I smite thee...tree!

Here is what happened last night at dinnertime during our massive thunderstorm. The red blob didn't pass over us at weather.com -- we WERE the red blob. The storm didn't exist, and, we watched the sky as it formed over our heads and as it became a huge red blob on the weather.com radar. The last time I remember being in storm like that was in Staten Island, over 10 years ago. The wind and rain came from all directions. It blew a window screen off our neighbor's house, it tipped over the huge flowerpots on our front porch, it tried with all its might to blow open back door of our house, and, it did this:



Sigh... This is one of the trees in my family of 7 on the other side of the street. These are the trees that I have been caring for since we moved here. When they were dusty with construction dirt, I washed them down. When they were baking in the sun with no water during our 2 year dry cycle, I watered them weekly. When the weeds invaded their trunk space, we pulled them out. They were doing very nicely this year -- even after those landscaping men came and "pruned" them -- and now this. No one showed up about this today, except for a group of boys on skateboards who wanted to pull the tree apart -- yes, I chased them away.

I guess I will have to call the powers that be to remove it. I am sad...