Tree Down, Power Out

It was a beautiful summer night with twinkling stars and moonlight. Cool enough for good sleeping, warm enough to have all the windows open.

2:30 am this triple oak decided it was time to become a double oak. A section about two feet in diameter cracked off and landed on every freshly repaired power line it could manage, bringing some lines down and blowing the transformer.

Bob was awake when it happened. I wasn't. But, of course, Bob and the dogs didn't want me to sleep through all the fun so they woke me up immediately to help figure out what was going on.

It took Consumer's Energy about an hour to get here with a chain saw. The poor guy was out there at 3:30 in the morning sawing off oak limbs while every dog in the neighborhood was barking at him.

I went back to bed about 4:00 am, still with no power. The repair crew arrived at 6:00. Dogs went berserk. There was no sleeping through it. The power was back on about 7:30.

Here's the long view up the neighbor's front yard from the road after power was restored.

The oak is on the edge of our property. It fell right over the fence into the neighbor's yard. The brown leaves behind the fallen oak truck belong to the downed willow responsible for last week's four day power outage.


The microwave was fried. We drove to Kalamazoo and bought a new one this afternoon.

Bob's power strip was fried. He bought a new one and decided to take a much needed nap before checking out the damage to his desktop computer. He's still sleeping.

My laptop seems have made it though without a problem. I also need a nap.

Maybe tomorrow I can blog about knitting.

Mentioning tomorrow reminds me that the road crew will be back to work 7:00 am tomorrow morning. There's no hope I can sleep in. A Track hoe is parked right at our property line. Right behind it is a bulldozer. When the guys arrive and park their trucks in front of the house, the dogs will go nuts.

This picture is my front yard. Landscaping by the County Road Commission.