Morning after...Hurricane Irene

taken this morning

Thankfully Hurricane Irene was downgraded to a tropical storm by yesterday morning. I'm sure there would have been more damage if it had stayed a Category 1 hurricane. We only got a 8/10ths of an inch of rain during the whole storm, and most of that came on Saturday, when at times the rain was coming down so hard that the gutters on the roof were overflowing.

Lots of tree branches and leaves came down with the high, whipping winds. I even found lots of the apples from our tree on the ground.  We lost power in the morning, and then it came back on for a short time. Around 11 a.m. we lost power until around 7 p.m. I had just finished lighting lots of candles when the power came back on. I blew out the candles, and we immediately lost power again. Relit the candles, and the power came back on. The lights flickered for a bit, but we have had power since. Area towns are still without power due to so many branches coming down of the electrical wires.
During the storm the little hummingbirds kept coming to my feeders. Sometimes the strong winds would blow the fierce, little birds off the feeders, but they kept coming back. The hummers were the only birds I saw all day long.
Here are a few pictures I took of downed branches.
you can see where this maple tree lost a big branch
big white pine branch
 
Tom's tomato plant...cage tipped over and roots pulled from the ground
    Tom's tomato garden with the cages tipped over from the winds
this morning as I opened the kitchen slider to the deck to take a few photos of the hummingbirds on my feeders one little bird kept trying to land on my camera lens. At first it startled me having it hovering so close to my face. Wish I could have gotten a picture of that. All summer long I hadn't seen as many hummingbirds that were going to the feeders this morning. By the time I got my lens adjusted they were off and fighting.

My friend called me this morning to tell me that someone she knows had gone to a birthday party not far from where I live yesterday, and two bears showed up in the back yard, and were busy ripping down the feeders. I guess her friend took photos of the bears. We have been reading in the paper that there had been

 sightings in our area and in neighboring towns. Yikes!!!

While out doing errands today I couldn't believe the number of huge trees that were knocked down in the storm, and big limbs were everywhere. Many big limbs are still on telephone and electric wires.