Thursday, July 25, 2013

Counting Blessings Part Two...

We stare at chaos.  We stare at all that remains to do to fully recover from the tornado.  Sometimes, we snap at each other.  One problem is that the old barn is hindering our progress; another is the rain that we have been getting this summer. It seems each time David gets the tools plugged in and ready to go, the rain comes down and its a race to get it all put safely away again.  So, what to do?

We keep moving forward with the little things.  Today I'm beginning to move out roses, ferns and border grass from the garden that is placed on two sides of the old metal shed.  Since the barn/garage will (eventually) sit where the shed now sits, those plants have to be moved away to make room for first, the new slab that will be poured and then for the construction of the building itself.  We continue to stack wood from the trees that came down.  David works on little things; he put a cat door in the Gazebo wall today (the cats will temporarily have no place to go once the old barn and shed are gone) and worked on a few other things in there.

Every little step forward makes us feel just a bit better, but still, we stare at chaos.  So, when frustration begins to take over, we count our blessings.

Blessing Six and Seven:  We replaced the water treatment system in 2004.  New systems are much more energy efficient.  Our system was nearing the end of its life span and had to be repaired last year (2012), we had plans to replace it this coming fall after we got through the expenses of the wedding.  The tornado took down the Holly Tree which came down upon the well house and the treatment system, destroying both of them.  Although we were without water for almost 48 hours, we now have a new energy efficient treatment system.  Only a few days before the tornado struck us, David warned me that he would be rebuilding a new well house in next year's project time because the old one was starting to have some rot and also was too small to be able to easily work on the pump and treatment system when needed (normal maintenance). His plan was to build it to be a mini version of the Gazebo.  Insurance paid not only for the new system but also the new house that is currently being built.

Blessing Eight:  The new Barn/Garage; we planned on building one when we moved in nine years ago but put aside that plan because of the state of the old barn that bordered our property.  Four hurricanes in 2004 and numerous tropical storms in the years past - specifically Faye who stalled over us for three days - took their toll on that old structure.  We had spoken with our Farmer across the street many times about either our buying the barn from them or his doing some repairs on it...with no success.  All we could do was pray that it would go eventually go down in a way that didn't come down on our structures.  (One might possibly be thinking "well, why did you put your structures so close to it? The answer lies in the way the property boundaries were laid out when the yard was cut out of the farm so many years ago, there was no where else to place those structures.)

In the end, it was trees that took out our structures and the old barn.  With three months of rain in only three days followed by a tornado on that last day of rain, those trees didn't stand a chance of surviving such a direct hit.  When the 100 year old pecan tree was uprooted by the storm, its roots lifted one corner of the barn as the tree fell onto our shed and slab.  The barn roof and siding blew off in the storm as the structure itself came down and went through our metal shed along with hail stones the size of golf balls.  Finally, the winds blew the barn as it fell so that its remains literally lay on our buildings.

This is probably the most difficult "blessing" to remember as we count them off one by one; because this is the one that will take the longest to complete.  The old barn has to be hauled off bit by bit before we can remove our old shed and the destroyed concrete slab.  We can't even begin to rebuild until all of that is done.

But in the end, this will be probably the greatest blessing beside our survival of the tornado.

We just have to keep remembering that!






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