If a tree falls...

And no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

I know, I know.  We had a huge storm early Sunday morning.  My husband headed out early to go dove hunting.  I was wide awake when he left.  At 4:30.  I finally went back to sleep and then was wide awake again at 7.  Horrible.  I fully believe in sleeping in on my days off.  I prefer to be able to sleep until nine or ten, especially when the hubby is out hunting.  But, there I was, fully awake at 7am on a Sunday morning.  I flipped on the TV to check the weather, of course the satellite is out because the wind is blowing like crazy.  So I went and grabbed the iPad to check to see if I was going to blow away.

Um, 50mph winds.  We were under a wind advisory.  Who even knew that was a thing.  It was for our whole county.  So I texted my husband to let him know he might blow away soon.  And then called my dad to see if I needed to head to the basement.  Turns out I was fine, I'm just a little freaked out by storms.

So, once the storm finally passed, I checked out the damage.  Up close to the house, nothing major.  Our plastic Adirondack chairs blew across the deck, no big deal.  But, we had some pretty big limbs down.  And our maple tree, my favorite tree in the whole yard, got struck by lightning.  It took out about half the tree.  Ug.  So, we spent a good portion of the rest of our Labor Day weekend cleaning up tree limbs.  Get ready for lots of pictures, our yard was a mess!

Sad, broken tree.

A huge tree limb I was getting ready to drag off

A big branch fell on our neighbors fence, it didn't really damage it though.

Branch down.

Getting ready to clean up.  It was lucky I was the only one home, we'd had people over the night before.  If we'd had extra people, or even my husband had been home, it's quite likely someone's car would've been damaged.

My dad was sure lightning couldn't have hit our tree.  I think he was wrong.

Ug, it looks terrible.

Another tree in our yard lost a big limb too, just wind damage on this one.

Getting my arm workout, cutting smaller branches off the big ones.

We hauled at least four truck loads of branches.

I am super skilled with my loppers.  Don't mess with me!  

That's just a ridiculous amount of branches.

So, it's mostly cleaned up at this point.  The big limb is still there because it's partially attached to the tree.  And our chainsaw is in the shop.  My husband cut all the smaller limbs with the pole saw attachment on his weed eater.  That last branch was just way too big for it to handle so it will have to wait for another day.

What did you guys do over your long weekend?  We meant to relax, but apparently mother nature had another plan for us.