Minor disaster in Stony Brook delays responding to emails; Update

At the height of today's storm, at around 8 am, a large branch fell on our roof in Stony Brook. I rushed over and found that while the branch did not crush the roof, its jagged tip penetrated the roof and water was dripping inside the living room. It also smashed a window. We could not remove the offending branch, but managed to get a tarp over the relevant part of the roof, until repairs can be done, after clearing a lot of smaller branches with my small, quiet but trusty Ryobi lithium chainsaw. I will be a bit delayed in answering your requests for appointments, but will tackle them in the order received.
I had not been to Stony Brook since the big storm 10 days ago, and it was impressive, and rather daunting, to see all the debris still everywhere.
I should be back on track in Baiting Hollow tonight. Luckily, because of the rain, all today's visitors canceled. However, at 7.30 am I sat on the front porch, dry in the then light rain, and happily observed the hummers braving the drops to feed. The gray wet background was quite magical, and the heavy rain that came later very welcome.

The above photo is from a few days ago, by Bill Milanese. The flower is lavender porterweed ("hummer cocaine")

UPDATE: I'm back at the sanctuary, and have cleared the backlog of requests. My friend Bob Immoor was here in the rain and reports: "It was both an exhilarating and frustrating experience today. As you have said, the birds come out in the rain, sometimes swarming competitively in groups of up to four, and sometimes just hovering over my head. Unfortunately though, the numbers meant that as soon as one began to feed, another or others chased it away. I did get a few photos of the birds and flowers in the rain though".  Here's one of them, more tomorrow.

The flower is bog sage (Salvia uliginosa)