Storm Damage & Silver Linings

Still waiting on official word whether last night’s storm qualified as a tornado. Sure felt like one. This is what’s left of a neighbor’s backyard this morning:

There’s quite a bit of damage in my garden (part of a fence and some stair railing down, many plants flattened), but I am lucky, lucky, lucky: the damage in the photo above is from a huge old Ailanthus tree next door that fell. It totaled three small neighboring yards, and could as easily have fallen in my direction. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Chairs got blown clear across my garden

and there are lots of branches to break down

On the bright side, my garden will get lots more sunlight now that the larger of the neighbor’s two trees is gone. Also, there was a grape vine that had jumped to the tree, all the grapes out of reach. A lot of the vines landed in my garden.

My tomato plants are history (fried green tomatoes for lunch, plus I’ll make some green tomato chutney). But my raspberry plants are the heroes of the garden today. I had them staked, and the stakes came completely out during the storm. The plants were utterly horizontal, and I spent the morning restaking them. But, incredibly, there is still fruit clinging to them:

Time to go back out and saw away at those branches.

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