The Silent Tree

We had every intention of having a very lazy and low key Saturday. We had debated taking the boys to the pool but neither of them were really excited about that idea and I wasn’t jumping at the thought of spending the day in the heat.

We had talked about going shopping for a new living room rug, which we really need, but our hearts weren’t in it.

I was close to finishing my latest book and Ed was excited that the English Premier League Soccer was playing their first game of the season. The boys were actually playing nicely together in their room, which is sort of rare these days so we just decided to take it easy.

About 10:45AM I decided to run get a quick pedicure while Ed finished the soccer game.

When I got home an hour later no one was in the house. This was strange. I quickly checked the bedrooms but still, no one. My next thought is that everyone must be outside so I walked onto the back deck to this view…

I know it’s a little hard to understand the picture, so let me explain. We had a very large tree fall in our back yard last night. The odd thing is that no one heard a thing. I would have thought that such a large tree falling would have made some loud noise, but we didn’t hear a thing.

The tree hit the corner of the back of the kids fort. The fort had a swing hanging off the back of it. The swing was mounted to a 4 x 4 board. The board was cut in half by the force of the tree falling. I’m fortunate that the house wasn’t hit and that no one was hurt.

After examining the tree I’m still not sure why it fell. It did have some damage from some carpenter ants, but at the base of the tree where it broke to fall over it looked healthy.

Now we have the fun task of trying to get the yard cleared up. We were able to get most of the small branches with leaves off with the help of a hatchet and a small hand saw. A neighbor brought over a gas powered chain saw but we can’t seem to get it to work. Another neighbor let us borrow an electric chain saw so Ed has managed to get the top of the tree cut up. Now we’ve just need to come up with a game plan for the rest of the tree.

I’m thinking we’ll try to rent a chain saw from a hard ware store. Only tomorrow will tell.

I’m still pretty amazed that such a large object could fall in the back yard and we didn’t even notice. Nature is very strange at times.