The Clean Up Continues

I left for work yesterday about 5:30 a.m. I returned from work about 5:30 p.m. During that time I was plenty busy. I didn't hear from Mike and assumed he was at work also. As I approached our home, I had to blink; I couldn't believe my eyes!  Remember our "fort", the branches we were piling in our front yard Saturday and Sunday? This picture does not really show it all, but you get the idea.

Well, when I returned home last night, it was gone. It turns out, a neighbor loaned a pick-up and a trailer to Mike. It took Mike from about 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., and he can barely walk now, but he got it done.

All we have left is some work in the back yard! I was so grateful to Mike! Looking at our front yard today, it doesn't even look as though we had so much snow and destruction...unless you look upward. There is a lot more sky showing through the trees!

I am amazed at the difference that has occurred in just a few days. Under all that, we still had a pretty green lawn, even a few flowers in the flower bed. Remember, this is what it looked like in our front yard on Friday!

Mike was telling me about all the people out in their yards, people we usually don't see. I really love that people were helping each other so much. I've heard of some folks asking outrageous prices to help with the broken trees all over the town, but mostly I've heard of people reaching out to those in need. While I hope to never again see a storm this damaging, there really has brought out the best in a lot of folks.

It's Good to Have Friends With Chainsaws

So, in case you missed it, click here to see how our yard looked Friday. It was awful and we were pretty overwhelmed! Saturday we sent Sam to help Maria and Eric (by then they had power back) with the damage at their home while Mike and I started in at our  house. It was hard, hard work. On the other hand, we don't usually spend that much time together, it was a bright and sunny day, and we had less damage than some people in town.

This is how things looked on Saturday...

The sun was melting that 14+ inches of snow very quickly!

Yesterday a friend from church came by with a chainsaw and a little trailer. He looked at all that Mike had hand-sawed and was amazed! Well, Mike had spent hours and hours and hours sawing while I lopped smaller branches. We both hauled about a forest worth of limbs out to the front of our house. Our friend cut up the biggest limbs lying in our back yard. He didn't have too much time to give but it was still so helpful! It raised our spirits to have him cut up those big branches into sizes we could handle. We're still pretty worn out and sore, but we can manage it. We also loaded up his trailer twice, for runs to one of the city's newly designated limb drop off areas. That didn't make much of a dent out of our pile but still, we've made a lot of progress just to get everything cut! That's Sam, hauling loads from the downed branches in the back yard.

We still have lots and lots of loads to be hauled, but our chaos is now more organized.

When we look up, we see we still have some problems. Can you see the broken branches dangling up there? We have several more of those. Will a good wind bring them down? Maybe, but we'd rather then didn't fall on a person or the house.

You simply could not imagine what this city looks like! There is destruction everywhere. It is really quite heartbreaking. Everywhere I drove, there were trees down. Streets are lined with piles and piles of the tree carcasses. It almost looks like big hedges as they are all still green.  There is so much work to be done and so many people with bigger problems than our's. Although we uncovered Sam's car and it looks pretty good, not everyone's vehicle was so lucky. It is the strangest thing to see our town so injured.

On a happier note, though, we've also seen neighbors helping neighbors. We've seen strangers stopping to help someone with a mess in their yard. Thousands were without power but we all worked together to help each other find warm beds. We were all in this together and we knew it. That's something good that came of this white tornado.