Irene's Aftermath

All is well here post-Irene. The wind was pretty scary last night, and it did down some trees. We walked the neighborhood, but didn't see too much that was terribly wrong. We actually talked to *a lot* of people. It's funny how post-storm, everyone comes out to talk and check in. It's a nice feeling. Kind of like that camaraderie after a huge snowfall. But the nice thing is, the weather here was beautiful today!



We came home and cleaned up our yard a bit. Lucy was really into it:





Our yard was littered with various tree bits, and we discovered this afternoon, after a more thorough exploration, that we lost a large part of our lilac tree in the back/side yard. This is sad.

I'm not sure if the rest of the lilac will survive. Those beaten-down branches are actually still attached at the root, so I'm not sure how best to preserve what's left. The whole thing will be very off-balance without this half. Hrm. Need to do some lilac-pruning research here. Readers? Suggestions?



But we're very lucky all things told. Some folks here in Lowell still don't have power. Some of our not-too-distant neighbors up here on the hill are (we think) still without power as of Monday afternoon, due to a big tree that fell into a power transformer. Yikes! We drove by the work crews who were dealing with it:



We're told by a neighbor that the tree actually caught fire last night. Scary! (that's what's left of the tree on the left there -- sorry for the bad photo; I took it from the car)



That's all I have from the storm. I hope all are readers are fully powered and dry.



Also, today we checked out the Billerica Farmers' Market for the first time. It was awesome. We had an all-market dinner. Yum!

Breakage

The past week has been one of breakage, but everyone's OK.

On Friday, while we were prepping for the St. Patrick's Day party, it was very windy outside. While we were in the kitchen, we heard and partly saw a giant branch of a tree across the street fall down, with the result below:
It knocked out power to those two houses, and caused some damage, but no one was hurt. So that was the neighborhood drama. You may recall that a little less than a year ago, we had another tree come down nearby. Trees. We must kill them before they kill us.

The other breakage was in Jake's hand. Before you get too upset and pick up the phone, he is fine. While riding to work on Thursday, his bike slipped on some nasty ice, and he went down. he was able to ride the rest of the way to work, as well as home in the afternoon, but he was in some pain. On Friday he went to see the doctor, and the X-rays indicate that some of those tiny bones in his wrist have some tiny fractures. He's doing fine and the swelling has gone down. He'll see a hand doctor on Monday.

Yikes!

We also had a broken salt shaker during the party, but other than that, the party was breakage-free. More on the party in the next post. We're still a bit tired. It's one of those Zombie Mommy (TM) days.

Tree Killers

Today Jake and I spent the morning in the jungle of our backyard, attempting to reclaim some of the ground that we had previously (like two years ago) given up to the powers of re-forestation. Here are some shots of what we were dealing with:

Here's Carter, enjoying the ability to hide amongst the vegetation.



He stalked the next door neighbors cat, and the two of them chased each other for a while. Both of them (at different times) actually got caught in the overgrowth of various vines and weeds. Although I know Carter will miss this haunt, we really are making it safer for humans and (some) animals.



To begin the project, Jake stopped off at our favorite local hardware store to pick up paper yard waste bags, and of course, folding Adirondack chairs. Here's all the stuff strapped onto the Extra-Cycle. [By the way, that's not Lucy, just her helmet -- he dropped her off at school first, then did the hardware store run.]









Here is a sample of one of the (MANY!) trees we uprooted:

It was actually pretty satisfying to pull these up. Some of these trees were taller than me [insert hilarious joke about Bridget's height here. Wait for snort of laughter. Continue reading]. We harbor no ill-will for the trees, but these were ones that had sprouted randomly from seeds dropped from the trees behind us, and a couple of them are from invasive species, so we did the right thing.



Here is the before:

And here is after:





What amazes me is how much better is looks now, and yet, how awful it still looks! We still have a lot of work ahead of us, but at least we've made a bit of headway. Here's that bottom right corner of the yard after (the very first picture at the top of this post is a before shot of roughly the same area):

And now, what you've all really been waiting for, some photos of the awesome new retaining wall, all complete & fabulous:

A Close Call

Minutes ago, I was sitting in the front office when I heard a frightening crash. I looked out the window and saw this:


If you're wondering where this is, here's the damage from another angle, showing 83 Durant:

WOW! Thankfully, no one was parked in the driveway of this house (there is often a schoolbus parked here), and no one was around. Yikes!

Update: After the tree came down, our great neighbor Lisa came over and helped me fix our driveway fence. I don't know if you can see this in the photo, but the fence between the neighbor's driveway and ours was in very bad shape, and it was about to fall over in the wind. Lisa brought her skill saw, and more importantly, her skills, and made short work of fixing our fence. YEAH LISA! She is a problem solver!

Also, I dug around in my early house files and found the number of the owner of the property next door. It's a rental unit, and we don't really know the tenants, who were all at work. Back when we first moved into 83 Durant, we had a tree taken down that was on the property line, between our two houses, so we had looked up the owner and called him. I still had his name and number (because that's how I roll) so I called to let him know. He was here in less than half an hour to assess the situation, and he called his tenants to give them a heads up.

I just got in from talking with them. We had said a regular "hello" and general politeness in the past, but now we know each others' names, and we exchanged phone numbers. Hooray! Neighborliness and disaster go together well. Here's for more neighborliness and less disaster!

But for now, here's more pix of the disaster:

Improving Some Spots Outside

Today we planted our new trees and did some general cleaning up around the outdoors. We planted a lilac tree sort of near the kitchen window (well, at least, below the kitchen window). We put a butterfly bush in the terraced area under the bay window.

The plant itself is looking a little wilty, but hopefully it will feel better now that it's out of its crowded nursery pot.

And we put two holly trees (a male and a female) in the previously very messy area by the fence on the driveway side of the house. Here's some before and after action:






I also rebuilt some areas of landscaping wall that had fallen apart, as you can see here:





I also cleaned out the area under the deck, which had accumulated gardening junk from our work and from that of the previous owners. It looks MUCH better now:

Meanwhile, the hostas out in front of the house are blooming like mad! They seem to attract a lot of bees, which really upsets Carter. He chases them, which doesn't seem like a very smart thing to do.


Overall, we're happy with what we accomplished this morning in the yard.

Basement Improvements and New Plant Purchases

Today we got rid of a few things via Freecycle, but we also acquired some new things: These awesome lockers:


There are two sets of two lockers each. They're perfect for re-living my high school years. And also for storage.


Carter was not a big fan:

Now that the lockers are here, the basement is becoming much more like "Man Town." We've set up the TV for the future exercise area. There was an old radio left here by the previous owners. We took out the (broken and dusty) insides and we're using the case as a TV stand. I think it's pretty great. I'm thinking the little round glass needs a clock, or maybe a fishbowl in it.



Also, I've been working on drawing circuit maps of the house. This started in part because we finally plugged in (and began filling) our FREEZER! We wanted to make sure that it wasn't on the same circuit as something else (like the dryer). The circuit box has some indicators about what goes to what, but they're kind of confusing, and some of them are just wrong.

Here's my map of the basement outlets:

We also went to Salt Box Nursery, where we had a gift certificate (thanks, Rose and John!) and we bought some new addtions to the yard. They're either small trees or large plants.
We got a pair of holly trees -- male and female:

This is a lilac tree.
It should bloom purple, so we're going to put it next to our (rather large) white lilac that's already in the back yard.