Well, How 'Bout That

In the last post, I said I'd replace the broken shingle on the west middle dormer if I could find my spare shingles. I didn't want to waste a lot of time that could be better spent actually working on the house.

Well, I soon thought better about it, and realized that even though it's up high, it is the front of the house, and it really needs to be done. So I resolved to dig through the garage until I found the stupid shingles. As I suspected, they were buried in the farthest extent of the garage, with the spare restoration glass and the complete window that used to be where the kitchen pass-through is now. It only took half a day to disinter them, and I'm nearly through putting everything back; it should only take another hour or so.

At first I considered just splicing in the missing part, as I did with the apron on the east window casing on the south side, because I was afraid of splitting the shingle above the damaged one if I replaced the shingle entirely. After thinking the situation out, I realized that even if I did, the job would still go much faster and would also look better when it was done. So with an X-Acto knife I freed up the head of the nail going through both shingles, and then I coaxed it out as gently as I could.

Yep, I cracked the upper shingle; the nail was simply too firmly attached to the wood from oxidation. After all, they had been together for 117 years or so. And speaking of that, I must tell you I can't help but get a bit solemn it such situations, because I realize that I'm looking upon something that hasn't been seen by human eyes for well over a century. Just slightly batty? Sure, but that's what it took to have bought the Farm House in the first place.

Oh, and take a look at the nail I removed. Note its rectangular cross-section. This is a cut nail, so called because it was cut from a strip of steel (which is why it only tapers along the wide dimension). They weren't originally blunt like this; the tip has rusted off. It's hard to tell in this picture because of the debris sticking to the nail, but the head was formed, basically, by squashing the end of the strip together during its manufacturing. Cut nails, although still available today, were in common use roughly from the early 19th century to soon after the Farm House's founding, so when I find them I can be reasonably certain that I'm working with the original construction.

While we're on this sleuthing tack, take a look at what became clearly visible when I began to sand the wood exposed by the removing of the broken shingle! Yes, it's a pencil mark, parallel with the roof line, clearly drawn by the carpenter who laid out the shingles. Awesome. 

In order to measure the new shingle for cutting, I made a paper pattern. I have a big roll of thick kraft paper I got from Uline along with an inexpensive dispenser; it has proven its handiness on at least a weekly basis since I got it, and I highly recommend it if you have the room. Anyway, first I made a kraft-paper replica of an uncut shingle:

Then, I cut it down to the length necessary to accommodate the pattern, slid it in place behind the upper shingle, slid a bone folder (a popsicle stick will do nicely) along the diagonal where the shingle meets the eave, then took it out, folded it along that crease, put it back in to check fit, then adjusted it until it fit well:

The black tape is there to keep the split shingle together until I can fix it.

The rest of the job was blessedly simple: cut the shingle and slip it into place.

Perfect! It hardly needs nailing, but of course I'll do that.

Note something interesting about the shingle pattern in this gable: the size of the shingles, and the pitch of the dormer roof, cause each course to be a whole number of shingles, increasing by one shingle for each course. Perhaps this is a coincidence, but it suggests a purposeful relation between the shingle size and the roof pitch; otherwise, one would expect that partial shingles would be necessary to complete the pattern in places. I know that the foreman on the construction project mentioned that there was a complicated calculation necessary to plot the proper placement of the shingles. I'll have to look into this further.

Climbing back into the house after this triumph, I happened to look up into the eave. Here is what I saw:

Funny I'd never noticed that particular pattern in the wood before; I guess usually when I'm out there I'm either looking down at the veranda roof or up at the house roof. In any event, this was a significant discovery, for it was evidence that, as I have long suspected, the front gables originally had bargeboards.

Now, I understand that these architectural terms I tend to throw around can be confusing, so here is what a bargeboard is:

It's the large, gracefully-curved green trim piece running along the gable in this picture. The pattern I saw in the eave of the dormer gable was exactly like the pattern I saw in the south gable before the missing bargeboard was replaced, but it was inconclusive, so I looked for the conclusive evidence. I found it higher up:

This shows the unmistakable pattern of a mounting block for the bargeboard. I can't believe I didn't notice this before, because as I said I suspected there were bargeboards in the front dormer gables, but better late than never.

This is quite a thrilling discovery, because the restoration of these bargeboards is going to make the Farm House even more beautiful than it is now. I'm not going to do anything about it until I'm completely finished with the exterior painting, but I'm going to take complete pictorial and video documentation of the evidence now, and I'm not going to sand out any of these marks, because when the time comes I'll have to bring this matter to the Cultural Heritage Commission for approval.

* * *

"I bring you this offering of fresh-killed prey in token of my appreciation for your fealty."

Triage

Whenever I begin a new segment of this project, my first impulse is to plunge right in and start whacking away at it. By now, fortunately, I've finally learned that before I do anything else, I must brush off all the loose dirt and debris and examine the areas to be painted closely, looking for anything beyond the usual sanding and patching that needs to be done before I paint. For the most part, this involves looking for any loose or damaged pieces that need mending.

There is surprisingly little of this nature on the middle west dormer. There are in fact just two items, only one of which affects building health: a split piece of siding.

This split is complete, and the bottom half is somewhat loose. This allows the elements unauthorized entry, and must be repaired. I'll secure the loose piece, and fill the gap with epoxy putty.

The other item is merely cosmetic: part of a fish-scale shingle is missing.

This doesn't compromise building integrity, so it is not essential that I repair it. I will if I manage to dig up my spare fish-scale shingles from the deepest recesses of the garage, but I'm not going to waste a huge amount of time looking. Time's a-wastin'.

* * *

"Hey, Warden! How's 'bout springin' us?"

My Next Nightmare

The center west dormer is next to be painted. While it needs a few repairs on the sides, and there will be some tight spots to get to where the dormer meets the roof, this should go fairly quickly, because it is small and I can reach everything readily except for the eaves in the very back. I'll fix that broken shingle if I can find my spare shingles, which is a big if.

The most complicated aspect of this job is that I will have to remove the sashes. There is simply no other way to paint the window jambs, or in fact the sashes themselves. It's a small opening, so I should be able to get away with taping some black plastic to the inside of the opening for a few days.

This will be an all-brush job, as will be all the dormers. There's simply too much risk of overspray getting on the shingles to use the sprayer. I have just obtained some new, stiffer brushes that I hope will yield a more satisfactory result than I achieved on the brushed parts of the south side using the kind of thick, instantly-curing paints that we are forced to use hereabouts nowadays by an overweening bureaucratic entity with no connection to the electorate.

A Long Nightmare Is Over

The south side is done.

 

I will do the foundation at the end of the painting work all at the same time, because it will involve some civil engineering beforehand.

What I Did on My Winter Vacation

Usually, I take some time off from the restoration project around Christmas to give the Yuletide celebration my full attention. This year, however, my hiatus was a great deal longer for several reasons, mostly beyond my control. First of these was the wind storm and its aftermath, of course, as I have already discussed; there was a lot of debris removal and regrading I had to do just to make the south side of the house accessible again. Frustratingly, I was within a week of finishing that side when the storm hit. Now, I have some new repairs to make, and I'll have to pressure-wash the side before I paint.

Soon thereafter, I came down with a bad case of whatever bug was making the rounds at the time, and that took me out of commission for most of the rest of the month.

Then, just before Christmas our new Malamute pups arrived, Peter and Sally. I anticipated that attending to them would take up all my time for a few weeks, judging from our fairly recent experience rearing Travis from puppyhood. He was no piece of cake to take care of, so I figured I had a pretty good idea of what to expect.

As it turned out, we were woefully under-prepared for Peter and Sally, and it took us until the end of January to figure things out and get on top of the situation. Much of the problem stemmed from trying to follow the dictates of the "experts", which flat out didn't work. So to be precise, I guess I'd have to say we were studiously mis-prepared. It was only when we threw out all the books and returned to the techniques that worked with Travis that our sweet, spirited little pups began to follow the paths of righteousness. Still, with them it's often a case of two steps forward, three steps back. Then again, there's very little in life that is both worthwhile and easy.

Without further preamble, here's what we've been up to lately, in too much detail.

Windstorm Aftermath

I've already covered this subject fairly thoroughly, but there is one matter that remained undone when I last discussed it: the broken limb hanging over our power drop. As I mentioned in "Paul Bunyan Jr.", our arborist was not comfortable with the task at the time because of its inherent danger, and recommended we tell Pasadena Water & Power about it, because they could get it done more safely. Unfortunately, PWP was simply too swamped with emergency work to get to our less pressing matter, so when our arborist drove by at the end of December and noticed the limb still hanging, he stopped in and said, "Okay, let's get that done."

One of the many things I like about our arborist is that he gets things done the old-fashioned way, with rope and tackle instead of cranes. I'm not comfortable with heavy machinery rolling around over the trees' root systems. I find the skill and fearlessness with which he and his men go about their work quite inspiring. This was especially true of their removal of the broken limb over the power drop, because of the significant added danger of the power lines directly underneath the limb. I made a point of taking pictures of the process so that I could show you all.

In this picture, the man up on the limb has already removed the broken limb (you can see where it was directly ahead of him on the limb he's standing on). The broken limb is hanging below him, suspended by a rope secured to a limb above him. He is guiding the limb away from the power line below.

In this picture, the arborist (in blue t-shirt) has looped a rope around the power line and is gently pulling it out of the way, as another man (in orange safety vest) helps guide the limb away from the power line as the man above gently lowers it. You can see how close a thing it was, but they got the limb down without incident.

I've failed to mention that there was another limb broken facing the street, about the same size as the one over the power line. Here's a picture of that limb on the ground:

You can't see it here, but the limb stretches all the way to the street. That's over 45 feet! As one of the men commented, this one limb is itself as big as a tree. I was astonished at its size, because when it was hanging from the tree it looked much smaller. After all, it was just one small part of one of many dozens of limbs on the tree. That should give you some idea of just how massive these trees are.

Christmas

We spent Christmas alone at home, we and the pets. It wasn't a quiet Christmas, thanks to the pups, but it was one to remember. My plan to put lights up along the big side gables was thwarted by the wind storm, so I just put them along the veranda as usual, but we did the tree up as grandly as we ever have.

I say "we", but I was still pretty ill, so Wifey did the tree all by herself. She came home with a tree so big that we could hardly get it in the house, but that's fine, because we have many hundreds of lights and enough ornaments for three big trees. This year, she outdid herself.

Up in Heaven, Dad was smiling. Both Dads, in fact.  It was breathtaking, with great depth, ebullient color, and rich textures. Here's a close-up, to give a better idea of what the tree looked like in person:

And of course, most of the ornaments carry with them some sort of special meaning or tender memory of loved ones and Christmases past, just as it should be. It was so beautiful that we kept it up through Wifey's Mom's birthday on the 15th. It stayed fresh, because I conditioned the tree well and kept it watered.

Pets

Now we come to the main part of the story. We were kept busy not just with the care of two seven-week-old puppies, but also with helping the rest of the Pet Division adjust to their presence.

Peter and Sally came to us several days before Christmas, and made themselves at home right away. Travis was happy to have some reinforcements, and the pups liked him immediately.

As one would expect, the cats were a harder sell. In fact, at first it seemed as if they couldn't quite figure out just what manner of creatures they were dealing with.

Here, Adam looks as if he could really use a Tricorder: "What is this strange creature? Hmmm. . . it's put together like Travis. it kinda smells like Travis. It makes similar noises. But it's so dang small!"

Actually, Adam quickly made his peace with the pups. Given his Brobdingnagian size and feline curiosity, he's afraid of very little. I often find him walking right up to the pups, trying to engage them in discourse.

He and Peter are not pals yet, but I think they eventually will be.

Evangeline has no problem with them, because she loves dogs, but she does expect them to maintain a respectful demeanor befitting her status as CEO of the Pet Division; they do not always comply, but she always stands her ground. 

Benny, a cat through and through, is no big fan of dogs, but he has at least accepted their presence. Still, he does tend to take out his annoyance on Travis, batting him mercilessly whenever the pups get in his face: "Take that, you canine, you!" He is nevertheless willing to be friendly, if they approach him nicely.

The addition of two spirited puppies could not help but cause some upheaval with the other pets, and except for Evangeline they've all required a lot of special attention. But everyone's beginning to become accustomed to the new order, and at times things are positively placid.

Most of the time, however, the puppies simply tire the rest of us out.

That's why during the day I like to keep them outside. It gives the rest of the household a break, and I'm able to keep an eye on them while I work. I can't let them roam free unsupervised, because they have a disturbing habit of eating yard debris and dirt. Thus, much of the time they are in a pen we put up on the astroturf-topped pad that used to house the gazebo. It may seem a bit severe, but they are fine with it. As a matter of fact, they seem to enjoy it.

They're changing on a daily basis, as puppies of their age do, and they're both growing into quite beautiful dogs.

Farmhouse Fauna

As I've discussed over in the Journal, we have a lot of resident animals here. Actually, there used to be a lot more—huge raccoons and it seemed like a hundred possums—but Travis, as he was bred to do, chased them all away. Now, what we have are thriving bird and squirrel communities, and some skunks as well, which Travis has not been able to chase away (not that he hasn't tried, unfortunately).

A lot of people hate squirrels, but all of us here love them. All, that is, except for Benny. Benny is a dedicated squirrel hunter. Think of how Captain Kirk felt about Klingons, and you have some idea of how Benny feels about squirrels. 

One day a few weeks ago, Benny and I were sitting out on the garden swing. I ran into the house for just a second to get something, and when I came back out, I didn't see Benny anywhere. I was momentarily confused, because he hadn't had enough time to get out of sight. And then, I looked up.

Benny had actually climbed up in the persimmon tree after a squirrel! Notice that the squirrel is not overly concerned by this; as Benny stares up at him, the squirrel is staring right back, as if to say, "Surely, you can't be serious." Hey, you can't blame a cat for trying.

We have an amazing variety of birds here at the Farm House. We have the usual resident species: crows, mourning doves, band-tailed pigeons, various finches, and our dear friends the scrub jays.

The jays are the cornerstone of our avian community. They always say "good morning" to us, and they always let us know when it's time to replenish the feeder. Once, they even left Wifey a present. One morning they were squawking at the feeder. Wifey wondered what was up, because she'd just put out some food for them. She looked out and saw something odd hanging off the feeder. It turned out to be a necklace!

We also get some interesting birds passing through during migration periods, and some birds that are local but not often seen: tufted titmice, bluebirds, robins, and the most spectacular of our periodic visitors: the Acorn Woodpecker.

With all our oaks, our yard is a perfect fit for them, but they don't usually eat from feeders, and with that big target on their head they need to keep out of the open as much as possible, lest they attract the attention of our local hawk. It's thus a big day when we see one of these beauties.

It may come as a great surprise to non-Angelenos, but we have a number of large parrot flocks in various parts of the city. In Culver City, the flock consists of some sort of long-tailed parakeet: colorful, slender-bodied birds with (of course) long tails. We actually had one of them land at our feeder there; I have a picture of that somewhere.  I think it was a Mitered Parakeet.

The flock here in Pasadena, on the other hand, is of some sort of Amazon variety, with substantial bodies and stubby tails. I haven't gotten a close look at them, because they for some reason never light in our yard, but they are mostly green. They typically fly by twice a day, in the morning and late afternoon, and they make a great noise as they pass, because parrots are in constant communication with one another as they fly. Here is but one platoon of their huge regiment:

I was lucky to get this shot, because these parrots fly with astonishing swiftness. I'd estimate that they took about a second to fly the distance captured in this picture.

Well, that's about it for this time, folks.

* * *

". . . and stop calling me Shirley!"

Adult Education; or, A Chump Smartens Up

As I promised last time, here is the newly-repaired corner board:

I had to use so much putty because, as I described last time, I did a quick repair. If I had done the by-the-book repair I described, I would not have had to use much putty at all; but then, I'd probably still be working on it.

Today, I noticed another repair that has come undone, on the east window casing:

At first, I ascribed this to the various stresses caused by the windstorm, because of the slight circular protrusion below the crack revealing where a screw hole was patched. This indicates that the board moved inward relative to the rest of the house. Given that there's no evidence of anything having hit the board, this movement almost certainly was caused by the house's reacting to earth movement—and there was plenty of that during the windstorm.

Then, however, I noticed the circular depression up at the top of the long crack. Sure, one could ascribe that to the same cause, but something about that screw, and that crack, tickled my memory. I looked back through the posts until, sure enough, in the post "Onward" I found this picture:

I included this picture in that post to illustrate how effectively the LiquidWood bonds wood together. The wood was warped outward, and where I placed the screw was the best place to bring the board back into alignment.

What we have here, clearly, is a Teachable Moment. And as with a schoolteacher back in the Old West, I'm sometimes only a lesson or two ahead of the class. The bulk of what I know about the home-improvement subjects I discuss herein I have learned from experience, and as you can see, the learning never ends. That's what makes life so fun.

What I said about LiquidWood was not wrong, per se, because the mend did withstand the screw's intrusion without complaint. Nevertheless, a mend is still a weak point in the wood's  structure; to counteract that, I would have had to impregnate the wood on both sides of the mend more thoroughly with epoxy, and further back from the mend line. As it was, the mend was already under constant stress from the wood's desire to return to its natural contour, and the added stress of the house's movement caused the mend to fail.

It is thus clear in retrospect that I should not have placed that screw right along the mend, but what should I have done then, and what should I do now to fix it?

To answer the first question: because the wood was warped and I wanted to bring it back into alignment, I should have been more thorough in impregnating the wood at the top of the board with LiquidWood, just to give it more strength and resilience. When bringing it back into alignment, I should have used smaller screws and more of them, placed more carefully back from the edges of the board.

To answer the second question: I think it's too late to depend upon epoxy saturation to keep the mend together, because there is now cured epoxy along both sides of the break. The best thing to do for the good of the house would be simply to replace the board, but that isn't going to happen. So I guess I will have to remove the offending screw, re-mend the crack, bring the piece back into alignment with smaller screws placed carefully to the right of the crack, patch it up, and see what happens. The worst that can happen is that I learn some more stuff.

I Triple Dog Dare Ya!

And I have the wherewithal to do it!

Yes, December was an eventful month here at the Farm House. First there was the epic wind storm, of course. Then came the cleanup, which is ongoing. Then, I fell ill with whatever flu is in this season, a pretty virulent one that lasted pretty much the rest of the month. The puppies came on the shortest day of the year, and somehow we managed to fit Christmas in among the other things. What with all these matters, I was not able to get back to the painting prep until this week.

The last thing I did, as you will recall, was to epoxy the crack at the bottom of the front cornerboard. Unfortunately, that mend did not hold.

The Farm House nearly always manages to punish me when I am in too much of a hurry. I did not properly prepare this crack before I mended it. Instead of drilling some ancillary holes to make sure the wood on both sides was saturated with epoxy, I just injected some into the crack and clamped it. Obviously, there was not enough epoxy to generate the hold needed to counteract the wood's desire to spread apart at the crack.

The proper way to mend it at this point would be to fabricate a backing piece that would run the length of the crack and most of the width of the board, sand the oxidation and dirt off the back of the board in this area, epoxy the backing piece to the board, clamp the crack closed, then drive screws through the board into the backing in several places along the crack to clamp those pieces together front-to-back.

Nevertheless, this is not what I did. It would take far too much time for too little benefit. Instead, I dug up a strip of wood from my scrap pile that just filled the gap between the corner board and the siding.

I was pushing the boards together here to check the fit.

I trimmed the strip so that it ends just shy of the corner board, and then screwed everything down on both sides of the crack.

The corner board was twisted outward here on the right side, so while this repair makes the corner board stable and square, the wood to the right of the crack is a bit lower than that to the left. For this reason, I had to do a lot of puttying to finish the repair. I'll show you the results next time.

* * *

"There goes the neighborhood."

Merry Christmas!

A big Farm House Merry Christmas to you all, from the newly-augmented Farm House Gang!

Sally (L) and Peter, born on Halloween, arrived at Christmastime.

Aftermath

If you're waiting for some sort of play on words involving Rolling Stones references, you can just forget it. I'm just not up to wordplay this evening. You'll have to get your satisfaction elsewhere.

So as I was saying, that was one Hell of a windstorm, the worst weather this Californio had ever been through. And it left our grounds in disarray.

Our arborist did come back later and take away the large boughs seen in this picture, but that still left a lot of mess to deal with.

Here's the view looking from the corner of the garage to the back of the lot:

It may not be obvious here, but the debris here is about eight inches deep. Did I say "debris"? I meant to say "mulch."

Anyway, I started working as hard as I could to clean up the mess from the front of the garage forwards. I worked as hard as I could for two days, and then I fell ill. I was starting to feel better when we got an e-mail from the city saying that we could put as much debris as we had in the gutter area along the street, and it would be picked up later. 

So I got well real quick and started hauling out as much as I could, starting with the south side (so I could resume the painting work as soon as possible) and working my way back. I knew I couldn't fit it all out in front, but I resolved to get as much of it out there as I could before they picked it up.

Well, by that Sunday (about five days later) I had gotten all the way around to the front of the garage, where the last of the heavy debris deposits were. It was supposed to rain that evening, but it was only maybe an hour's work left, and since I didn't expect them to be picking up on Sunday I took my time.

Just as I finally got out there to start, I heard the sounds of heavy machinery. Then, I kept hearing the sounds of heavy machinery. Right after that, I heard the sounds of heavy machinery getting closer. I ran to the street and saw a big tractor scooping up the debris at the end of the block, about 150 feet away, and doing a pretty quick job of it. I had about ten minutes tops to do that hour's work, and amidst a fusillade of foul words that I sure hope were drowned out by the heavy machinery, I managed to haul out the last of the stuff just in time. 

That night, it rained just enough to settle the dirt, and the next day I took a few photos just to document the back yard's new airier look. Here's one looking in the same general area as the one above:

As I said, airier. You can see that the olive tree still stands, but in a severely abridged state, and the wounds it sustained will eventually prove fatal, I am sorry to say. But for now it lives, and for that we are grateful. After all, that tree almost certainly predates my grandparents. Well, at least now that little scrub oak will have its day in the sun. Plus, now we can actually grow some roses back there.

Even as I was taking these pictures, I was getting sick again, much sicker than before, and sick I still am, five days later. Drat! DRAT!!

Drat.

* * *

"Words fail me."

Paul Bunyan Jr.

Wednesday I got an especially early start on the patching work, because I knew that high winds were going to be coming in the late afternoon, and I wanted to be all done before then, so I could get ready.

We customarily get some pretty stiff winds this time of year: 30 to 35 MPH, with gusts to 45 MPH tops. Things get rather messy around here during these winds: Plant pots get knocked over, all the dead leaves and other debris get torn off the trees, the street becomes covered with those annoying palm fronds,  and the occasional larger limb comes down as well. So I wrapped things up early and laid the ladders down on the ground so they wouldn't get blown over and break something.

The winds came in due course, and they seemed rather more forceful than usual. I went to the back door and looked out. To my dismay, our metal-framed, canvas-skinned gazebo had been blown off its moorings and was resting on its side some distance away against the side fence. That was our first warning that this would not be our usual windstorm.

This saddened Wifey,  because she loved that gazebo. I had fitted it with a nice bright light fixture, and she enjoyed sitting out there in the evenings. I told her not to worry, that it looked unharmed, and that I was reasonably sure that we could just put it back up and it would be fine.

By 7 PM, the winds were blowing a steady 45 MPH, and the gusts were more like 60. I began to get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Fasten your seat belts, I thought to myself; it's going to be a bumpy night.

The winds continued to intensify, and by 8 PM the steady winds were up to about 50. The palm trees were leaned over at a 60 degree angle, but I wasn't worried about them. I was worried about the pines, and the massive oak on the other side of the driveway. The upper limbs of all the trees were being whipped about alarmingly in the wind. At this point, it seemed perfectly rational to be terrified.

Somewhat later on, Wifey was standing in the parlor looking out the bay window looking at the relatively small pine tree right in front of the house. It was only about 60 feet tall and two feet in diameter at its base. She said that she'd seen the base of the tree wobbling, but I thought it was just her imagination. We went back to the TV and tried to watch a movie, turning up the volume in order to drown out the shrieking of the storm.

Then came a sound that could not be drowned out: a sickening CRACCCCCCCCK! We ran to the parlor, looked out the window, and saw this:

Oh, my Lord. What a nightmare! a 60-foot tree, down on the ground, headed right towards the cars in our neighbor's driveway. We ran out, dreading what we would see. This is what we saw:

Sweet Providence, it fell between their cars! It missed the car in the picture by less than an inch. Still, this blocked one of their cars from exiting the driveway, so I resolved to cut the tree and drag the top of it out of their way. I have a whole collection of handsaws, ranging from tiny to massive, designed for arboreal disassembly. I selected a curved one, about two feet long with vicious teeth, and started sawing. Wifey stood by to ensure that the cut piece did not roll over and hit the car.

Just then, the wind kicked into high gear. I looked up at the huge pine between the houses. We were right in its path of destruction should it fall over. I told Wifey, "If I say 'run', or you hear any cracking or tearing sounds, run that way!", pointing towards our driveway. I started sawing as fast as I could, and then some. When I'd gotten about halfway through, I moved to the other side of the tree, so it would tend to fall straight down. At that point, I had my back to the big tree.

Then, an insanely violent gust blew by, and I heard the sickening sound of splintering wood again. "RUN!" I shouted, but I couldn't run the way I'd told Wifey to go, because I was on the wrong side of the tree, and one of its boughs completely blocked my way. So I went between our neighbors' cars, ran down their driveway, then turned up the street towards our house—and right into the wind.

I've seen the gag in films a hundred times: someone finds himself caught out in a storm, he starts running as hard as he can, and he doesn't get anywhere because the wind is holding him in place. I never had any idea that this kind of thing actually happened in real life! Once I turned into the wind, I put my head down and started running as hard as I could, and after about six strides I looked up to check my progress around the felled tree. I hadn't even cleared the neighbors' driveway yet. It's a good thing that the big pine wasn't really falling, because I'd already have been a pancake.

I kept running as if on a treadmill until I finally figured out that I'd make faster headway simply by walking with long strides. It seemed as if I were walking around the block, but I eventually made it all the way back around the felled tree, and I met up with Wifey again on the veranda. We had lost track of each other out there in the maelstrom.

Once back inside, I felt rather silly having gotten so worked up that I imagined the sound of splintering wood. "Oh, well," I mused, "at least Wifey didn't notice my pathetic Buster Keaton impression."

Then I looked out the back door. The great majority of the south olive tree had split off from the main trunk—and landed on what had once been our gazebo.

Hey! I hadn't imagined that big splintering sound! Woo-hoo!

From that point on, I was all nerves. I was honestly afraid. Mostly it was perfectly rational fear of someone or something getting hurt by falling trees, but a little of it was fear of uncharted territory. This was by far the most violent weather I had ever experienced.

Look, I know that this was not terribly catastrophic weather, as catastrophic weather goes. I completely understand that compared to hurricanes or tornadoes, our event was mild. For those of you who live in Illinois or Texas, this sort of event is called December.

The thing is, this is California. Unless you live in geographically risky or foolish places, such as Big Bear or Malibu, you're not supposed to get catastrophic weather. See, that's the tradeoff. In exchange for the ever-present chance that everything you own will be destroyed in 60 seconds by an earthquake, you don't have to worry about old Mother Earth trying to kill you with catastrophic storms. It's a good system. I like it that way. In my personal experience, it has worked quite nicely for over fifty years.

When it seems as if the Basic Agreement has suddenly changed, then, it is certainly a cause for some concern. As I said, this was the most violent weather I had ever experienced, and I was reasonably sure that it was the most violent weather the Farm House had seen in half a century. I had no idea whether the trees were going to hold, and no idea what would happen if they didn't. With their size and proximity, and the light structure of the Farm House, the one thing I was pretty sure of was that a particularly fell, but reasonably possible, set of occurrences would kill one or more of us and destroy the house.

With this in my mind, I proceeded to be more terrified than I have ever been. It was like the first split-second reaction to an earthquake, extended over an entire night. See, in an earthquake the terror goes away in an instant, because my emergency response system kicks in, and I know exactly what to do. Here, however, there was nothing to do but try to keep my charges as safe as I could as the storm continued to rise in fury.

For the next few hours, that meant staying in the kitchen. It was of the newest, stoutest construction, and it was in the location least likely to be in the path of destruction. Moreover, if things really got ugly the basement was right beneath us. I managed to corral Wifey for that long; she surfed the Net cool as a Kool-Pop, while I tried to sit still and get my heart to stop pounding. Just after 1 AM, she called our arborist thinking that she'd leave a message, but he answered himself. Oops. But he was extremely gracious about it, saying he was expecting calls.

After a while, the storm stopped worsening and sat at the same level of intensity, with occasional gusts and infrequent periods of relative calmness. I figured that whatever hadn't come down so far wasn't going to come down as long as things didn't get worse, so I judged that it was worth the risk of going upstairs just to get some rest. Wifey slept well, but I kept waking up every time the wind gusted, because when it did the house rumbled ominously.

At last I fell asleep from pure exhaustion, and Wifey kindly let me sleep in when our arborist knocked on the door at 6:30 AM, ready to start cleaning up the arboreal carnage. Although the forecast had called for the gale to continue through the next day, by dawn things had calmed down significantly. I had stopped taking pictures after our caper outside, so Wifey took some pictures of the carnage before our arborist started to clean it up. It was still pretty dark at that point, so some of the pictures are a bit blurry.

Here's the olive tree. The broken carcass of the gazebo is behind 
and under the tree in the left half of the picture.

The big pine between the houses didn't get off without some damage.

This and one other smaller break were all that we lost on the 
big oak, thank goodness.

The broken oak limb from the front. This made a lot of noise in the wind 
during the night; I was sure it was going to break a window, but it didn't.

* * *

Wifey was a smart cookie indeed to call our arborist so early, because that allowed us to get our neighbors' driveway cleared in time for them not to be inconvenienced. Not that they complained. No, they were extremely gracious about the whole thing. Good neighbors are among the greatest blessings in the world. They were even laughing over the matter of the felled pine tree knocking down their telephone line: the line did not break, and was still working, until it was broken by the tall antenna on an AT&T service vehicle. The guy riding shotgun leaned out the window and yelled, "We'll be right back to fix that!"

By noon or thereabouts, all our fallen trunks and limbs were cut up and moved out of the way. There remains one major broken limb that still hangs from the front pine tree, right over the driveway and our power drop.

The red arrow points to the break. Note the power drop directly below.

The arborist was unwilling to try to remove it because the power drop underneath made that a very risky proposition. As it is, fortunately, it is in no immediate danger of falling, because it is still well-connected to the tree. At this point, we're hoping Pasadena Water and Power will remove it; otherwise, we'll have to have them disconnect our service temporarily so the arborist can remove the limb safely.