7/16/2024 Lily Poplar
Late afternoon, July 16, 2024 there was a ‘straight line storm’ that blew through here made a mess in the backyard (as well as all of East Fallowfield).
I was watching the rain from the bedroom window, it was going in so many different directions that you couldn’t see anything more than a few feet away, but I heard the crack. I couldn’t even see it, but I thought it was only a branch…I was wrong! The lily poplar was DOWN! I am glad it didn’t fall towards the house or take out the neighbors chicken coop/condo. Chasing chickens around in a lightening storm would NOT have been much fun!
A few minutes later, Jen was checking the tree out front when I heard the second crack. A BIG branch from the maple tree snapped and took out some of the ‘roses of sharon’ hedges between us and the Wilson’s house
The electricity was out until 3:30pm 7/18/2024…some hoses were still without power on Saturday the 20th. We worked by generator and ‘hot spot’…what a pain in the ass that was! I had my laptop ready to go, but still needed docs from the hard drive attached to my PC…everything took way longer than I wanted. My vacation started on Friday and I went to pick up Becky at the airport, so cleanup will have to wait! I ordered a Worx 10″ chain saw…this is the brand of all of my tools…same battery for everything. (I may borrow my friend, Ronnie’s 16″ gas chainsaw for the final push, we shall see!)
On July 23rd, I went out and started the clean up of the maple tree since it fell into the neighbors yard. They also had a branch drop from their big tree and brought in a tree guy to clean it up….even the stuff from our tree that fell on their side. They asked us if we wanted to have them clear out our side too, but I really like being outside and this is a perfect excuse 🙂
I spend a few hours cutting things down to a more manageable size so that I can get some burnt and some to the curb for the Aug 5th monthly yard cleanup pickup. (So many rules, cant be longer than 6 feet or 4 inch circumference, it needs to be off the property line (so in the street) and it cant take longer than 15 minutes to pick up or they charge $30/15 minutes.) I still need to decide if I will cut the bigger stuff and split it. After I have the fireplace inspected in the family room, I may burn it there. Or if I need to find a place that will take it…don’t need to decide that now!
More pictures to come as I clear it out!