And It All Comes Crashing Down!

You are stilling in a meeting and your cell rings.  The caller is someone would not typically try to contact you at work, so you know it must be important.

I got one of those calls last week.  It is mid-morning and I look down at my phone.  Tim is calling me.  He knows I am in meetings all day and can be reached by email.  So I excuse myself and take the call. 

The conversation starts normally, so I cut to the chase - "Is this an emergency?"

"Well..."  So in the second or two that he takes to respond, I have rapid fire gone through the scenarios of what could be wrong.  He is hurt.  Something happened to the cats.  My car was stolen... and so on.

"We had some storms last night and apparently..." I jump to car damaged, house is damage, shed is damaged...

"And a tree fell" on my car... house... neighbors house...

Finally, I find out that my neighbor's tree (from 2 houses up) had fallen through the next door neighbors yard, neighbors behind me yard, and my yard.  Honestly, I can't picture how a tree could fall and hit so many peoples yards and not a house.

The tree, whose root ball was over 7 feet wide, fell diagonally and 'touched' 5 yards. 

Lucky for me - it only took out about 5 feet of my fence.

Luckier for me - my Dad came up with his chainsaws and some tools to help me fix it.  In less than 2 hours, we cleaned up the tree, hauled off the debris, and re-built the fence.

Now, don't let the pictures fool you, I got my hands dirty on this one too - I couldn't let my Dad and Tim have all the fun. 

And, I learned a few things.  First, I know now how to put up a wood fence (I knew how to do the ones on the farm with the barbed wire). Next, if an "act of God" damages your house/property - regardless of where the damaging element comes from, it comes out of your homeowners insurance (if you chose to claim it). 

Lastly, I have amazing neighbors (well, I already knew that).  I lived in an apartment for many years before I bought this house.  I never knew who lived next door to me even though I would see them several times a week. But now, I know my neighbors and would call them a friend. 

We were all outside working together- it isn't something that I thought I would get living in a big city, knowing my neighbors and hanging out with them- but I have it here.  I am really thankful and grateful to have it.

(And really grateful the tree didn't actually hit my house!)