In the Aftermath of Hurricane Irene: Mourning the loss of my cherry tree

I am so tired of dealing with tree damage. We lost a major chunk of a tree the week before Irene, with all the usual downed wires and loss of service problems.

Now Irene has destroyed a beautiful very old—apparently very weak-- cherry tree. It bloomed the same time as a Redbud every April; the white cherry tree flowers intertwined with an adjacent Redbud were gorgeous. I looked forward to it every spring and it’s hard to accept that I’ll never see it again. I think of my trees as old friends and it's hard to part with them.
Cherry Tree and Redbud blooming together

I guess I should be happy that the tree didn’t cause major damage to the house. It fell on our little sunroom roof but didn't destroy it.


We’ll need to do some plastering and repainting thanks to a big locust branch which fell on our front porch and I’m sure when all tree debris is removed we'll discover more damage.

Right now we're dealing with downed wires all over the property, but amazingly at least so far, no loss of service. We can’t get our car out because of all the downed electric wires in the driveway and PECO has no idea when they can come out! At least, unlike FIOS, PECO eventually answers the phone.