Weathering the storm

The good news is we survived Hurricane Matthew with no damage to the house we're building, Daddy's cabin, or the rental we are currently in.  The bad news is we've lost a week of work on the house, but I can't even be upset because I'm so relieved we didn't have damage, when so many others have lost so much.

We did have some downed trees on the property; at least a dozen, several of them rather large.  In addition to the ones below we had several young pine trees and even a full grown sweet gum that snapped off.  All of the young pines have a decided lean to them now but they should recover.

An Asplundh tree trimming truck from Alabama (say that 3 times fast) came by the farm on Tuesday, by mistake. There were spotters out marking areas with plastic tape where there were trees that needed to be removed from power lines; the same plastic tape that was left at the end of our road by the timber crews.  After we cleared up the confusion I chatted with the crew for a bit and even wound up giving them a tour of the house before they headed back out to finish their shift.

There goes the pear harvest... 

We lost this pecan tree but it managed to avoid hitting a single blueberry bush.
Luck, or a little divine intervention from Granddaddy?!

Note that the branch from this pecan tree is just as big, if not bigger,
than the whole tree that fell in the blueberry patch.  

More pecan limbs down, one of which took out the electric lines.
We expected to lose some and we are just glad the barn was spared. 

A cluster of smaller trees fell and blocked the road.
We had just finished cutting them up and dragging them off when our neighbor WC came down the road.  

What was left of my garden was swamped.

The Titanic is fine; Daddy deliberately half sank it to keep it from getting airborne. 

We wanted to take some of these trees along the edge of the pond out so Matthew saved us some effort.  

The pond was half empty before the storm.

I'm glad this barrel just wound up in the field and not in the pond.
Snapped off & mangled trees in the background.

This pecan tree almost, but not quite, tipped all the way over.