wash themselves so I'll just leave them. But I'm rather loathe to make more dishes. What can I eat to satisfy the hunger but not make a lot of dishes?

I went to the store on Friday after work. We had a big event planned for the evening in my WOW guild and those events always go much better when there is a snack and a beverage along for the ride. Ever since Christmas, when my mom's husband gave me some of his oranges, I've been wanting more. He buys the fruit boxes from the 4H kids who sell them as fund raisers. The oranges he shared with me were incredibly sweet and juicy and so tasty. A bowl of orange slices, now that's an unconventional raid snack but far better than nachos or white cheddar popcorn.

So, I head into the produce section and, what's this? Oh goodness! Tangelos. Tangelos are a cross between a tangerine and a grapefruit. You won't get me to eat a grapefruit but a tangelo, absolutely.

You can see they are more red-orange and bigger than an orange. They have a sweet tart flavor. The oranges I got are deliciously sweet while the tangelos are more tart. Tangelos peel like a dream. I really wish oranges had zippers. I know people who feel that peeling an orange is akin to a zen moment. It just frustrates me. Both contain a lot of vitamin C in a fashion that's better for you than juice. You won't find any high fructose corn syrup in these babies.

Tonight is citrus night. I might make a peanut butter sandwich later but for a crappy night, the intoxicating smell of citrus is in my kitchen and home office. It may be zen for some friends to peel these. It is zen for me to eat them.

Beverage:  Dr Pepper

Deb

Aftermath

When you are inside a movie theatre, the world could end and so long as the movie keeps showing, you'd not know it until you walked outside. Such was the nature of last Sunday. Pam and I went to Brave. There was a 40% chance of rain but that just means 40% of the area gets 100% of the rain. The temperatures were to approach the upper 90's again and Com Ed was announcing record power consumption figures.

Hence, when the power went out in the movie theatre, we weren't exactly sure if this was something with the theatre, a brown out or perhaps weather. Pam thought she heard rain, but, again, is it rain or is it something in the movie. We didn't know, for sure, until we walked to the front of the theatre and exited. The parking lot was wet. There were standing puddles and there were leaves and twigs scattered about. To our left, the dark clouds of a passing storm were heading east southeast toward Indiana. "Hmmm, looks like we got heavy rain. Do you suppose it was heavy enough to knock out the power?"

We had no idea.

Power was out at one stoplight on the way from the theatre to Culver's for lunch. We had a delightful lunch and continued to head west. When we got into Glen Ellyn, the light at Park and Roosevelt was flashing. No matter. We'll go cross-country. I wanted to hit CVS Pharmacy before going home as I needed refills on Folic Acid and Methotrexate. As we headed into the neighborhoods to avoid Roosevelt Road, we started seeing signs that perhaps this was a heavier than we thought storm. There were limbs down and lots of debris clustered around the storm drains. CVS was closed due to no power.

"I'll wait. You run inside and tell me if you have power," Pam said, as we drove down my street and passed a neighbor carving up the remnants of the tree that had blown over in his front yard. Nope. I had no power. Pam headed home to see what awaited her.

Wheaton was one of the hardest hit communities. The storms formed roughly 30 miles west of us, just popped up, without warning, and roared east, "roared" being the operative word. We've been told "hurricane-force winds" of 80-90 mph came with 1-2 inches of rain in 20 minutes. We often joke that getting from place to place easily in Chicago is a "you can't get there from here" adventure. Downtown Wheaton has and still has no power and lines down all over. Giant trees, probably in excess of 60 years old, were snapped, toppling onto power poles and lines, snapping them. Pam had a limb down in her back yard, balancing on the power lines and a limb down in the front.

As Pam has a generator, I removed most of the fridge and freezer stuff I bought on Saturday (I know. Perfect timing.) and took it to her house. The damage was incredible. It's going to take weeks to get things cleared. My power came back Monday afternoon. Pam's is still not back on. People have been on the grid only to be removed because of another problem. Wheaton canceled all of their July 4th events because you can't get into downtown, where the parade goes, and the excessive heat and dry conditions do not bode well for fireworks.

I have two branches down of this size. The city has announced they will pick up storm debris from parkways. I just have to drag this to the street. I am incredibly fortunate. I look at my tree shaded back yard and realize, it could have been so much, much, much worse than a couple of branches and the deck chairs tipped over.

We gripe and complain because we are without power. When you drive by streets closed because the lines are dangling 2 feet off the ground, when you drive by homes where the tree snapped, hit the power pole and snapped that in three pieces, when you drive by streets where the only thing you see on each side are mounds and mounds of branches and limbs, you realize that this is not a 24-hour snap your fingers clean up. I must have passed a dozen power trucks and a dozen tree trimming trucks, some at work and some standing around the remains of a light pole and assessing how best to remove that branch  safely.

Last July's storm left me without power for about as long as this one did. It's hot. It's sticky. It's uncomfortable. But, I am grateful I did not suffer any major damage, just a minor inconvenience. We have become quiet used to our electrified lives and it comes as a system shock when that is interrupted. I am grateful there are people who work to restore power. I won't criticize the linemen, the guys in the trucks trying their hardest in 90+ degree weather to restore power.

Beverage:  Water

Deb

Debris

Before it got too hot outside on Saturday, I did some clean up.

I estimate at least 3 bags of yard waste in that pile.

I was able to hold onto the loppers and use them without pain in my hands. So, I cut back the one tree that was bent over the deck and trimmed back the tree branches which were covering the deck on the south side. Then, I went around the deck and trimmed back some of the brush that has grown up. I could only work the loppers for about an hour before my hands started to hurt, but I'm taking this as a good sign that I'm slowly getting better. There is a slight worry that I'll still have problems in the winter when I need to be able to shovel. No blizzard, please, this coming winter.

Zeke mowed the lawn Sunday morning and added to the pile. My neighbor to the north showed me a large branch that had snapped off the tree that is in the NW corner of my lot, where his meets mine. He's going to have it hauled away. Technically, it's not really in any danger of damaging anything other than his fence, and he's not all that concerned about the fence, but he said he'll hear it from his wife so he best get it done.

We noticed more small branches snapped off at the top of trees surrounding our houses. They aren't big and maybe the next strong wind will knock them down. Nature's fury, when viewed by the damage to the trees, is quite humbling.

It's supposed to be a reasonably nice weekend upcoming. This is good for the Ale Fest on Saturday, but I'm thinking I'd like to take down more of the volunteer trees I have around the property. I don't have the funds to get the stickers to have it hauled away, but I can make a pile and work at bagging up the debris when I have the cash for yard waste stickers. I felt a sense of accomplishment having done this much when I couldn't before.

Beverage:  Edinburgh's Finest tea

Deb

Cleaned Up

When I got home yesterday, the limb had been removed from the street.

I have to feel for those guys. It's been quite the summer for downed trees and limbs. I drove to the post office, bank, grocery, book store and home today and the number of trees downed in Glen Ellyn is quite amazing. We're not talking the slender 6-8 inch around trees. We're talking the 3 feet in diameter ones that have seen generations drive by possibly from the early 1900's. Street departments have had their hands full just to get the streets cleared, let alone pick up some of this. It's disheartening when you see the remains of a tree that you know probably was  planted before WWI, lying in the parkway. But that is the nature of summer in the midwest. We're just aware of it because we live where we can see what nature does. In a forest, we are grateful for those downed limbs where we can sit and rest. Plus, they provide, as they decompose, vital nutrients to the ecosystem of the forest. Here, we haul it away and maybe turn it into mulch. 

I took a look into the tree to see where the branch had been snapped off. It took me awhile to find because I was looking at the side of the tree, where the branch hit the street. That's not where it broke.

It broke off one of the north center limbs. In looking at this I realized that although I thought I could cut it up, my little saw would not have been able to go through this limb. I probably would have had help from neighbors in cutting it up but I'm grateful the city took it away. 

Now to clean up the twigs and small branches scattered about the yard. 

Beverage:  Orange Juice

Deb