to the extent that blessings are available we have them

Here is a link to my blog post about the immediate aftermath of the tornado:

http://dreamsandnightmaresmagazine.blogspot.com/2011/05/woop-there-it-is.html

I know it's an inappropriate name for the post. I was in a hurry and didn't have time to think of a better one. Besides, what would not be trite under the circumstances?

This is where things are now.

The bottom part of our big oak tree is still in, but not blocking, the driveway. I guess its weight to be at least 10 tons, based on the fact that a piece of a smaller tree weighing 3500 pounds was lifted off of our roof. Oak is heavy! By the way does anybody want some black walnut wood, perhaps to carve into a yard gnome? Most of the three Walnut trees that fell in our backyard has already been carted away, but we still have at least half a ton of it. Some of it is in easily managed pieces. I'm not mailing it to you, but if you visit me...

I am more or less caught up on all of the stuff I normally do at home, except I lost two weekends worth of whatever work I would have done on the trace fossil book. Luckily, my co-author didn't lose power (or at least not for long) and the University was dismissed two weeks early, so he actually had more time than he otherwise would have had to work on the book.

I have discovered that if I speak loudly the voice recognition software does a better job of figuring out what I meant to type. Makes sense, but it seems even sillier to do this loud.

Here is a very brief summary of the state of the garden. A mighty wind threw many trees at the garden, with relatively little effect. One macho backhoe dude and some young volunteers destroyed garden ornaments, a fig tree, a patch of flowers triangular in shape and roughly 10 feet on each side (one side was actually the square root of 200 feet in length), and several other things. Other helpers destroyed a Camellia, the guys taking the tree out of our roof destroyed a sidewalk, tree trimmers destroyed several bushes and a small part of the garden. Not that we aren't grateful, just trying to present the herbaceous point of view.

The tree is out of the roof. A more sturdy and durable tarping was completed Friday. Actual roof repairs are probably going to be completed in July. A spigot had been snapped off by a diminutive eight ton oak tree. I called the city water department about it. Those guys are good! Same day they came out, rolled 5 tons of tree off of where the spigot used to be, pumped hundreds of gallons water out of the hole, capped off the broken pipe that used to lead to the spigot, and were done.

So we are doing okay.