Loss of Limb

I just can't make this stuff up. Tuesday afternoon a storm blew in, complete with high winds and heavy rain. I heard a thunking noise outside the house and immediately knew what had happened. After all, I have already had two trees fall down within three months so far this year. The sound had come from the back yard, so I cautiously peeked out the bedroom window. A large oak limb had broken off of one of our trees, smashing onto the patio. I offered up a thankful prayer that this time only our property had been damaged. Or so I thought. Once the rain let up, I threw on a raincoat and took my camera outside to survey the damage. Crap! The limb caught part of the neighbor's fence in addition to busting some of our stuff. This would be the same neighbor whose car was totaled when one of our trees fell on it Good Friday. He and his wife were out of town all week taking their oldest child off to her freshman year of college. We have not had a chance to discuss the latest calamity yet.

We had a bid for the tree removal on Friday (the earliest they could come out due to all the storm damage), and today all the debris was removed. One of the table umbrellas was busted up, as well as the slats on one of the wooden chairs, but remarkably that was all the damage that was done to our property. The painters (who are still here, by the way) had a stack of ladders on the patio, and one of their ladders was bent. It may be repairable, I don't know. The ladders probably saved our actual patio surface from being damaged by the limb. One section of the neighbor's fence will need to be replaced as far as I can tell. We continue to endear ourselves in the neighborhood, one tree at a time.

The tree professionals said that the drought we had in recent years caused the trees and their limbs to weaken. When we have a wet spring like we did this year, the trees produce an excessive amount of leaves so in a heavy storm the limbs (or entire tree) just give out. That certainly makes sense. This latest tree incident is complicated by the fact that honey bees are living in the tree. They are protected, so the tree cannot just be arbitrarily removed. The hive has to be saved first. We are having an independent arborist come and look at the tree to see if it can be saved, or if there is other damage that might cause further problems for us - and the neighbor.

In other news, we celebrated our 37th anniversary Wednesday by playing pickleball. We decided we wanted to do that since we had to miss Sunday night as we were out of town. We have been playing every Sunday and Wednesday. We went out to dinner Thursday night instead. Webster Groves has a new restaurant called the Sushi Station. While I am not too keen on sushi, I knew they had other things on the menu I would like. I tried the Chicken Teriyaki and Jim had the Salmon Teriyaki. They were both excellent! It was an added bonus that we each only ate half of our meals, so we had leftovers for lunch the next day. We definitely will go back and try some other things. If we have any money left after paying the painters and tree company. Ha!

Timber!

tree damage

The St. Louis area had some thunderstorms with high winds and heavy rain on Thursday and into Friday morning. The lightning flashes and thunder crashes kept me awake well into the early morning hours on Friday. Around 6:45 a.m. I heard a different kind of crash. One I had heard only one time before when one of our 100+ year old post oaks tumbled to the ground. Only in that case, it was the middle of a calm, sunny day when the tree dropped. Fortunately the only damage it did was to our planting bed. This time we were not so lucky. Our 100+ year old white oak fell this time, landing squarely on the Pathfinder owned by our next door neighbor.

Recently the neighbor added a small circular drive to his front yard so that his daughter could park her car there. On our side of the street we have a private alley that runs behind the houses, and most of us park our cars in the garages or parking spots out back. Same neighbor has also been building a new front porch on his house, and that fortunately was spared any damage from the falling tree. As both the neighbor and Jim dealt with insurance companies, I went out front to take some pictures. Yikes! We were so lucky that the daughter was not at that time getting into her car to go to school. She could have been seriously injured. She was off for Good Friday, so that was a blessing.

Both insurance companies said that the tree removal would not be covered as it is considered an act of God. Their policy will cover the car, less their deductible. But essentially, Missouri law states that you are only responsible for whatever part of the tree is on your property. That means at any point in time a neighbor can trim off any limbs of your tree that is hanging over their property line. Most people do not realize this. And in this case, that meant we only needed to clear the tree stump and probably four or five feet of trunk off our land. The rest of the large tree is their responsibility. Including all the limbs our tree sheared off of their beautiful maple. It doesn't seem fair for sure, but that is the law. We will definitely work out some sort of compromise.

Jim called two tree companies to come and give us bids for removing everything, and the neighbor lady and I talked to both of the estimators when they came out. Both showed up at nearly the same time, which was awkward to say the least. In the meantime another neighbor came by with a third name for us to call. In the end, the third company gave us the best bid, and they are here today cleaning everything up. They first freed the car from the large limbs so it could be taken off for an estimate. I hope it is not totaled, as no one wins in that deal.

It was not a very Good Friday around here.