Photos / Sheila Lennon

If an old treetop falls into your yard, it's considerate of it to slot itself harmlessly between the fence and the beanpoles. You can see the broken trunk of the leftmost tree along the left edge of the photo above.

The bed on the far side of the trellis is growing beets and a couple of pepper plants, which are visible and unscathed in the detail below. The trellis held back the broken apple bush that drapes over its right side and kept fallen branches away from the little tomato plants in front of it. The trellis is now a slight parallelogram.

Another bright side of Hurricane Irene, so far: This is a view to the south, so we'll have more light on the garden next year. And this is just the left side of the garden.