Day 1035 TIMBER!

There are some days that are ordinary and others that are unpredictable, today was the latter.

The weather forecast was for stormy and high winds, which meant a day in the garage, and no distractions.

I was busy sanding another leg of the dining table when I heard an unusual noise. Normally I’m responsible for dislodging most things causing them to fall, but this was slightly different. For some reason I went to the doorway at the back of the garage, looking up towards the top end of the garden. What I saw was just a clump of green leaves. There was no flower bed to be seen. That was when I realised that part of the next door neighbours tree had fallen into our garden.

I rushed back into the house shouting for Kelli, who was in the bathroom at the time. She rushed out and I explained what I had seen. We both went into the sunroom where we could see the full extent of what had happened. The tree had split halfway up the trunk, but was still attached. The fence had not been damaged, but all the branches had covered our new flower bed.

It was still raining hard, but we donned our rain gear and went out to try to save our plants.

I got the loppers from the shed and started to cut the branches away. Gradually we cleared the flower beds and fortunately only a few were broken, others just sprung back.

It was exhausting work, I was wetter on the inside of my North Face coat than the outside from the rain, so I was cursing them for making a useless garment rather than the tree.

Kelli went to see if the neighbour was in, but they weren’t, so we cleared the garden as best as we could, and went back inside to change clothes.

Later the lady from next door came round to assess the damage, and agreed to get the bough removed as quickly as possible.

The two pine trees in our garden had taken the brunt of the weight when the bough fell, and one looked in a sorry state, we would not know the full extent until the tree was removed.

Apart from a hot shower, the rest of the day went back to normal, with me continuing to sand the leg I had started earlier.