Readers of my newspaper and my social media friends know that Tuesday, July 11, 2023, a severe thunderstorm struck the town where I live, Byng, Oklahoma.
![A very large branch from the maple tree in my front yard dangles from the tree by a thin piece of bark, blocking my driveway. The tree closer to the camera, a redbud, also contributed to the mess.](https://richardbarron.net/giantmuh/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/driveway-blocked-07-11-23aweb-644x431.jpg)
I don’t know if the storm was straight-line winds or a tornado, but it made a lot of noise, and did a fair amount of tree damage.
Fortunately, only a small number of structures suffered any damage. The house where I live, for instance, lost just one siding panel, which I nailed back up with no trouble at all.
Power lines across the street were taken to the ground by falling trees, and the power was off for 13 hours as a result.
The trees – mine and most of my neighbors’ – got pretty roughed up. Two maple trees along my 100-yard driveway, for example, dropped large branches onto my driveway, such that while I was trying to figure out how to clear them out of the way so I could use the driveway, my next-door neighbor Mike showed up with his tractor, attached a chain to the branches, and pulled them into the pasture, out of the way.
![Neighbor Mike Nipps ties a chain around the largest of the down maple tree limbs to move it from my driveway.](https://richardbarron.net/giantmuh/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/driveway-blocked-07-11-23cweb-644x431.jpg)
Those weren’t the only trees of mine that shed limbs or need further pruning, but it allowed me to get the cars out of the driveway without any off-road excursions.
The last couple of day, I’ve use my six-inch, battery-operated chain saw to dice up some of the branches into manageable sections, allowing me to drag them to the brush pile.
Marry this for a minute with the fact that our guest at Ada Sunrise Rotary Friday was Briana Coureur, who talked to us about paths to health and fitness. I told her that this activity, dragging branches across a pasture on a summer evening, was a legitimate workout, and she agreed.
I still have a way to go. My most-damaged tree is the giant black walnut on the north side of the house. One entire main branch blew down, though only mostly, since it is still hanging on by a sliver of bark. Other parts of this 125-year-old tree are damaged too. My plan is to clear out all I can by hand, then re-assess.
![You can see that the 125-year-old black walnut tree north of the house took quite a beating in Tuesday's storm.](https://richardbarron.net/giantmuh/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/storm-07-16-23-1-644x429.jpg)
Such a gift to live on your patch. These are the worthy dues paid for the privilege.
I respect your respect for nature.