14 | July | 2014 | Polilla Writes

Have you ever had the experience of a visitor who came uninvited and left not a moment too soon?

Have you tolerated the overbearing presence of that visitor knowing it was a limited stay?

Have you had major clean-up after the visitor finally left?

Arthur … Hurricane for some, but tropical storm for us here in Nova Scotia, was just such a visitor. Some areas were a week without power after that visit, some still have serious damage to clean up.

At my house we had no storm damage, but here is what it looked like at my dad’s after Arthur left.

This is the hummingbird vine that grows up against the two-storey house all the way to the roof. The trellis was pushed over by the ferocious wind and the vine was damaged so had to be cut to half its height once it was hoisted back up into place.

It had fallen into the lower driveway, blocking it.

This vine will be covered in gorgeous red trumpet blooms the hummingbirds love to feed from in the summer.

This is the side of the house on the upper driveway. The huge maple trees, one in particular, took quite a beating.

The driveway was totally blocked until my husband, and my cousin who happened along, sawed the heavy limbs and got the wood out of there.

You can see the limbs from one tree hung up on the tree next to it.

Dad and I heard the crashing of the limbs when they were being torn off the tree.

I apologize for the poor quality of this photo which I took through the screened window overlooking the driveway at the back of the house. What you see there is the top of the tree in the above image. The wind had snapped it off and driven it over the roof and onto the driveway at the far corner of the house. The thing about that is I’d had Meyya (my Schnoodle pup) out awhile before and I am very thankful we were not out when that happened because it probably would have hit us.