Corn and apples are down. The rest of us are up at Lester's Flat.

As The Husband predicted, his beautiful cornfield (see previous post) was destroyed by Hurricane Irene. Several of the ears were about 2 weeks from picking, but the wind took down almost every stalk. I will go out later today to see if I can resurrect some of them. The tomato plants are also struggling to stay upright, but that has been a battle from the beginning. Most of the ones that were staked and still upright, pulled the stakes over with them when they came down. I am also going to try to rescue a few of those today.

Our apple trees probably hold their largest crop ever, and that caused one whole tree to come down (in photo) and another to lose 2 big branches. The apples are so heavy on every branch, even after the wind knocked so many of them to the ground, that I am surprised we did not lose more.

Overall though, we came through Irene in better shape than a lot of people in this area. State Highway 28 was closed just north of us because a tree brought some wires down. This was close to Cousin Greg's house and took out his power, and the wind and high water level in the lake took out the Reef Shark (his boat). At least Greg's house and ours are both on higher ground and survived the storm, as did all of the humans and critters. The Reef Shark spent yesterday drying out on our front lawn, and is being repaired as we speak (I think).

For some reason I do not understand, the Chicken Girls and Roo spent most of a very stormy Sunday outside in the wind and rain. They would come back in every so often, completely drenched and looking pathetic, shake off the rain and go right back out. You go girls! We, the wimps, drove to the Chicken Shack in the car.

And, speaking of critters, who is this large critter that Irene sent to our house? It looks like a mosquito, but its body (minus the legs) was about 2" long. It was on the screen porch when I let the dogs out the morning after the storm. Yikes!

Note: The critter is apparently a crane fly, also known as a mosquito eater, even though it does not eat mosquitoes. I posted this on my Flickr photostream, and jumpingboy identified it.