OK so I just posted the blog I wrote in April, recapping the year before. I copied and pasted it from my Livejournal account.  At the end of that blog I was supposed to continue, but I never did because I couldn't figure out which blog to use that day.  What I meant to write about was the mini-tornado we had in April.  The storms were rolling in that night and I tried to stay up and wait for them, just in case I needed to wake Jim up and get us into our bathroom for shelter.  But my eyes refused to stay open and I assumed the storm was taking its sweet ass time arriving, so I went to sleep.  It wasn't an hour later that rain and hail were pounding on the window so loudly that it woke us up.  I was so delirious and groggy that I couldn't form words right, but the adrenaline kicked in and I was very awake.  The wind was like nothing I had ever heard before.  It did indeed sound like a freight train.  I kept pacing the living room saying "Omg, the wind! OMG the wind!" I didn't know what to do!  Then I heard a noise.  I didn't know what that was, maybe a thud with a scrapey sound and I said "what was that???"  Jim said he didn't know.  The Bradford Pear out front was being blown all crazy like and I was too scared to stand close to the window for fear of glass flying at me.  Then, everything got really still.  I got down on my knees in front of the window and looked out, trying to see what damage had occurred.  Then the lightning flashed and I saw it: Our tree.  Our pretty, precious Bradford Pear Tree was split right in half.  The wind ripped it in half.  I started to cry and say "My tree!  My pretty tree!"  Jim just rubbed my back, saying "I know, baby, I know."  He was speechless.  I was numb.  My pretty tree was gone as far as I knew.  The storm was slowing down at that point so I did go outside and take some pictures of it.  My heart was broken.

Life has gone on, we have since gotten a new roof out of the deal, and the remaining half of Mr. Tree still stands with tiny little sprouts coming out of the bare spot.  But I am still heart broken about that tree.  I know it sounds silly, but that tree was our most photographed tree in ten years of living here.  We have 14 mulberry trees, three crape myrtles, a few other seedlings here and there, but ONE Bradford Pear.  Every year on my birthday, Jim would take a picture of me with that tree.  Every fall it would turn yellow, orange and red.  Every Spring, it would explode in gorgeous white blossoms and bees would swarm all over it.  Every summer, it would shade our front window, porch, and a good portion of the yard and the front flower bed.  Every winter, the cardinals would spend their time on this tree, eating at the feeder, eating the berries.  And that scary summer of 2008, the leaves formed a design on my blinds as the sun shone through them and it formed the shape of an angel that was for my eyes only.  It came just at the right time.  I'll never forget that.  So for me to have lost half of that tree was upsetting to say the least.  I loved that tree.

We've since planted a few more saplings in pots to see what we can get to grow.  But nothing can replace that tree. We've watched it grow in ten years.  I miss that half.  Every time I go outside, I will stop and stare at my tree.  I stare at the bald area on the trunk.  I stare at the sky where there used to be tree.  I stare at how awkward it now looks, missing half of it's canopy, but how it seems to want to live despite losing its half.  Very symbolic if you ask me.  A fighter, that tree is.  It kind of reminds me of life.  How sometimes we lose ourselves, we lose our faith, we lose our self esteem, so half of us feels gone.  But the other half remains and we have to just keep going and keep fighting to live.  

We had a few other storms that scared the heck out of me, gave us tornado warnings and scary afternoons and evenings.  We've lucked out and been spared, even when the same storms went on to Alabama to drop deadly tornadoes onto them.  It's so sad.  

And now I'm begging for rain.  I don't know if we can even afford to run the sprinklers this year, so I am relying on Mother Nature to water the yard.  We have some bald spots and scorched looking spots where there used to be shade and now the sun bares down on the yard.  I hate seeing my yard looking all thirsty.  But, well, we have to eat and all that.

OK that was the other part of April that I meant to share.