Monday, December 23, 2013

My Yard is Mother Nature's War Zone

I don't think I can handle any more drama. First being sick (and technically still sick) and then the big ice storm.
The storm has covered everything with between 3/4 to a full inch of ice. As you can see it is affecting the trees and plants. Any time spent outside you can hear trees cracking and breaking and giving way to all the weight of the ice.  

Clean up involves violently chiseling away at the ice with heavy metal garden shovels. After two days only part of the walkway to the house and about half of the driveway are mostly clear of ice. It all just breaks up in large ice chunks that you have to fling into the yard. The ice is so thick on the ground that you don't break through and the chucks just go sliding across the yard.

On Sunday afternoon we lost power for only about an hour. But as we were going to bed around 10:30pm the power went out again. This time for much longer. We promptly got the generator out and running by 11pm and it ran till 4am when power was restored.

Still not sure if I can get my car out. At the moment there are lots of icy branches hanging over the driveway, so you don't really want to be under them shoveling, just in case they give way and fall on you.

As you can see the maple in the side yard is experiencing all sorts of damage, and so far about 5 different large branches have come crashing down. I still go out and feed the birds and squirrels, but I don't go under the tree, I just fling the food and it slides into place at the base of the tree. There is going to be an incredible amount of debris to clean up this spring. I am already thinking of renting a chipper.

No comments: