Sandy

Since people were wondering about me on other blogs I figured I'd better post. We probably got tropical storm force winds but not hurricane force winds here. But don't look at my weather station for info. Its wind gauge has always been broken. Our house never lost power, but my husband is working at home for the second day due to power loss at work.

The storm ripped most of the leaves off the trees. Before the storm we didn't have a covering of leaves on the lawn. I was worried about my peach trees as in the microburst over the summer it had going nearly to the ground. I have it staked now to try to repair it. But the trees didn't even bend this time. They just lost their leaves. You can see one peach tree in the bed to the left.

The worst damage to plants is in my zinnia bed. I have cages holding them up but one has tipped over. The zinnias look ragged now and I'll take them down soon. But the trash can you see there was there during the storm. It never fell over. The wind was always pushing it against the rock wall.

Many of my fall crops are under row covers. This one that has 9 gauge metal wire as supports is now tipped. Not because it came out of the soil, but because the metal bent. 9 gauge wire isn't all that strong. The others with the pvc pipe were just fine. One end came open on one, but nothing else happened.

The kale survived well. Some of the leaves are twisted, but none snapped. I staked them all before the storm. I wasn't really thinking of the storm when I staked them. I stake them so the weight of the snow doesn't take them down in winter.

So there you have it. I survived quite well. Our microburst over the summer hit our section of town much harder. I took a walk yesterday when the sun was out and I saw one street with yellow tape over it. After the mircoburst about half the streets had it. The bike path had two trees down from the soccer fields until Lake street. After the microburst I couldn't count the number since it was so thick with downed trees you couldn't walk through. Our town still has about 4% of the people without power and had about 24% at the height of the storm. That is pretty consistent over eastern Massachusetts. As you can see from those numbers, we didn't get hit very hard. Things are getting back to normal fairly quickly. Our state lost a few things along the coastline, but compared to farther south we are doing just fine.