The storm came late in the night on a Thursday, as I settled into bed. The rain drummed heavy against the roof and spattered windblown against the windows, and the thunder went from a distant grumbling to sharp, angry, near relentless percussion. Then the torrent grew stronger, and the howling roar strengthened, and the rain was going near sideways. Following several spectacular claps and flashes, there was the familiar metallic belch of a transformer blowing, and the power went down.
I had, just the morning before, managed to get our old generator up and running. Running it for just over an hour every month keeps the electric start charged, and keeps the gas from going bad, so I do that the first of every month. On the first day of September, the little Honda had growled to life easily enough, but then sputtered and died just ten seconds later, after which it refused to start. I realized the likely culprit: I'd forgotten to put stabilizer in the gas I'd gotten at the beginning of the summer. The carb was clogged, again. So I treated the fuel in the tank, let it set for a day, and prayed that this would solve the problem.
It did, thankfully, as the cacophonous storm that had just knocked the power out came before a day when the heat index was expected to hit 102 F.
But the task I'd left undone, despite having noted its likely necessity, was shoring up my little Fuji apple tree. The branches on the south-facing side of the tree were heavy with fruit, but there was pretty much nothing on the other side. "That," I thought to myself on more than one occasion, "could be a problem in a storm."
Which it was. Looking out to a garden illumined by the strobing staccato of lightning, I could see that the tree had toppled in a seventy mile an hour gust. "Oy," I thought to myself, lamenting the potential loss of a fine, productive tree. "I'll check on that in the morning."
The next morning, I was busy with my usual post-storm routine. I ran extension cords, got the generator purring, plugged in the coffee maker, then walked the dog through the quiet of a debris-littered neighborhood. Upon my return, I transferred the coffee to a thermos, then hooked up the fridge to the generator. I closed the south-facing blinds to reduce heat load, then plugged in a fan and an extension strip so's my waking family could charge their devices. Coffee, refrigeration, cooling, and light? Done.
Now, out to the fallen apple tree. Inspecting it, I noted that the trunk was intact, and the root ball hadn't even been pulled fully from the soil. As falls go, it was a minor one. I'd looked up strategies for helping young trees survive being downed, and things looked promising if I acted quickly.
I got a five gallon bucket, which I filled up with dozens of nearly-ready apples. They weren't quite as sweet or as crisp as they would have been three weeks later, but they were still tasty, as good as most store-boughten fruit.
Then I dug a couple of steel stakes out of my shed, placed them, and gently pulled the tree upright. I secured it to the stakes with rope, being sure to both protect the bark and leave some slack for movement, as storms were again in the forecast for later that day. The ground was still moist, and the tree took easily to being righted, so there seemed a good chance it might survive.
In the kitchen later that morning, I tended to the apples, cleaning and sorting them for storage and use.
A storm will shape and focus our lives when it arrives. But it's better if we've done the work to prepare for it before that day comes.
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