It was on just such a blusterous day as this

that my Uncle Robert, a portrait of whom you see upon the wall on your right, Piglet, while returning in the late forenoon from a—what’s that?”

There was a loud cracking noise.

And I suppose there must have been a loud cracking noise, although I wasn’t there to hear it, because when I came home at three from running an errand, I found a huge amount of pecan limbs in the back yard, and a large branch from the old Burkett tree sitting on the back (flat) roof.

Matters failed to get better once I got inside and found a four-and-a-half-foot length of branch sticking through a ten-by-eighteen-inch hole in the sewing room ceiling, matched on the other side of the room by an eighteen-inch chunk of another branch sticking through another ten-by-eighteen hole just above L’s sewing machine.

I’ve called the arborist to come clear off the big branch, which will take at least two people and maybe three to move, so he may decide to chop it up on the spot, called the insurance agency, they’ve sent a roofer’s flunky to look at the damage and see what an emergency patch would require, and L is gone to Target to buy a couple of big tubs to set under the holes in case we can’t get a patch in place before the next batch of wet weather comes on Wednesday and Thursday.

The aerial photography:  downed branches from the top

The big chunk of branch

The smaller chunk of the other branch

Where the big branch went through, topside

Where the smaller branch went through, from the top

(ETA:  The Tree Tender has been and gone, leaving me with a back yard full of twigs, a half-rick of new firewood, and a bill for $280.  They also found two other, smaller holes through the roof—but not the ceiling—that I had missed.)

“Supposing a tree fell down, when we were underneath it.”  “Supposing it didn’t.”  Fnord.