Damage assessment: I have a ton of tree limbs to clean up and a section of fence came loose, but considering the many fences I saw that were blown down entirely, and the many uprooted or snapped trees (including a willow with a trunk that was a foot in diameter that had snapped clean in half) picking up a few branches and nailing a fence back together ain't nothing. My son reported in, he lost two trees at his house and both fell on the cars in the driveway - his cell kept cutting out so I don't know how badly his car was damaged, but it is drivable so it can't be too bad. It's an old clunker anyway, a tree falling on it may have improved it.

Other neighborhoods, especially the ones with lots of big old oak trees, were much harder hit. There are lots of trees on roofs today. It appears that the northeast side of town took a harder hit because the northeast side of the eye was the strongest. There's a LOT of damage around town, I feel very fortunate to be sitting here with power and cable and just a little yard work to do, and we know we are far more fortunate than the folks farther south, who got the Category 2, 3 and 4 stuff. Charley was damn nasty to Florida.

I filled my one empty trash can with tree limbs (our garbage men won't take yard waste unless it is "containerized") but the other cans have trash in them and the sharp twigs would go right through trash bags, so I can't do much more cleanup until Monday evening. I'll scrounge some long nails and fix the busted fence section later - I'm glad it's only loosened and not busted up on the ground, many of the neighbors lost enormous sections of their fences. I still don't know what hit my house at the height of the storm, but I don't see any damage so whatever it was, it just made a noise and didn't hurt anything.

Right now I think I'll go to the garage and see if I can find long nails to fix the fence, or at least get some twine and pull the sections together until I can go buy some. Happy weekend.