The great Derecho of 1998. I've always said that Vic likes to talk a lot, but she never could compete with this monster storm. Matter of fact most of women in my life all love to talk. When Vic gets together with fam, I sort of retreat for the nearest TV and watch the oxygen get sucked out of the room. Man can they go. More words per minute than I can even count. Now that I'm mud, I'll shut up about women.Back to the storm. It came early in the morning of May 31, 1998. The storm devastated West Michigan, with Ottawa county,(were we live) took one of the biggest hits. See picture above. Ottawa county had wind gusts of 130 miles per hour. It moved quickly across the county and state within hours. Downtown Spring Lake was devastated. This was the closest thing to a mid west hurricane or war zone. I've never seen anything like it since. The storm isn't the story, but it's what happened the week before that makes it a blonde thing blog story.(btbs)
Our house was purchased with a large amount of big oak trees surrounding the house. We literally had a canopy of trees above our house. No sunlight would even get near the front of the house, and we had a hard time growing grass. We decided to have 3 trees taken down. One very large one on the corner of our house and two other smaller ones up front. The small trees were so big, that I couldn't wrap myself around them and touch. No, I'm not a tree hugger, and don't get any ideas that I do this stuff. The trees fall with a boom. I was at work, but Vic said you could feel the trees hit the ground all over. When the tree guys were done, they took the tops, and Vic decided to leave the logs. I come home not knowing this and freak out! I had to cut all of these up, (loved the chain sawing)but it was a ton of work. Vic said we needed fire wood. I said, "We could have bought fire wood down the street for as much as we burn the fireplace!".
This is the week before the great Derecho. I had so much wood, that I couldn't give it away. I don't know if this was a blessing in disguised, but we didn't have one branch fall during the storm. The only problem was you couldn't give wood away, because everyone had wood to give away, and they were paying people to take it away! I think it took 4-6 weeks and the final giant log was removed from our front lawn.
I was mad at Vic for all the extra work, and she was just trying to save money! Things come and go, and storms blow and storms go. I loved the results.
The grass now grows twice as fast, (more work) and Vic has such wonderful gardens. She loves the flower beds up front, and I call it, "The Jungle." I think most of the stuff are weeds, and then Vic comes up with some fancy name. My Uncle Jim always identified all growing things as "Choke Cherry." I use this all the time. Vic thinks its old material rehashed. I'm now the great derecho of harbor view drive.
