What a Storm! High Winds Took Most of Our Mulberry Tree Down

Except once, years ago, when trees were literally bending down from straight-line winds and our apple tree never did straighten up completely, I've never seen wind and rain move as fast as they did last night. I was scared enough by the weather outside and the storm news on the TV news that I wore my bicycle helmet as I sat on the couch knitting in case one of our big trees fell on the house. I should have been in a small interior room like the bathroom, but I wanted to see what was happening.

Just a few nights earlier, I woke up to thunder so loud that I asked Jim if there'd been an explosion. Lately it's been really muggy. Kids running during an athletic event in Cedar Rapids had to be taken to the hospital for heat exhaustion in the last day or two.

When I first moved to Iowa in June 1974 from Ithaca, NY, I read in the Des Moines Register about a man who stood on his gas station roof to get a good view of the tornado sweeping toward him. He didn't get down in time and the tornado swept him to his death. So I knew I shouldn't have been so curious, but I wanted to see the storm.

Still, I was startled when my husband peered out the back window into the dark and said that our mulberry tree had lost a big branch in the southwest corner of our backyard. The branch was big enough and had enough leaves that it buried our large backyard prairie patch. In the morning, we saw that the mulberry had lost two big branches. One fell north and one fell south. Our back deck is littered with smaller branches from our ash tree, but Tree Care had already treated and cabled the ash tree, so it didn't break and fall on the shed or the house. Phew!

Now I can hear Trevor and his assistant from Tree Care going to work on the mulberry branches. The tree can't be saved, unfortunately, although the forked trunk and branches that didn't break off can wait for now. Trees are down all over southeastern Iowa City. Our next door neighbor has big branches down from a silver maple. Our neighbor down the street looks like she's lost at least half of her big tree in the front yard.

Trevor is feeding the branches into a wood chipper out front and I'm afraid to look at the naked tree in the back. That mulberry planted itself in our wet, wet backyard and grew in an environment that would grow nothing but [kitty] willows from the Mennonite Relief Sale. We let it live since it was brave enough to grow in a drained swamp. The forked trunk will remain for now while Tree Care takes care of everyone else who needs them.

I asked the estimator earlier this morning what to plant instead.

"A tulip tree," he replied at once. "They like wet environments."

A tulip tree it is. I don't know what it is, but I'll be looking for one.