Storm Alfred-Danger warzone ahead!

The day started out okay... when the snow came it came as big puffy snowflakes!! The size of softballs. You should take notice of the limbs on the left of this tree...(they will be down shortly).

Julie's new truck was in a precarious place...those two big oak trees next door always give us 'adjeda' (spelled correctly?) during a storm. See the amount of snow on the ground? The total inches we got were probably 4-5" of heavy wet snow, but the branches on the surrounding trees were coming down already and it's not even dark.

Once the branches started cracking and falling behind Julie's new truck (she's had it a week or so), she decided to move it up close to the garage... (smile- big mistake)....

Notice the tree... Notice the V in the front branches? See that thick trunk through the V?

Watch it come down....This trunk, threaded the needle!! There is all of 10 feet between the front of the garage and the back of our house... It was soon taken up by ALL TREE BRANCHES!!!

It blocked the left side of the garage doors, but thankfully, my car is on the right side.

These two lovely branches were across the driveway...

 This was the backyard once the sun came up....Sunday morning. Lots of prayers were said regarding no loss of life or injuries and no structural damage. They worked.

This was the bushy part of the big tree. This photo was taken from the bathroom window. (No one thinks it's quite safe to venture outside yet).

Talk about one dangerous branch to come down. This is our next door neighbor, Brian pulling on that huge branch. The left side of the branch fell right after this photo was taken, but it was 'wishboned' over another stump of a branch high up. The other half is still dangling.

Looks like a hurricane came through. OH, Wait! That was in August! LOL

This is the swerve in the road around downed wires. My trees/house is on the left of this photo (actually, the red house is the neighbors).

This is the neighbors front yard.

This is ours, looking up the driveway...

 This is the backyard, from our other neighbor's yard. Can't quite get to all of ours...

Amazing in all this destruction, God does show some beauty......

Parking lot- New Truck for Julie

Well, I hope this is the start of something good in my daughter, Julie's life. She has a car (VW Jetta) that she really cn't afford (never could, I don't think), so a friend of hers gave her a car for $1. 1990-something Nova (really a piece of junk in my husband's opinion-- he's the mechanic, he should know). She might have used this if she could sell the Jettta, but in the meantime (before that could happen), she and her beau, Chris decided to buy a truck...oops!...
. A TRUCK!!

Chris bought it with $$ he was saving for their 'future', so I guess it's alright. I don't know their intentions, but they've talked marriage, I guess.

Anyway, she is selling the Jetta to a lady she knows from Malakai's school (Justin's mom, Tanya). Installments. Not sure I'd ever do that with someone I don't know well, but that's her choice. I just hope she doesn't get screwed!

Intereesting News....

Lee came home from the doctors office and said he has the starting of cataract. It may be anywhere from 10-15 yrs before it's ready to be operated on, but it's just news I don't like to hear. He already is 'glacoma suspect' and has drops he uses all the time. I told him he could use braille with me....LOL

What ONE bulb of garlic caused...

Okay.... so the garden hasn't been tended to all year.

 Yes, you read that right. All year. Little scruffy, isn't it?

Oh, I've meant to, but one thing or another has gotten in my way.Read the other posts in this blog to see all the things that might have kept me from working outside. (Mainly the 90 degree weather -- or higher!!)

Well, I went to the Garlic Festival in Bennington, VT again (always on Labor Day weekend) and this year I decided to try planting garlic, so I bought a bulb. Yup. One bulb. Well, I've never done this before and I figure that if I don't like it, then I 've only done one bulb worth of garlic.

Well, since I couldn't plant it in a garden that had gotten so overgrown, I had to at least clear out a patch of dirt. and well, you know how that is....

 I got part of it cleared (mostly taking out tall grasses and dead violet plants--those overtake the garden every year), but notice what I had to contend with? ROOTS!!!! Little, spindle-y roots. Some I had to chop with a hatchet, but mostly pull out by hand, which killed my back. I turned the dirt over by shovel and it was easy enough to pull out EVERYTHING , but the roots.

One thing I did realize was that I had wonderful worms in the garden. Goooood! Love it! Made me think of my co-worker, Glo, who is deathly afraid of worms. (wonder why...)

 I did leave in the irises, two tomato plants who haven't bit the bullet' yet, a thyme and basil plant and some day lillies. But that was all. I was so sore and crippled from all the back-breaking work I haven't done in ages, that I couldn't plant the silly little bulb of garlic, until the next day. (Oh, I did find lots of scallions-- I thought I'd only planted a few-- and planted some more in the little area with the garlic. This area is in the lower right side of the photo. I marked it with the large rocks going into the garden on the right and filled in more rocks around the the bottom of the photo.) .... It looks good, but the garden on the back left still needs to be done. Maybe before the snow flies....

Bathtime and schooltime for Kai??

Somehow, the only way to get a kid in the tub is to make it fun....

Doesn't this look like fun??

Of course, he's young yet, so I'm not sure if this is a sign of things to come...This was kai in his bed, BEFORE I woke him up for his first day of school....

 This was him running late.... (wasn't this the same outfit he slept in???? I think she purposely put him in this when he went to sleep, so she could save time, but really....I'm not his mom, so I can't say a thing. Everyone was late for work/school.... oh well.

Somehow, he doesn't look quite awake, does he? 

Hurricane Irene photos at last!

We did get hit pretty hard with wind, but never lost power at our house. Two streets over (and actually, the next street over) lost power for three days. My mom 15 mins away, lost power for almost a week. We had her in to our house every other day (she babysat my grandson) so she had power/phone/bathroom facilities. I'll post some photos that I took after the storm went through...Lee & I just walked a few miles to see our daughter, Amber (they lost power for a few days)...

This is the tree on Center Street that we heard come down...

This is how my hubby decided to divert the water that usually comes into the garage....Notice the mini sandbags at the right side of the garage door? The bottom of the garage door is pretty muddy, but it won't stay clean so I gave up long ago....LOL.

This was our back yard.... lots of leaves everywhere, but not a tree down. Good thing since we have so many of them back there....

This tree snapped in half (it's trunk is on the far left of the photo). It was up the road from our house although the swish and the 'thunk' Lee & I heard may have been behind our back yard (see the above photo).

This branch feel from a really tall tree at the elementary school at the end of our street.

This was a a street a few blocks away. They hadn't had power for two days. (Boy, were WE lucky)

These were more on the streets surrounding us...

This is the tree that cut off my daughter Amber's power... it was across the street from her house. 

This one was on my way home from work. They were in the process of cleaning it up.

We had half power all week at work, so a few of our machines in my two depts. didn't work... All in all we faired well.

Home safe, so Far.....

Mom and I got home from VT safely.....Now to brace for Hurricane Irene! I'll post photos when we have power (hopefully, we won't lose it)...

We did have a great time in VT...

Coming onto Rte 30 in Brattleboro, VT, it's always nice to see the highway I just left (Rte 91), except that this is interesting with the low lying clouds hanging on...

What is more picturesque in VT but covered bridges?

 You can tell they had some kind of storms the day before, as the weather is starting to clear this morning (Friday).This shot is looking at Bromley Mountain and it's just at the spot I always thought was the best plot of land to build a house!

 Stopping in at the Vermont Welcome Center is always a pleasant stop. It always has some non-profit organization offering weary travelers some food and drink (donations only). Malakai couldn't wait to have the chocolate milk and I picked up some muffins and breads for the trip.

Without having anyone else up at the cabin to play with, this is Kai's entertainment... running up the stairs to the deck...

 ... and jumping off!!! Many, many times! (I know this photo is out of focus, but the expression is priceless!)

How sad to 'stop playing' to come in for dinner... At least he found a great fishing hat (in the bathroom on a hook) to wear. Yes, I know it's not good manners to have a hat at the table, but we made an exception at the camp. And besides,... he was tired!

Somehow, he thought this was gonna be his bunk...on top. But he was so tired, he fell asleep on the bottom bunk, so I moved up top.

Due to the fact that I didn't want to babysit a campfire, we decided to do the 'cheater method' to making s'mores....use the gas stove.

He liked them... although he tried to put a majority of it in his mouth all at once.

After a nice sleep, we woke up to deer in the back field! Three of them (actually a fourth one was by the pond to the extreme right of this photo.

oh! I forgot!!!

I woke up at 4:10am to use the bathroom and as I'm watching out the screen window (I LOVE looking up at the night sky off the deck, usually, since it has such a HUGE expanse of space. You can actually follow the satellites across the sky if you are still enough!), I heard this awful sound! A barking/howling/yipping kind of sound which made me think of a pack of foxes/wolves. It went on for a few minutes and THEN I heard the grunting/growling!!! It was the bear I ran into a few years back! the soulnd was coming from the pond area. I am SO glad I wasn't outside in the dark watching the sky!

These are some shots of the sunrise before it got too cloudy. Beautiful....

Here is my buddy, coming out to get dressed and run in the grass...

Notice the footprints? He loved it...

We even made it home before the Hurricane Irene hit!

We may not have much power for the next few days, so I'll check back in when we do. In the meantime, I have knitting (kids hats) to keep me busy.