Unexpected "guests"

Christopher told me about the surprise he got when pulling into the driveway after the homeschool prom (and after prom party, so it was quite late). He had to slam on his brakes, which is always interesting on gravel, as there was a deer blocking his way. When his dad asked if it was the typical "deer in the headlights" look he received, he said it was actually the opposite end of the deer's body. The last thing he saw was the animal's form as it ran toward the Christmas tree farm, obviously it was more shaken than the driver.

We'd never seen any deer around here, although we know they are near us as we count how many times we've had to brake for deer on the way home! We've also heard wild turkeys but never seen them. Of course, that is quite common with turkeys. It was more uncommon when we lived in Western Michigan and they used our yard as a crossing from time to time.

It seems to be the season for finding unexpected nature at our place. We pulled in our driveway last week and I thought something looked a little strange in our back yard at the fence line. We figured a small branch had broken off... below is what we found.



This came as quite a surprise as it wasn't even a windy day! You are actually looking at our neighbor's property with part of a big tree over our fence and on our lawn. I'm hoping they don't think I was taking these pictures thinking I'll sue or something... but when one has a blog one gets all excited over unexpected events and finding half of a big tree in your yard doesn't happen every day.

They're nice people, even if they do have an Obama sign in their yard. This was all cleaned up before the sun set that evening. That's the kind of thing they would do. We figure the actual damage happened when those hurricane force winds went through a few weeks ago, although we had a very stormy May and June so there was a lot of stress on trees. We had a very small branch (compared to this) break and fall onto a younger tree during that big storm.

Believe me, it has me looking upward at the trees near my house... especially those with big limbs that could fall on the house.... saying extra prayers for protection here. We are used to having dead branches fall during storms. This was a perfectly good tree.

I'll return to sharing more about recession proofing and stocking up and scrapbook journals... fun stuff like that. These pictures were too good not to post. I have more but two is enough. They kind of all look the same, anyway.