Sacramento reluctantly welcomed the first storm of our fall / winter rainy season yesterday. Heavy rain flooded streets; wind gusts up to 48 MPH knocked down trees, landing some on top of buildings. Drivers in Midtown Sacramento jammed cars into each other -- one ran a car into a building. It was a wet and wild day.
I spent part of the day trying to re-stake a couple of young trees in my yard in Land Park. The maple tree I had planted 2 years ago in the front yard had lost one of its stakes, and the wind whipped it so hard that I was afraid it would break in two. The ground was soaked to the point that it could not longer support a stake.
My crepe myrtle in the back yard was not faring any better. The winds shook it like a rag doll and slammed branches to the ground. It also lost a stake.
I put on my rain gear and ventured into the elements with a sledge hammer, new stakes and ties. I was able to secure the maple tree, but the stakes for the crepe myrtle were not holding. There was only one thing left to do. Prune the tree.
It was top heavy and loaded with too many branches, spent flowers and leaves. The ground was too wet to set a ladder on it. The legs of the ladder simply sunk into the lake. I found 2 high spots near the tree and laid down a board to support the ladder. Then I climbed up the ladder and clipped like mad.
The poor tree looked like it had received a bad haircut, but at least it stopped hitting the ground. I might have saved its life. As I climbed down the ladder, my cell rang. It was a caller asking me: How are you?
Wet, was my reply. So am I, he said. He went on to explain that he was sitting in his car in front of one of my short sale listings and wanted to know the price of it. I wanted to know why he was driving around in the middle of a storm checking out Sacramento real estate.
I mean, I had an appointment with a tenant of my new listing in East Sacramento to do my agent visual inspection. Both the tenant and I agreed that Tuesday was not a good day to go anywhere if one didn't absolutely need to go outside, and we rescheduled our appointment for today.
But here was this guy watching the rain fall on my For Sale sign and calling me. It's possible he had to resort to this because his ISP was on the blink. Rain tends to knock out service in some areas of Sacramento. Given the choice between looking for homes online or driving rain-soaked streets, I know what I would choose.
At least no trees fell on my home in Land Park, like the birch tree in this photo from January of 2008. But my 5-foot cactus pear collapsed in the back yard. Some of the succulents look smashed this morning. The casualties could have been worse. We have so many stately and older trees in Land Park that every rainstorm seems to claim some of them.
More rain is on its way for today. I'm hoping that the worst of the storm is over and grateful that the homes on my street did not lose power this go-around.
Hi, Elizabeth:
I'm glad you made it through the storm with power and trees (somewhat) intact. It sounds like you have a motivated buyer for that listing, too!
Cheers,
Robin
Wow you were lucky Elizabeth... no trees on your house is a good thing...
It could have been much worse and probably was for some. I'm glad your home was spared.
You do have some adventures girl. I'm glad you were only wet. I hope both your trees make it. I love photos of your yard, it's always so beautiful. Now I'm about to venture out into the same kind of weather... it's been raining for days and I have BPOs due on new foreclosure listings. So I'm off... hopefully all the trees will be still standing.
Elizabeth - So sorry to hear about your poor tree. :( Especially after all the work that you've just recently done on your yard.
Elizabeth,
Never a dull day in your life! I really enjoy reading your posts. Sorry about your trees! Hopefully they'll make a full recovery, and there won't be any more damage.
Your friend in the Cosmic Cow Pie.
Um, Elizabeth....isn't this your 2nd tree issue? If I remember correctly a few years ago you had a major one fall ON your house?
All these tree fallings have made me tree-shy. I don't want any around my house and not especially around a rent house. I've got one to put up tomorrow on my blog.
Elizabeth; Rainy days may be what my buyers need to get the upper hand in these multiple offer situations. Your post have given me a new idea for house hunting. Just need rain.
So we should expect the wind and weather to arrive here in a couple of days. Please no snow.
Rain. rain....you must have sent it our way today...that's fine...almost no wind so we won't be the next realtors on Oz....or we would be happy to join you there...we can fight over the Ruby Slippers....
It's sort of early in the year for this kind of rainstorm, but everything seems to have survived. I put on oven mitts yesterday to lift my poor cactus pear off the ground. It has all these paddles and doo-dad thingies that held flowers. All the doo-dads fell off, and I broke only one paddle, but I managed to get it erect and staked. Note to self, find the tweezers. Oven mitts don't protect the hands as well as you might think.
It was quite a storm for October in Sacramento. We received 6 to 8 times the normal total monthly rainfall in that storm alone. If that truly was the remnants of some Pacific typhoon, I would have hated to have experienced the whole enchilada. You're right Elizabeth - the trees all look like they had a bad hair day:-)
Elizabeth, this looks like quite the storm. Glad that your home was not damaged.
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