So, there we were on Saturday, April 13, just back from grocery shopping when at 11:15A we heard a huge crash outside. I looked at my husband. He looked at me.

“That wasn’t an explosion,” he said.

“That wasn’t a crash out on the water.”

We were both right. It was a crash but not on the water. A huge, repeat huge, tree crashed into our boat shed and deck, shredding the deck and basically imploding the boat shed. We walked out on our deck, looked down to the water and saw two huge limbs poking upright from the area of the deck and front of the boat. We walked down 78 box steps to see what the damage was.

It was extensive. The stationary dock, where we hang out most of the summer, is in splinters. At least half of it is so unstable neither of us wanted to walk on it. The two huge limbs took out the roof and the electric lift, leaving the boat trapped. With no electricity, even if we could get on the boat, there’s too much debris underneath to lower it and move it the the floating dock. We walked over to the tree itself. Yes, we’d had a lot of wind of late. But it wasn’t windy on Saturday.

The trunk was hollow. No more than 2″ of bark was left. Red oaks rot from the inside out and don’t look diseased until they fall down and go boom.

As it stands now, the tree trunk lies across our neighbors’ lot, the top limbs stand upright in our boat lift, and we are happy that we weren’t working on the boat, which we would have been had this happened on Sunday. The insurance appraiser is due out in a few days. He asked if he had to hurry. I assured him the tree wasn’t going anywhere…

So, how was your weekend?