Early this evening Kaylee and I watered the garden. Kaylee also watered the flowers; the deck; the deck chair; her own feet and my legs. She's got her own pink watering can and she's on a mission!
I had no idea it was going to rain tonight. I know, I know, that sounds really lame considering it's been raining almost every day or night for the last 20 days. But it's true...something happened in my brain when I experienced the sun today. I was convinced the rain was gone forever and the garden needed to be watered.
So I was surprised when we started hearing thunder in the distance. But it was far away and I just knew it wasn't going to amount to anything. A short time later Mark came to pick up Kaylee and they just about flew out the door to get home before the storm started. By this time I've seen the storm warning running along the bottom of the screen on the weather channel. But still I didn't think it was going to be a big deal. Ok, we're going to have a thunder storm...possibly some hail...but I never get hail. It's still no big deal to me. But it IS getting very dark out there....
Apparently I couldn't have been more wrong if I tried. I finally knew this for sure when a huge bolt of lightening lit up the outside like it was high noon and my living room too. And a fraction of a second later I heard a massive crack of thunder that startled me so much I let out a little scream, bolted from my living room chair into the dining room and stood there not know what to do. For some reason I thought the dining room just had to be safer than the living room even though it was only a matter of 4 or 5 steps from one room to the other. I'm guessing how many steps it would be because I'm pretty sure my feet never touched the floor on my way there. At least it felt like I flew there!
Ok, I realized that I was fine, the living room is not being bombed, and there is no reason to be standing in the dining room starring nervously out each window in turn. So I settled back into my chair and decided to watch a little t.v. This was not to be.
It wasn't more than maybe 5 mins later and I started hearing sirens coming down the street. That's fine...nothing new in that...of course there may be some problems with the storm. I'm still watching t.v. at this point. Then I start to see a lot of lights outside...I mean a LOT of lights. As I'm looking out the window I'm seeing three firetrucks coming down the road towards my house. Wow, must be something big that happened I'm thinking. I'm also noticing there are an awful lot of extra lights on firetrucks these days...do they really need all those multicolored lights? Don't we already know you're a firetruck? As I'm thinking this I'm also beginning to notice there are even more firetrucks coming from the opposite direction and the sound of sirens is now so loud it feels like I'm surrounded with it. And in fact I was.
The first line of firetrucks started slowing down just before my house. I'm getting a little nervous again. The first firetruck turns down my little side road and continues down the dead end behind my house. The second firetruck begins to follow him and decides to stop directly across from my kitchen window. I can feel my heart racing and I begin to wonder if my house is on fire and I don't know it. I can see my garage...it looks fine. The third and forth firetrucks are lined up on the main road. There isn't enough room for them to fit down the little side road. I'm glued to my back door at this point starring at the lights that are swirling around behind my house at one of the neighbors houses. I can't see what's going on but I don't see any fire...I don't smell any smoke...but they're not coming back out and now people are starting to wander back there from around the neighborhood. A crowd is forming...people are milling around...what the heck is going on back there?
Justin and KC arrive during all the excitement...quietly freaking out because firetrucks, with an excessive amount of lights going, are surrounding my house...my house looks fairly dark...and Justin doesn't see me outside. I'm sure my tree burning episode is running through his head at this point and he's beginning to think something bad has happened.
Once he finds I'm in the house, peeking outside and wondering what's going on as much as he is...all three of us headed down the dead end to check it out.
The first thing I noticed is the nice fireman that came to my house for my burning tree is there...leaning against a vehicle watching the situation and watching us; giving directions; and generally seemed to be waiting for something.
The second thing I noticed is my neighbor behind me has a very large tree that looks very odd. My neighborhood is full of very large trees. We all secretly want them taken down and none of us can afford to do it. They are some really massive trees.
The neighbor behind me is a D.J....I don't know his name...Mike something. Anyway, it's his tree that's causing all the trouble. Turns out his tree was hit by lightening. And somehow this also caused another neighbors house (next to the tree) to lose all power. I didn't see any lines down and I'm sure we would have been told to get back if there were any lines down...but that house and only that house had no power.
Once I walked around the tree I could see one side where it had been struck; looked like it had caught fire and also appeared that the opposite side of the tree had just exploded outward, blowing large chunks of tree and bark everywhere. I had all this pointed out to me by another neighbor, an elderly man with a flashlight, wearing flip flops with white socks...so cute! He gave me a guided tour of the damage. A very nice man, Everett was his name.
After the tour and much discussion about how scary it was since it's such a large tree; how much worse the damage could have been; the fact that this was the second time that tree was struck by lightening; how much clean up there will be and many more trees in the area really need to come down...Everett invited me to his house to get the name and number of the tree guy he used a little while ago, for a very reasonable price, to take down the elm tree in his front yard. When I got to his house, a mere hop skip and a jump from where we were already standing, I realized I had met his wife, Martha before. She's the lady that is out walking very early every morning like clock work. We've spoken many times but we both forgot each others names. I had never met her husband but she had spoken of him to me. Now we all know each others names, we know where each other live, (I have a sneaking suspicion that they know where everyone lives) I have the name and phone number of the "tree guy" they used (although Martha warned me the guy works alone and he's trying to cut back on his amount of work); and now that the storm is past and the firetrucks are finally leaving, I can take a shower and go to bed.
And the lesson in this story? Well I think it's obvious.....flaming trees are more likely to be located near exploding trees, which will bring firetrucks with way too many lights on them to your neighborhood, to scare the hell out of you during the middle of a terrible thunderstorm, which will in turn bring all the neighbors outside, enabling you to meet the nice elderly couple that will hook you up with someone that will take care of your flaming trees in the first place so they don't become exploding trees in the next storm!
But of course you knew this, right?
