WIND EVENT

Every few years, we get a windstorm that blows in from the west and makes a mess.  This year it happened on Monday morning around 4 a.m.  The storm came in very quickly with gusts up to 90 kph and it was scary for a while.  It only lasted about 20 minutes, but it was a helpless feeling to look outside at things blowing around and breaking.

Fortunately for us, the gazebo stayed up and the furniture that blew off the deck didn’t break.  We had to retrieve cushions out in the yard, but nothing was lost.  Our flag pole broke off and as we watched, a section of our fence behind the garden fell into the neighbour’s yard.

So later that morning, we cancelled our tee time and set about fixing the fence.  We purchased a new fence post as the old one had snapped off and bought 1 by 4 boards to shore up all 11 fence panels along the garden.  We met our new neighbour and reached an agreement on what we planned to do from their side to make it all stronger.  It turned out to be a good thing for us as their side of the fence was falling apart and leaving “see through” gaps in the fence panels.

Stuart worked on getting the old post out and the new one in place while I stained the new support boards.

After we concreted the post, we started working on the fence. We stapled all the loose boards and almost rebuilt the fallen panel, then put up the support boards across the panels.  Last thing to do was to lift the rebuilt panel into place from our side and secure it.  I was able to crawl under the panel and secure it with screws from the neighbour’s side.  The job took all day and we are pleased with the result.

The other thing that happened to us was roof shingles coming off the house as well as one off the shop.  We contacted a roofer who came by late on Monday to assess the damage and estimate a repair.  He is going to re-do a section of the house roof with better quality shingles and he did replace the missing shingle on the shop roof.  They are busy now, so we won’t see them for about 3 weeks.  Hope we don’t get torrential rains before then.

A few houses away, there was a big branch that broke off a tree, so the people hired a crew to take the tree down. 

Other than that, things are going well.  We have been keeping the yard and garden looking good and will be having our first zucchini and cucumbers in a few days.  We installed a couple of tall sprinkler heads in the area by the squashes and Stuart added a shut off valve.  That way, we can control how often the area gets watered.  So far it is working very well, and the squashes are happy.