Trees in Land Park Battered by Tuesday's Rainstorm

Sacramento reluctantly welcomed the first storm of our fall / winter rainy season yesterday. Heavy rain flooded streets; wind gusts up to 48 MPH knocked down trees, landing some on top of buildings. Drivers in Midtown Sacramento jammed cars into each other -- one ran a car into a building. It was a wet and wild day.

I spent part of the day trying to re-stake a couple of young trees in my yard in Land Park. The maple tree I had planted 2 years ago in the front yard had lost one of its stakes, and the wind whipped it so hard that I was afraid it would break in two. The ground was soaked to the point that it could not longer support a stake.

My crepe myrtle in the back yard was not faring any better. The winds shook it like a rag doll and slammed branches to the ground. It also lost a stake.

I put on my rain gear and ventured into the elements with a sledge hammer, new stakes and ties. I was able to secure the maple tree, but the stakes for the crepe myrtle were not holding. There was only one thing left to do. Prune the tree.

It was top heavy and loaded with too many branches, spent flowers and leaves. The ground was too wet to set a ladder on it. The legs of the ladder simply sunk into the lake. I found 2 high spots near the tree and laid down a board to support the ladder. Then I climbed up the ladder and clipped like mad.

The poor tree looked like it had received a bad haircut, but at least it stopped hitting the ground. I might have saved its life. As I climbed down the ladder, my cell rang. It was a caller asking me: How are you?

Wet, was my reply. So am I, he said. He went on to explain that he was sitting in his car in front of one of my short sale listings and wanted to know the price of it. I wanted to know why he was driving around in the middle of a storm checking out Sacramento real estate.

I mean, I had an appointment with a tenant of my new listing in East Sacramento to do my agent visual inspection. Both the tenant and I agreed that Tuesday was not a good day to go anywhere if one didn't absolutely need to go outside, and we rescheduled our appointment for today.

But here was this guy watching the rain fall on my For Sale sign and calling me. It's possible he had to resort to this because his ISP was on the blink. Rain tends to knock out service in some areas of Sacramento. Given the choice between looking for homes online or driving rain-soaked streets, I know what I would choose.

At least no trees fell on my home in Land Park, like the birch tree in this photo from January of 2008. But my 5-foot cactus pear collapsed in the back yard. Some of the succulents look smashed this morning. The casualties could have been worse. We have so many stately and older trees in Land Park that every rainstorm seems to claim some of them.

More rain is on its way for today. I'm hoping that the worst of the storm is over and grateful that the homes on my street did not lose power this go-around.