Remember those “spot the difference” picture challenges where you looked at two nearly identical pictures and figured out the difference between them?

Can you spot the difference in the picture on the left versus the right below? (besides the vast difference in the amount of sunlight in the first photo)

I took these photos minutes apart from one another last night while Steven and I were outside watching a crazy storm come in (I was on the balcony, he was in the yard).

The trees were swaying so much, it was creeping me out. I shouted at Steven, “Look at how much the trees are moving! They look like they’re gonna snap!”

Sigh.

Within a minute of saying that, we heard a loud crack, and the tallest, widest tree in our yard came down (the same one that lost a huge branch May 22).

You can’t tell the size of the tree from the photo above, but two people could wrap their arms around the trunk of it, and their fingertips would just touch. It was massive. Now our yard looks all funky with it gone. We’re both really sad we lost it, but grateful it fell in to the woods, and not so much in the yard (it did take down a few of our invasive species, the buckthorn, which we are completely fine with!) or near the house!

Our neighbors were outside and could hear it fall and called us right away to make sure we were okay and it didn’t hit the house, which I thought was really sweet!

I wish I could get closer to the trunk now to share a photo of it, but you can only access this tree from late fall through early spring. There’s too much brush around it now!

I hope we don’t lose any more this summer. Our ground is so saturated, all it takes is some strong wind to knock over these old unhealthy trees.