Wham Bam Lamb Slam '09

Pine tree on neighbor's house across the street (note the uprooted based of the tree)

A little traffic hazard in our neighborhood

Ok, so it's been awhile since we've made a post. Three reasons: 1) no power for nearly a week, 2) no Internet for 3 weeks, and 3) lots (and I mean lots) of fallen trees. Around 1pm on Friday, May 8, the tornado sirens sounded, and we headed to the neighbor's basement. After sitting out the storm, we emerged to find two pine trees and a power pole snapped in two and laying in our neighbor's yard. "Oh, my," we thought, "this could be serious." That is to say, we live in an older neighborhood with several big trees. One partially dead and looming pine tree in our other neighbor's yard has threatened our garage for the last two years. That's the causality I imagined next. As we walked home, we saw the carnage of snapped and uprooted trees resting on houses, in yards, and across streets. Luckily, we found our home to be relatively untouched.

Our backyard (the power line is suspending the uprooted tree)

Under that pine tree is my compost bin

The relaxed pine in the photograph above is one of the many culprits for our loss of power and Internet. And, yes, I'll spare you the suspense: the compost bins I made from recycled fence boards didn't make it. (Considering what so many of our friends had to endure with damaged homes, I'm more than willing to have sacrificed it.) The news reported that we had experienced sustained winds over 80 mph with some gusts (or rather blasts) exceeding 120 mph.

Immediately after the storm settled, I headed to the farm and home store down the street. With flashlight in hand, a retail clerk assisted me down the aisle where the generators were. This wasn't the first time our power had been off for an uncomfortable period of time, so I was more than willing to buy a little box of gas-powered convenience. (I later found out that getting said gas ended up being 30 miles away, but that's another story.)

Chainsawing trees all day builds an appitite for lamb

As it turned out, we were the only home amongst our foodie friends (two of whom had just bought an entire lamb) with a powered refrigerator and enough propane to cook up two nights of some fantastic dinners. Friday night was lamb shoulder and lamb burgers stuffed with herbs and goat milk feta. Saturday night was a smoked leg of lamb with all the appropriate fixings. Eric also brought over some fantastic wine and voila, Lamb Slam 2009. By Sunday, we were ready to be done with no power. I had to conduct a wedding the following weekend in MO, so we headed out early to grandparents and a powered civilization. Granted, we had endured our own little natural disaster, and our daylight hours were filled with endless chainsawing, but during those two nights of the Lamb Slam we ate well, drank great wine, and laughed a lot. Natural disasters are just more fun when you have great friends.