The Crack Before the Bang

I suppose that it was a sign of the big event -- my daughter's high school graduation.

The night before she graduated, the heat wave ended with a major storm. As the Inquirer noted,
Heat wave ends with a bang:

After four steamy days in which being outdoors was as pleasant as standing in front of a hot pizza oven, the region is about to enjoy a run of splendid June weather. But the price of that enjoyment was a terrific - and sometimes destructive - cold front that wreaked havoc as it passed through last night.

The storm swept through quickly, with strong winds, lightning and fierce rain. A loud crack sounded out back, followed by the big bang. Two branches from one of our big trees were draped across the yard, after one of them first touched down on the car of my in-laws. Luckily, there wasn't much damage to the car. Of course, the term branch is relative, since it was the size of a tree itself.

And I feel that I'm doomed to no tree cover facing the adjoining street from our back yard. We have a large back yard, which was enclosed on three sides with foliage from the big, old trees surrounding the area. Our back porch has a beautiful porch swing and I love sitting on the swing on a warm summer night, enjoying the peaceful evening, with the trees providing privacy. We also have a hottub on a deck off the porch, so the privacy was useful for that as well.

I wrote about the loss of a number of trees last summer, when a developer purchased the home behind our house and removed them, see Don't Look Down. As I said then, not only did he tear down an old stone house to built two big homes on the lot, he also cut down over a dozen trees on the lot, many of which were 100 plus year old. He also cut the branches on the trees on my property that grew across the property line.

The branches that came down were from the same tree that he cut last summer, so now it has suffered again. And I've lost yet more tree cover.