Since when do hurricanes hit Ohio?

Before I say anything else, let me offer an apology to anyone reading this. Ike's destruction is old news, and I know it. I'm playing catch up from being gone a whole week and away from blogging for nine days. I've got pictures to share and a whole lot of unwritten posts floating around in my head. So indulge me, if you will, on this story and others to come...

The giant fireballs exploding from an electrical line across the street from the local Saturday's on Sept. 14 should have been a sign that the weather Mount Vernon was experiencing was more than "some high winds." As I walked into the cheapo hair salon (my favorite kind!), I instinctively ducked at the sight of these literal "great balls of fire," even though I was more than a few hundred yards away from the flares.

What was happening? Wind. A LOT of wind. It had caused the line to come loose, and fire—yes FIRE!—was wooshing up into the sky from the box where the line used to be. I gave the scene a good, slack-jawed gawk and proceeded into the Saturday's anyway (which, by the way, produced a perky update to my classic bob).

When I exited the salon and headed for home, I thought it was unusual that a few small branches had fallen in our yard in the hour or two I was gone. A few hours later, David walked into the house as Noah and I were in the master bedroom packing for my conference in D.C. and said to me, "Have you looked outside lately?" Nope, I had not.

I followed him into the living room and took a good look out our living room's bay window. Hmm. The 100+ trees in our front yard were swaying. Nope, that's not right. They were bending... precariously, alarmingly low to the ground. Small, medium and large limbs were scattered everywhere. Our porch furniture was sliding across the ground as if I had strapped them to skates and pushed them across an ice rink.

We were immediately transfixed. Noah, David and I promptly perches ourselves on our window seat and watched the action. At one point when David had turned away I said, "Big tree! Uh-oh, big tree!" At that moment, a large—but dead—old tree had fallen almost in slow motion to the ground. It wasn't the first; another 3/4 of a tree had bitten the dust a half hour earlier.

At one point, it seemed as if the wind had slowed, so the three of us trooped out into the backyard to just take it all in. It's considerably safer there as we actually have a wide open space to stretch out in rather than being confined by the forest that shrouds the front yard. Noah didn't know what to do with that wind zipping around him. He just looked into it, letting it lap at his face, which was being whipped like frosting from the force of the gusts. I kept expecting him to fall backward into the cushion of his size 4 Luvs, but his feet held firm.

Never able to stand still for long, Noah immediately began working his way to the front yard as we trailed behind him. It quickly became apparent that the front yard was not a safe place to be. Branches were flying; leaves were smacking into us with a mild sting and those darn trees were creaking and bending with reckless abandon. David swooped up Noah and took one step toward the house... just in time, it turns out. One moment later, a decent-sized branch planted itself where the two of them had just been.

I had the same problem. As I foolishly dawdled to take pictures (just like those weather men we make fun of on TV), I was struck in the shoulder by a 2-inch thick limb. Ouch.

Safely back inside, we surveyed the damage from the storm: our front yard was a mess. Two trees down, several large limbs, and debris EVERYWHERE. It looked like we didn't have a yard at all... just a grassy disaster.

Later I found out that we were lucky. We never lost power—not even for a moment. That alone is remarkable given the large number of trees that tower over our old-fashioned, above-ground power lines. Many of our friends were not so lucky. For some, power wasn't restored for days!

I also know that it was only by God's hand that one of the dozens of skyscraper trees in our front yard didn't fall on our house. Instead, they fell at the very front of our yard—away from posing any danger to our home. Remarkable!

These pictures really don't do the damage justice, but they'll give you a small taste of the clean up that's ongoing. I still can't believe we had such hoopla from a hurricane... in Ohio!

In this pic you can get an idea of the medium-to-large limbs we had everywhere. Here's a sampling:


This one's deceiving. The giant stump you see in front is OLD news. It's been there since we moved in. The new problem is the skinny, tall tree to the right of the stump. It's top leaves and branches are wrapping themselves around the stump to the left. In the back right you can see where the tree snapped.


David took this shot of the sky. I dig it.


Our flag is really moving in this one! What you can't see well in this picture is the other downed tree, which follows the grass line at the road.


So now, more than a week after Ike barreled through, we're still picking up branches. We've cleaned up three sides of our yard, saving the "front 9" for last. It's going to be a long last...