Windstorm

While I shall always remember this day as the one on which the restoration of power after an outage caused a pet cat  to fly into a frenzy and tear my aunt's eyelid, we had some trouble as well: we returned home to find the tree I had asked NB Power to remove had snapped about 12 feet from the base! Fortunately, it fell away from the wire and across the driveway, blocking it completely. No matter. About 45 minutes later, the tree was a small pile of slash and a heap of firewood.
This summer, Jo noticed that the upper portion--most of the tree, in fact--had failed to produce foliage. There were some needles on the lower branches (visible, in their ruddy autumn tones to the left), but the top was dead. I used the online form to suggest that NB Power cut it down before it fouled the lines to the right (leading to the workshop) or across the street (a primary line). We emailed back and forth, but we returned home on Friday to find the tree down. It broke across the garbage bin and felled the driveway marker. Interestingly, we never did lose power, and the Grateful Dead--the old spruce along the back line of the property--came through unscathed.
UPDATE: NB Power declined to remove the tree, stating that it did not fall within their maintenance standards!