What the-?

Sunday we were getting ready for our annual Father's Day outing - which I will blog about someday, I promise. I looked out the backdoor getting ready to lock the door, when, what's this?
It's not what's here that's the problem, it's what's not here. Isn't there supposed to be an umbrella in our table? Wasn't there an umbrella there an hour ago? Where could it be? Did someone randomly steal our umbrella?

Um, what? Why is our umbrella way up in the neighbor's tree? How the heck did that happen? Did the wind lift it up? 30 feet? Past three electric/phone cables? How did it get shoved, stake in, to the tree?

And most importantly, how the heck do we get it down?

I don't think it's easy to see in the above picture, but turns out, throwing a soccer ball up to try to knock it down only results in soccer ball stuck in lower branches. Also a wooden stake in is there, too. Now what?


Yelling at the umbrella to come down does not work. And surprisingly, 4 year olds can't throw things high enough ot even hit lower branches. And see the hose? It's too high up for a strong water stream to reach and possibly dislodge. Not to worry, 4 year old, 19 month old, and mommy spent most of the time safely on the back porch.

So, Daddy climbed the fence, with a cleaning brush that has an extendable handle. Which dislodged the soccer ball and stake, but still could not reach the umbrella. It could reach some of the branches, though, so with a little bit (a LOT, actually) of shaking the branches, the umbrella dislodged and fell down, luckily missing the wires. Whew!

Our Hero!

So, enclosed back patio - fenced on all sides. No unfettered channels for wind. And yet umbrella was apparently lifted straight up at least 30 feet in the air, then spun around and driven into tree branches. I suppose it could have been worse.