By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
CARIBOU — Nicole Michaud hates a messy lawn — at any given summer day her gardens are neat and tidy and the yard is well kept.
But she’s relegated to a messy lawn for a while after strong winds during Friday’s storm knocked over about thirty trees on her two acres.
Miraculously, aside from a chip here and a bend there, none of the structures on her property sustained damage and no one was hurt during the significant weather event. Michaud was at work at the Caribou Nursing Home when the storm sent her trees horizontal and missed the storm’s fury by about a half hour (but speculates that her dog must have had quite a scare).
She took her first break from yard work on Tuesday in order to give her sore wrists a rest as she’s been chopping, chain sawing, and hacking the trees apart since Saturday — even when she does take some time to sleep, she dreams of chopping down trees.
With the help of volunteers and her own elbow-grease, significant improvements have been made to her land — her driveway is now cleared and she can open the door to her shed — but aside from the tell-tale sawdust that speaks of previous obstacles, it looks like the storm had just hit her River Road home.
“You just have to take it one day at a time, one tree at a time and one stump at a time,” she said.
Of the volunteers that have offered to help Michaud regain her yard from the fallen trees, employees of J.P Martin and Sons Construction took two one-ton loads of branches to the dump on Tuesday afternoon.
They estimated that there are probably 15 more loads of branches — just branches — to take the dump.
