Wild and Windy Winter Weather

This last February was not the best of months for me. Besides everything else with my mom, we had some nasty weather to contend with. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a few pictures for you. I tried to do them in sequence from left to right. Unfortunately, I don't have a "stitching" tool with my current photo editing software. Does anyone have a good one they'd recommend?


That's not a tree, folks. That's only a branch, a 50 foot long branch. The tips of the smallest branchs on the end were as thick as my fingers. It took out 15 feet of my fence.


Here is a shot of the actual tree. That big white spot you see is where the branch came off. The white spot is 5 to 6 feet long and a good 30 or 40 feet (or more?) up from the tree trunk. This is clearly a BIG tree!


Not only was it very windy when this branch came down, it was bitingly cold. I was outside with my coat, hat, and gloves on for about 15 or 20 minutes snapping some of those pictures. By the time I got back into the house, I couldn't feel my fingers.

We are looking into having the tree taken down, but the estimates we've had so far are staggering. Everyone seems to want one to three THOUSAND dollars to take the tree down. YIKES! That's a lot of dough. However, that may be cheaper than replacing my neighbors house should another huge branch (there are two left) or the whole tree come toppling down. I'm not too crazy about the idea of it landing on my house either, for that matter. I wouldn't normally be too worried, but the weather this year has been especially weird. First it was the soaking rains, then the crazy wind. And it would seem we may be expecting more damaging winds later this week. In fact, it doesn't look great out there right now as I watch the trees swaying back and forth.

Oh, please. I really don't need any more headaches.