Storm damage clean up time!

I did get some applique work done today but not until late in the afternoon.  This morning before it got hot it was time to start clean up.  We started over by the maple tree – Mike had cut it yesterday and we had hauled off 2 trailer loads of branches.  Mike spent time starting a fire to burn all those branches and brought the trailer back over for me to load up the firewood.

Empty trailer on the left photo.  Filled up trailer on the right photo. While I was loading the trailer Mike got a lot of the branches burned (lower right photo) and started work on cleaning up one of the pine trees where the top had fallen off of the tree (lower left photo).  The top of that tree was quite large and we found that it landed on a dead cedar tree that we had not cleared off – we were procrastinating – nature took care of it for us    he had to cut that cedar tree in firewood too.  The top of the tree also took out several small trees under it and branches off of another tree in the descent to the ground.  He has most of the branches pulled out and tomorrow we will unload this maple firewood load pictured in the right upper photo and then proceed to load it up again with pine and cedar.

Caron from Michigan had commented on how long it takes trees to grow.  She is from a northern state.  Things are a bit different here.  Here are two photos that show an area of our land that basically had no trees when we moved here almost 28 years ago in August of 1981.  We planted all of these trees in about 1984 – about 25 years ago.

Oak tree, Sweet gum tree, Red Bud, Dogwood and others. The tallest in the background a pine tree is actually across the road and not ours - the ones up by the truck are ones I am talking about.

Tall Maple tree planted about 25 years ago it was a twig as were most planted in this field (no longer a field) - it is a little bigger than the one the storm took out. They were planted at the same time but the one that fell was over shadowed by the Sweet gum tree and the Oak tree and didn't grow as large. Some of these other trees- on the right of the photo - were twigs when we planted them, they are a nut tree. I believe they are just called "filberts" but that might not be the actual name. We planted them about 15 years ago.

We were back to normal water pressure this morning thank goodness because I got done with six loads of laundry today in between working outside until 12:30 when it got way to hot and sunny for me.  Back to work tomorrow to do more clean up in the morning.

I did get done with a little of the applique on the final Christmas Baltimore Album block.  I will continue to work on that over the next two or three weeks and hope to finish it before our next trip.