Some icing on the cake

That’s what the last rains brought us - kinda. Mount Wilson received a nice light sprinkle of white and made us remember that we can have everything here after all- Snow and surf. Mount Baldy (or Mount San Antonio to be correct) has had snow for some time now and is mostly hidden behind the clouds.
We also made some progress with the cleanup after the storm- after the tree crew was done chopping down the huge trunk (firewood for years to come) the full amount of the damage became obvious. The worst for us, though, is the landscaping. The area where the tree hit was our most beautiful spot- and now it looks like a plane went through. Some of the palms may recover, but some got hit really hard and I can only hope, that they will survive and heal in time.
One look at the bright side- we now have an extended view towards the Northwest and see the Verdugo Hills and Mount Lukens now.

Disaster strikes the Haus

In the night from Wednesday to Thursday, unusually strong winds hit the North East. From Pasadena to NELA, trees toppled and power lines went down. The winds reached speeds of up to 120 mph -this compares to a category 2 hurricane! Around 3AM the unthinkable happened: The huge Aleppo Pine tree in the rear that we had pruned only three years ago could not withstand these winds and started to fall uphill towards the house! It narrowly missed the roof, but hit the balcony, deck and devastated the entire garden including the wall of the future jacuzzi area. The rail on top was squished like hot spaghetti! For the next 2.5 days, electricity was down, traffic lights didn't work and we had a hard time to find someone who could remove the tree so that we could assess the whole damage- Pasadena and South Pas look a lot worse- many trees had come down there and crews were working long shifts to free roadways again. We finally found a crew that was able to cut down the tree in an afternoon and haul the foliage away (we kept the trunk for firewood. The palm tree garden is gone entirely including the ground cover- and the trees will most likely not recover.
But we got lucky in bad luck- if the tree had fallen on our neighbors house which is closer to it, it had caused a lot more damage.