An INTERESTING Weekend - As in the Ancient Chinese Curse

You're surely familiar with the so-called Ancient Chinese Curse, "May you live in interesting times."  Well, I've had an "interesting" weekend!!!

The Bridgeton covered bridge.

After the irritation of my glasses and sunglasses trying to self-destruct, and the amazing news that That Man had decided to spend the day spectating drag race qualifying in Indianapolis, I thought I'd take a little field trip on Saturday to Parke County, "the covered bridge capital of the world."  I drove to the Bridgeton covered bridge and mill, where I picked up a map of the driving routes that take you to the 31 covered bridges in the county.  I drove the Red Route and visited several of the bridges.
 

The Bridgeton Mill

The Zacke Cox covered bridge.

The Harry Evans covered bridge.

It was a bright, clear, sunny, mild day.  While I wandered the back roads of Parke county, always on the lookout for wildlife, I encountered a white-tailed deer, a bald eagle, loads of turkey vultures, and a tree full of eastern bluebirds.  I ate a little snacky lunch at a picnic table by one of the bridges.

The Rosedale covered bridge.

The Mecca covered bridge.

It was a perfect day, exactly what I needed.  All good things must end, though.  As I got closer and closer to home, the sky clouded up, and eventually, rain spattered the windshield and then it started raining for real.  And blowing!

Pulling into the garage, I saw our neighbor on our front porch talking to That Man.  She was telling him one of our trees had split and was about to fall, and to be careful around it.  Once inside, we watched the rain wind whip the trees on the street behind us into a frenzy.

After the storm passed, we went outside to see what was what, and sure enough, our buckeye tree had been totally decapitated, the missing top on our neighbors' roof and gazebo.  Plus, their big sugar maple had split and blocked the street.  I called a tree service, and that's how we spent all of Sunday - supervising the removal of those two trees with our neighbors and picking up leaf litter and moving "smaller" branches around.  We had several branches blown out of the top of our 90-foot tulip tree, too, and they ended up scattered around the back yard - knocking down our cable TV connection, hitting my boat, and landing on the tomato plants in my garden. 

 And then the cherry on the top - when we woke up Sunday, we had no power.  A tree down the street had been struck by lightning Saturday, caught fire, and during a second storm that night fell and took down the power lines.  We didn't get power back until nearly 5:00 Sunday afternoon. 

In the meantime, we got out a generator for us and another for our neighbors so our refrigerators and freezers would stay cold.  It was a mild day again, so we just opened the windows to keep from suffocating in the house.  It could have been much worse - the temperature could have climbed into the 90s like it did earlier in the week.

The tree guys brought a truck with a grappling arm to remove the top of our buckeye tree from the neighbors' roof.  It was fascinating to watch, as attested by the number of rubberneckers driving by, slowing down, and taking pictures, but I'd really rather not have that kind of activity in our yard again soon. 

Here's the pile from the neighbors'
tree, after the street had been cleared.

Here's the pile from our
buckeye tree.