The Cleanup

Today was a beautiful day here on Long Island, temperatures in the mid to upper seventies and blue skies everywhere. From the weather conditions around, you'd never have known that just one day ago a tropical deluge named Irene had come for a visit, but the sound of chainsaws buzzing in the morning air were a noisy reminder of what had passed through here.

It'd been a long time since a hurricane came through these parts, and many, including myself, had forgotten what to expect. Though Irene had downgraded to tropical storm status before making landfall in the New York Metropolitan Area, she still wreaked her own little havoc on the place. No, it wasn't as scary as I thought it might have been, and what I and many of my fellow Long Islanders experienced was nowhere near the devastation and terror that past storms such as Katrina, Andrew, or Hugo wrought. Irene was simply a noteworthy interruption of daily life, and she left a big mess for us to clean.

In the hours after Irene's departure, the cleanup had begun. My first task was to remove a giant limb that had fallen from a tree in my backyard in between my car and my deck, narrowly missing both. The limb could have been a tree unto itself, about 30-feet long with dozens of sprawling branches of its own, and a thick trunk. Unfortunately for me, my chainsaw had broken just the other day and I was left with only a handsaw to cut the limb into movable parts. In about three hours or so, with the help of my brother and a friend, the limb was finally cut up and moved out of the way, the beginnings of what would become two huge piles of brush stacked out front for the town to eventually take away.

I lost electricity in only two rooms, oddly, my kitchen and my living room, but at least I was lucky enough to be able to run an extension cord upstairs to keep the fridge going. It turns out that one of the three electrical wires coming from the transformer across the street became unattached and now I am patiently waiting for the power authority to come fix it. I'm not holding my breath.

Today was clean-up day, piling the never-ending clumps of branches and twigs that fell all over the yard, reassembling all that I had dismantled on my deck (no, summer is not over yet!), and replacing all of the flower pots I had stored in the garage. It was a day of sweeping, raking, cutting and even a little mowing, but at least I got to be outside and get some exercise on a truly glorious day. I'm definitely going to sleep good tonight!

So Irene is gone and I say good riddance! Let's hope it's another 10-20 years before we get another one!