Add a Storm, Subtract Half a Tree

We had a wicked storm come through the Midwest this week. Everyone in the area was hit pretty hard, but we were pretty lucky all things considered.
We did lose electricity for about 12 hours, but some people still don't have theirs back on yet. One of our friends might not get power back until Saturday. That's 5 days! All we had to put up with was manually opening the garage door, and cereal for lunch because we have an electric stove.

Ok, the other casualty of the storm was half of our plum tree. Thankfully it fell in the yard, not on the house.
The ironic part? We had already scheduled to have that tree trimmed next week. Oh well, now they can look at it and see if the other half can be saved.

I thought we were going to have to wait a week for the tree trimmers to remove the downed tree, but I was in for a surprise. Our next door neighbor (who seems really nice but we just don't talk to that often) came over and dropped off his chainsaw for us to use! Maybe it had something to do with the heaping handful of snow peas from my garden that I gave him the day before the storm.
Chain saws for snow peas... that's my kind of barter!

Dear Husband (DH) learned and used a chainsaw for the first time!

 We are left with a large pile of branches. I tried to call someone to haul them away, but with no luck. There are so many trees and branches down around town, they are focused on cleaning up the schools and businesses. They aren't even taking non-critical residential calls yet.

We are so blessed that no one was hurt, and nothing major was damaged. It even gave us a chance to make friends with a neighbor!