Risen from the dead????

Anyone who has visited my neighborhood knows that it is full of big, beautiful trees.  It is one of the leading reasons why I fell in love with the neighborhood.  My backyard was like my own private sanctuary, surrounded by big, huge oaks, many of the prettiest in my back neighbors' yards.  During Ike, the winds ripped two of the biggest oaks from the ground, taking a much smaller Dogwood with them.  As I surveyed the damage, I was perplexed why two big healthy looking oaks would be lost and the dead oak in my neighbors yard would remain standing.  It just didn't make sense.

Now, two months after Ike, in November I might add, my backyard has somewhat of a spring time feel about it.  The dead oak has sprouted  light green, spring-like leaves.   I guess something good has come out of Ike.

Lunchtime Entertainment

This is something I witnessed earlier this year and wanted to share it...

I met one of my childhood friends for lunch at Corner Bakery. We decided to take advantage of the beautiful, although hot, weather and sit outside on the patio. We found a shaded two-top table sitting right against the outside railing of the patio overlooking the fountains and rail line. I have never noticed the random chairs sitting out around the fountain, which were probably envisioned by some idealistic architect for weary downtown travelers and guests of our fabulous city to stop, relax a bit and enjoy the dancing water show. The reality is that most of these chairs are filled by homeless men. One of these such chairs was positioned about ten feet from our table next to a tree. As I was eating, I had a vision of a man kissing the tree in my peripheral vision. Not believing what I thought I saw, I turned to see that the shirtless homeless man was not kissing the tree, but rather he was licking the tree. He was not just licking the tree with the tip of his tongue, but rather more like the way a dog licks his, well you get the picture. The man proceeded to lick the tree for a solid five minutes. When he began picking at the cracks in the sidewalk like he was looking for grub worms, I decided it was time to leave before he actually pulled something from the crack and popped it into his mouth.

Hurricane Ike - Part II - Surveying the Damage

Late Saturday afternoon, Paul and I decided to venture back across town to see how our neighborhood had fared.  We spoke to our neighbor earlier who had told us that it didn't look like we had any damage but that a tree in the neighbor's yard behind us had fallen into our yard.   Thinking of the small dogwood that was just on the other side of the fence, I was not to worried, and excited about the prospect of getting a new fence.

We pulled into our driveway and were quite relieved that the only noticeable damage were about ten small tree limbs.  Paul and I were doing the happy dance.  

We walked through the house, no damage, no broken windows, no leaks.  YEA!!!  

 

We then headed to the backyard to survey the damage to the fence.  HOLY MOLY!  What happened to my oasis of a backyard?!?!  Boy, was my vision of the small Dogwood tree through the fence wrong.  Instead two large oaks and the dogwood tree were down, and I think half of one of the trees was in the deep end of the pool.  The deep end of the pool was full of tree debris.  It stuck up several inches above the water level.

We decided that since the power lines were involved in the tree, we were going to wait and let the power company take care of the tree.  

Thinking back on the images we will never forget from the recent hurricanes, the New Orleans Heineken beer looter following hurricane Katrina is one of my favorite images.  Paul was going to reenact that image in our pool; however, after seeing the condition of the pool, he decided to modify it, by not actually getting in the pool.

That ended up being a good idea, when we went inside to take a shower, we learned we had no water pressure.  That gas hot water heater we were so excited about before the storm did us no good without water.  At that point, we decided to get out of town.  To Aggieland we escaped...