Hurricane in the Neighborhood

Our valley has been in the news every night for a week. We had a hurricane without the rain. I still can't believe it.


This picture above does not do it justice. We have fallen trees and branches lining the curbs of our streets...like snowbanks...green and brown snowbanks.

Powerful winds woke us up on Wednesday night, in the wee hours of Thursday morning. I woke Mozart up, "Did you hear that?".
"Oh it will be okay," he said. "It's just the wind." Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

I stayed awake and thanked God we had just trimmed our giant tree in the front yard. Someone had knocked at our door a couple of weeks ago and suggested a trim. Since it hadn't been done in 10 years. (Above) Palm Frons scattered over the Arboretum parking lot.
Large power poles snapped and fell on this street near hour home. Our power was out for 3 days. The homes on this street still don't have power. Our schools closed on Thursday and Friday. Since the kids couldn't play video games, the parents put them to work. I've never seen so many children raking before!
After the electricity came on, I went to the market to re-stock the fridge, and found many trees like this.
Edison is still working around the clock.
Broken trees are everywhere.
That's the roof of our church.
The people on this street are not only enduring the cold, but have their homes illuminated all night...Edison's been working on this half-mile stretch for 6 days.
These people weren't very lucky. Today I noticed another home with 2 cars parked in the driveway. Both were crunched by a large tree. But amazingly nobody was hurt.

Our small city lost approx. 500 trees. Several other cities were affected and had similar losses.
My oldest son was determined to read, and made some candle holders out of my glasses. For three days and 2 nights, life changed for us. But good came out of bad. We had some family time without the tv and other distractions. Mozart emerged from the studio and didn't know what to do with himself...but when we finally began to get into the rhythm of our "new normal" then...the electricity flipped on!