Cooking with Ike: Stormy Weather...

Well, for once the weathermen (and ladies) were correct. They had been telling us to, as one weatherman said, "Go home and batten down the hatches" and they were right... First storm hit about 6:45, and wouldn't you know it I was right in the middle of making myself a flatbread pizza... Well, the tornado siren was blaring, Sandy and Ike were headin' to the basement and I was still cutting my flatbread... A man has to have his priorities, right???

So the first storm came and went - Lots of wind and rain but no damage, as we did what the weatherman said, and took things down or took them in and wedged them in where no harm could come to them. So we had a respite between storms and while it was quite a lightning storm, we thought the worst was over.... Boy were we wrong, About 9:30 I was watching Longmire on A&E (great show by the way - if you haven't seen it you need to check it out - but I digress) and all of a sudden, the NOAA weather alarm started blaring a tornado warning, and rotation was spotted on radar just south of us... So I told Sandy she and Ike should head down to the basement while I checked things out... The next thing I heard was a big CRACK and thought to myself, "That ain't good".. So I headed down with them for the next 45 minutes until the Tornado Warning expired... Came back up about 10:15 and the last two of our original Bradford Pear trees were no longer vertical - or at least one of them wasn't the other one had half of it down in the bean field behind us beside the entire the far east one both resting on our fence. That's gonna leave a mark....

So after going out and checking the rest of the house (no damage so I consider ourselves lucky) I emailed work and said. "Taking a personal day tomorrow!" So in the day light it wasn't too bad but man, 12 year old trees that are 40' tall and 30+" in circumference have lots of branches!!! It took us all day but we got it cut up and stacked - saved bigger pieces for firewood, and now I know what I will be doing over the holiday- firing up the wood chipper - anybody want some Mulch??? LOL. So all in all we are much better off than many, all three of us live to cook another day, and no real permanent damage.. so I consider us pretty lucky as the town we go pheasant hunting in suffered a direct hit by a tornado about 10 days ago...

Check out the pics below... Note again who was supervising...