Yes Mary, I saw the news of a couple of tornadoes hitting Brooklyn, that's such an amazing thing. I am glad that your building came through safely, love your thought of honoring the destroyed trees by warming people, firewood is a very honorable end to the life of trees.
How is your recovery from the surgery? So good to hear from you.

I followed it too on the news and the on-line papers. It just don't sound right, tornado in NYC. It's a crazy weather pattern this year. You have a great idea honoring the trees. They have a hard live in an urban inviroment.
How is your shoulder doing? Hope you are on the mend.

Yes,a very close friend of mine lives here but also has a brownstone in Park Slope. She sent me a video which shows some of that awful storm.Glad you didn't get a direct hit.

Yes, I heard the words Tornado and Brooklyn and it took a while to figure out what happened. I'm glad you are ok and did not take a direct hit.
Nice thought about collecting some of the wood and use it in your fire pit. The felled wood is green so I'd say collect it and let it dry for a period of time before using it.

I appreciate your concern and shared relief that my garden was spared! I'm glad to say that a friend's fabulous rooftop garden also escaped. I think, given that he's much more of a gardener than I am, I would have been more upset at the destruction of his garden than mine.

We had a tornado in Brooklyn in the Bay Ridge and Sunset Park neighborhoods (south of where the recent one hit) in 2007. I really, really hope these two incidents are a strange repeat of once-in-a-lifetime events. Although with global warming, weather instability is a big part of the picture. This makes me feel like starting up my compost routine again, although diverting my trash from the NYC landfill is hardly a fix for a global problem. Some little thing I can do to feel I'm playing my part, I guess. Other than that, I can pray. Or move. I almost left the city earlier this year, when I nearly got a job upstate.

The cleanup continues in my neighborhood. Street trees are all trimmed of major branches, so now it's time to tend to the trees in the backyards. It's common to see a line of workmen marching out of tiny little townhouses carrying the cut remains of a 18 - 24" diameter tree. Then they bring the pieces to the street and proceed with chainsawing there, in front of the truck where their mulcher is roaring away. All parts of the tree go into the mulcher -- brown wood and green branches. Nobody has the luxury of time to make firewood.

I'd still like to go ahead with my firepit tribute, though. I can't carry firewood at this point (two weeks post-surgery, I'm healing but have a ways to go), but maybe I can get some neighbors to help. We have space at the back of the building, where the deck overhangs, where we could leave the wood to season before burning it.

We had three small tornados in our town last week - just confirmed as an F1 catagory, which is winds 85 -100 mph. A group of us had goon to dinner and all we got was some rain, thunder and lightening. At the time I was walking a block to my car, less than 1/2 of amile away the little tornado was taking out trees and blowing off rooftops. Made me realize how narrow the path of destruction can be. The town's warning system did not go off until after the event. Glad you were spared, Mary.

Bay Ridge sure rings a bell. I spent some time there in the 50ties, in "Little Norway". I had never heard of a tornado back then, and if one would have happened, I would have been on a boat back home to Scandinavia.