I walked outside today and noticed this heart – made by the relentless rain hitting the gravel next to the porch. A perfect heart – isn’t that amazing? It made me smile on this day after the hurricane.

We moved into this house 6 years ago today. Part of what sold us on the house were the 4 large trees in the front of the property: a shag hickory, a weeping willow, a sugar maple and a catalpa. We deeply love these trees. To hear cracking and groaning as limbs were ripped from them on Sunday was heartbreaking. Each of the trees lost one or more branches; in some cases, large limbs. The sugar maple suffered the most. It is the tree that sits the closest to the house. You see it in every photo of the garden or the porch. We are very sad. Don was so upset last night that he had to write a song about it.

Clean up has started. We are grateful for a friend who came over with his chain saw today. That was an enormous help. There is still much to do. There has been terrible flooding in our area, with damage to crops and homes.

We are very lucky that the house was not hit by a tree. Everything seems even more precious to me. Early in the day, before all the devastation happened, we decided to rearrange the furniture in the living room. Long story short: we moved everything around in several formations but ended up putting it back in almost the same position. It really doesn’t work any other way. These little changes have made things just a bit cheerier today. We ended up moving some tables into new positions:

The dollhouse sat on this coffee table – it’s now on a smaller table and the coffee table is in front of the sofa in the den. It almost moved into the living room, but we couldn’t imagine the living room without the round oak coffee table.

We decided to take away the white table that was next to the piano, moved the piano over 6 inches, and now the yellow chair fits perfectly in the space.

On another note – the bowl on the left was in a photo a couple of posts ago. Some of you mentioned how much you liked it. It’s not McCoy. It’s a pattern called Orange Tree by Homer Laughlin. I found these at an auction a few years ago and I love them. This pattern was made in the 1930’s – 1940’s. Here’s the mark on the bottom of the bowl if you’re interested in searching for some of your very own Orange Tree bowls:

Happy Anniversary MHC.

Go hug your trees today.