The storm...

We have a HUGE silver maple in our backyard which, as of yesterday, has been chopped down. Joe was sad to see the shade go and I was sad to see our money go. This is long post so sit back and hang on...

On Friday June 6th, I came home from work (about 3:30 and already in a crabby mood) to find a pretty large limb lying on top of Joe's beloved garage. Needless to say, when I entered the backyard, there were power lines and branches so I called Xcel (our power company) and then called my husband to come home. This would have been his first weekend off of work since April 17th and now he would have to deal with this...

About 2 hours later a tree service pulls up and assesses the situation and lets us know that they can't remove the limb because technically Xcel can put the power lines back up over the limb and that we need to call an electrician first.

Upon hearing that, I was not very happy. I got back on the phone with Xcel wanting to know why I wasn't told 2 hrs ago that I would need an electrician first. So got that figured out and Joe got a hold of Rob (his boss) to get the number of the electrician that works on the restaurants.

Joe and I left, it is now about 8 pm ish and go to Target to get boardgames and then were going to eat. He gets a call from Tony saying "I stopped by to see and an Xcel truck just pulled up."
We dropped everything in the middle of Target and dashed to the parking lot to get home (good thing we live pretty close to Target). The older gentlemen looked at the power lines, went to his truck made a call and said "You'll have power in no time." What????!!! What about that electrician? (which we hadn't called yet...thank goodness) Joe gave me a look that said "Not one word about the electrician."

About 3 minutes later another Xcel truck pulls up and another guy gets out and pulls out a ladder and climb up on the roof. About a half hour later we have power...no electrician needed!

The adjuster finally decided to show up on (go figure) Friday the 13th to assess damage at which point I started calling for estimates for the removal of the limb and just for the heck of it, the tree too. Everyone that saw the tree said it should go. Scooter said the same thing. The problem with the tree is that it is GINORMOUS and a HUGE branch hangs over our bedroom and over the neighbors...

Joe didn't like the fact that I wanted the tree down and since Scooter isn't up here to take a look, we had the next best person - Travis' stepdad George. Well, as Joe should know, I am always right. George said the tree should go because there was some rot and it is actually 2 trees grown together.

So, FINALLY, the tree guy came yesterday and removed the limb and the tree! I can now breather easier. Here are some fabulous pictures of the what I came home too on June 6th.


Here is a before picture of the tree

Power lines in the backyard

Limb split

Limb over the garage