It’s been nearly a year since 110 mph straight line winds knocked trees into our house and tore up our yard. The house was repaired after five months. Our yard remains needy.

Today was a windy day, but I no longer sleep with my purse and change of clothing in the basement. I’m still on alert for potential sirens, but no longer fearful. Flashlights and the hand-cranked weather radio remain downstairs. Windy or not, today was a good day. All morning, I spent in revision mode. All afternoon, I worked in our backyard. This evening, after my DH returns from his ever-persistant meetings, we’ll probably relax to a mystery, where the bad guys always get caught. Yay! Good day.

I recently decided that I was tired of our neighbor promising to remove his three trees root balls from our backyard — upon one you couldn’t even see our chain-link fence buried in the overturned dirt. The bottom of the fence was pulled over the top bar, and six-foot root branches of 1″-4″ diameter stuck out into our yard at face and chest level. I think of myself as a somewhat patient person, but I wanted my fence back. I wanted my yard back. I was tired of the gaping holes in the ground.

Spring brought the desire to start planting more grass and to replace my border garden. (My east side Children’s Garden is coming along, too.) Two weeks ago, I’d called for a fence company to come. During the wait, I started filling in the 5′ holes left from the overtuned trees, chipping away at the ball roots myself with shovel and handsaw. This afternoon, the fence guys came. (Whoo!) While they worked cutting away the fence and hacking more of the roots — even a Bobcat couldn’t budge the smallest one — I planted four of the five Arborvitae trees which I’d bought last week. I am SO pleased! Sure, the five trees barely go above the top of the chain-link fence, and sure, I can still see seventeen houses out of our livingroom picture window (v.s. parts of only two houses before the storm), but there is just something soothing about seeing a living green wall, even if it’s short.

The fence guys will return in 3-4 days, after the cement dries around the posts. In the meantime, I’m to dig and saw away at the fenceless roots so the men can replace the fence. I only need to clear 8″ from the fenceline. When they are done, I will cut back the remaining roots sticking out of the 5′ tall mound and sow grass seed upon it. Our neighbor can continue promising each month that he’ll take care of them, but in the meantime, the tree mound will look pretty-green from our picture window.

I have been so green-deprived since the storm. Things are looking up. Things are looking green.