And everything stopped for a while

I meant to write about the wonderful anniversary party our children gave us, but right now it's all I can do to put one foot in front of the other and keep my chin up.

Early last Wednesday we had a tornado rip through our area of Wisconsin.

Unfortunately we were right in it's path.

The weather service says it was an F-1 which is the lowest grade of tornado.  I for one never want to encounter anything like this again, F-1 was more than enough for us.

 

Here is  what our homestead used to look like.

 

This is what it looked like the morning of the tornado.

I'll be downloading the really "after" shots soon too, here it looks like a war zone, now it looks like a lumber camp.

Here is the beautiful old barn before.

 

Here is what is left of it.

See this big pine tree?

There is a truck under there somewhere...

there it is!

yes, it was totaled.

As was miss V's car.

Other damage includes two windows and two rooms in the house, several holes in our fairly new metal roof, a hole in the garage where the tree that is on top of the truck ended it's run, dents dings and a hole in our new camper, the barn completely flattened, another outbuilding damaged, and worst of all, 60 trees.  Some of those trees were really good friends.

But, if you know me at all, you know that I am a pretty positive person, so here goes the list of blessings.

Jim and Miss V safe and unharmed despite the fact that he was closing one of her bedroom windows when a branch came through the other one, me not hurt, the dog and cats unharmed- a bit skittish, several apple trees unharmed, another special tree unharmed, one very old chestnut tree damaged but salvageable and still standing, so many friends and family who pitched in to move trees and help us clean up without us asking once, power back on, one old lilac still standing, indestructible hosta plants, heavy work gloves, people stopping by to extend their sympathy on the loss of our beautiful trees, an undamaged porch, family and friends who cried with me, and then asked if it was okay to start making Wizard of Oz jokes. 

Life goes on.  I will probably miss some of those trees every day that we live here, but I will be glad for having them for as long as we did and grateful for the beauty and shade they gave us.  And we will replant and make our homestead beautiful again.