More ICE!

Well this will be a winter to remember.  We have had nonstop rain for two days now.  Yesterday we got a snowfall warning that seemed to come out of nowhere.  It turned out that it was only those some miles to the east of us that got the snow, but we did get a bit of freezing rain.  Thank goodness it was just a bit, because a fraction of a degree colder would have made for another terrible mess.

It was very pretty this morning though.  It seems that there was a bit of warmth in the ground so there was no freezing rain at ground level, but everything from a couple of feet off the ground had a pretty layer of ice on it. The contrast of the frosted trees and the green grass was beautiful.

Looking south over our hayfield to the neighbour's property

Looking east over our back hayfield. The Alders back there are pretty battered looking from the previous ice storm

Same place looking south

Iced over Wild Chervil, an invasive weed

   

Looking east over the close hayfield

Icy Cotoneaster. So pretty with the red berries.

Salix integra 'Hakuro Nishiki'

In the afternoon we went out.  Most our ice at home had melted.  Going uphill we ran into more ice which slowly decreased as we went back downhill to the flat land of Matsqui Prairie.  We went into town to pick something up, and went quite a ways uphill, but no ice in that area.  Back down to the flats, but more to the east, and all ice free.  We drove past the place we used to live 30+ years ago, and what a dump it looks now.  Across the eastern half of the prairie towards the Fraser River, and all of a sudden the ice reappeared, and got worse and worse.  We took the dogs for a walk along the dyke there in the pouring rain, it was miserable with an east wind blowing at us. Fascinating to see all the ice again though, but not quite so fascinating to the dogs when a few branches along the edge of the fields decided to crash down.  Everything except the road and the gravel dyke was layered in ice.

Luna figured she had earned a few treats for plonking her butt on that cold and icy bench

Looks like tomorrow afternoon and Sunday may be decent for working on our firewood stash.

Update on the Arch

What arch?  That's right!  We dropped a word in the right ear, he came and looked at the tree, said, "yes, it is hanging over our wires, I'll get that taken down for you".  Shortly after that, the crew that was working on some trees just up the road, and had done a minimal amount of trimming at our place the day before, was back.  We had talked to them yesterday trying to convince them it was their job to take it down, but had no luck.  Private companies are contracted by the utility company to go around and trim trees. Maybe sometimes they need someone cracking a whip at their backsides.  Anyway, there was much discussion, one guy on the phone describing the situation, another taking pictures or video, I heard someone asking if they had rope..... Finally it got underway.  There wasn't much for us to see.  We went and watched a little bit.  One guy in the bucket up above the branches, leaning over and sawing with a chainsaw.  We were inside watching our favourite lunchtime show (no, not a soap opera) and there was a thump and I looked out and the arch was down.

They sawed the big piece up some and shoved those pieces off to the side so that the driveway was clear.  I went out to look and spoke briefly to the guy who had done most of the work.  He looked exhausted and his hair and face were all sweaty.  He said that he didn't know who would be doing it, but someone should be by to do some clean up, which I'm guessing will probably just involve chipping the smaller branches along the road side.  Anyway, I won't complain, as we did say we would just be happy to have it on the ground. That metal box is still attached to a piece of the old power pole, and is strapped to the new pole.  I guess someone will come along and transfer it over at some point.  Our internet line is still not strung back up.  The guy actually showed up to do that while they were cutting the tree, and said he would come back today after they were done.  He was a no show today.  Not too worried, the line may be drooping, but it is fully functional.

The first order of business for us was to get some of the logs off the corner of the fence of the chicken field.  Looking from the field out to the road here.

Larry had to do some sawing to get a couple of them into reasonable sizes so we could just move them.  The end of one was jammed into the wire.

 It is very heavy stuff.  We had a couple of heavy steel bars that we used to lever the logs out of the way.  We managed to straighten out the fence wire to a usable degree and tied it up to what was left of a couple of posts and to the trees.

Most of the wood we will salvage for firewood.  There are a lot of hours of sawing, splitting, picking up, stacking, cleaning up, burning branches,  ahead of us.  We don't work as fast as we used to.

Those big bruisers from the part of the tree hanging over the driveway......we might end up putting a Free Wood sign on them and hope someone takes them away.  Not sure how, they would have to cut them up first.

The Ice Storm

This is old news now, but I thought I'd post some pictures of the ice storm.  The ones that I took didn't really do it justice.  I should have taken more when the sun was shining, but for some reason I didn't.

A shrub in the Bittersweet family Euonymus Atropurpureos as far as we can figure.

Sky starting to clear

Blackberries

And more blackberries

Did I ever tell you we have a lot of blackberries?😉

The old hay baler encased in ice

Stucco wire sculptures

When the sun shone on it all, it was ABSOLUTELY STUNNING!!

This picture does not do it justice, but you get the idea.  Driving past blueberry fields, or scrubby brush, or just about anything with the sun shining through and reflecting off the ice, was just incredible.

Bella said she would stay inside and admire it from a warm spot

The flowering cherry at the back of the house.

The other side of the tree at night with the moon shining through it.  Now I should have used a tripod to get a clear picture, but interesting all the same.

The ice storm was over on Saturday, Dec 30.  We got our power back on after 53 hours on New Years Eve. Our neighbours got it a little sooner, but because our power line had been ripped off the pole, we became an outage of one.  Fortunately we didn't have to wait much longer.  I heard of two different people who were still waiting for theirs a week later!

The ice didn't really start to melt much until Thursday.  There were piles of ice under the trees.  I picked up a couple of branches to show the thickness of the ice. 

An ice caterpillar!

It was an inch thick on these two branches.  

Look how skinny the caterpillar branch is!

Lots of icicles on the windward side of the house

I stole the next four pictures off the internet.  Bradner Rd is to the east of us and a little higher,  and probably more open to the east wind, and they were hit with more ice than us.  I drove along it Tuesday last week in the early morning sunshine.  I had an appointment so had no time to stop, but it was just stunning!  The chainlink fence around the tennis courts was a sheet of ice.

I passed fences that looked like this!

I didn't see this, but isn't it just magical?

And the poor linemen that had to work in conditions like this!  

A big thank you!!

Red sky at morning......

The whole ice storm, tree falling over, power outage has a chapter two.  When the big maple tree at the bottom of the driveway came down, it bumped the power pole, which made it lean slightly.  This made the line that crossed the road in front of us hang a bit lower.  It did get mentioned to a couple of the crews....

Anyway, as of Friday it was still doing okay, was still there.  It was the internet/landline/cablevision line.  We were doing our usual end of the afternoon dog walk around the block.  We got up to the corner where we turn down a lane, and where we take the dogs off leash.  There was a large tractor trailer coming down the road and turning the corner to head past our house.  I looked at it and said, 'do you think this will be the one that takes out the line?'  Larry joked about running down there to see, and I said that I think we will know.... And there was the most incredible boom and flash, the dogs bolted (not far, they were okay), and we knew it wasn't good.  We walked the other three sides of the block and on the last stretch talked to neighbours who had either walked up to the corner or were stood looking.  The truck had ripped out the line and broken both the pole at the bottom of our driveway and the one across the road.  By the time we got to our corner the firetruck was there and we couldn't go through because of the downed lines.  We had to detour through a neighbour's field, cross our road behind the firetruck, climb the gate into the field next door to us, walk along the fence line and ended up walking to the bush and scrambling through there in the dark(thank goodness for the snow still on the ground to light it up a bit). The fence was either hidden in the blackberries or was that 'non climbable' stuff with holes too small to get the toe of your boot in, and we weren't agile enough to get over it.  We would have had to heave the dogs over as well.  

Anyway, we got back to the house and of course had no power once again. The weekend before we had been loaned a generator Saturday evening.  We hadn't returned it yet, so fired it up once again and sat with a lamp on and watched the tv (we don't have cable vision, just use a roof top aerial that David calls 'peasant vision'). Hydro showed up a bit later and were there all night working to replace the two poles and the lines and our power was back on again by 6 in the morning.  We were impressed!  Unfortunately for our neighbours that live on the block across from us, the internet/landline/cable line didn't get replaced for a couple of days. Our internet was fixed later Saturday morning, and since we don't have a landline or cablevision, we were okay.

It will be a winter we won't forget for a while.  

We still have our arch.  We are still hoping that someone might take it down for us, but not sure that is going to happen. I won't bore you with the stories that go with that.  

We've finally had some dry hours the last couple of days, so have been picking away at getting the driveway cleaned up.  Lots of large branches to be sawn up, without touching the arch. The maple is nice to split for the most part.  I like the challenge of trying to split some of the ones that are awkward shapes, but I also know when to give up on them!

So there you are, I've probably bored you once again. 

This photo was from this afternoon. 

Do you like the prop under the arch? 

Ha, it's kind of a joke!

Meredith had said we should prop that side up and make it like the entrance way to a ranch. 

I think this is as close as we'll get!

Wyndson Farm Arch

As mentioned in my previous post, things deteriorated badly on Friday.  A wind was blowing out of the east and the rain was freezing.  Our power had been off for a couple hours early in the morning, and then flicked off and on a few times, and then went off for good just before 1 pm.

Now this picture taken after the storm makes it look like icicles on the clothesline were blown enough  to freeze sideways.  Actually something happened at the other end of the line, maybe a branch falling or something, that caused the line to twist.  You can see the icicles continuing to freeze straight down.  Three days later, those icicles are still frozen to the clothesline.

In the afternoon the ice had got thick enough that branches started breaking, and then trees were coming down.  Some branches off the maple tree near the gate had already fallen, and we eyed the rest of the tree up.  The car seemed to be in a vulnerable position.  When I had parked the car I hadn't been able to get it very far into the parking spot, as it was so icy.  Larry suggested driving it around the back of the house, but to do that we would have needed to take it down to the road and get a run at our sloping driveway, and we couldn't do that because there were big branches down and in the way.  I suggested grabbing a few floor mats and putting them behind the wheels, which we did, and managed to get the car backed up onto the patio in front of the house.  Maybe not totally safe, but much better.

Sometime after dark there was a very loud, very close almighty crash. I looked out of the window just in time to see the cedar trees along the road on the south of our driveway swaying, and there seemed to be more sky showing, so I thought a top had broken off the cedars.  We had already seen some pretty big branches come down below the gate, which had been left open.  We donned our rain gear and grabbed flashlights and went out to look.  We daren't go down the driveway, so went the long way round down the south chicken field and tried to stay away from the trees.  We  could see that a large part of the Big Leaf maple at the bottom of the driveway had crashed over.  I didn't get as close a look as Larry, so didn't realize how big the piece was.

That night we slept downstairs.  There was a large fir tree off the corner of the house near our upstairs bedroom.  I've never worried about it before, but several large branches had crashed off already, and I didn't want to be laying in bed wondering if the next crash was going to be the tree falling on the house.  Needless to say I slept very little that night in the 'safer' bedroom. 

When daylight finally arrived, this was the sight looking down our driveway to the road.  I was horrified to see the size the the maple across the driveway at the bottom.

I am generally a 'cup half full' kind of person, so looked for a 'positive' and was pleased to see that the gate was not damaged and we would be able to easily close it to keep the dogs in.

I was also impressed by the ice markings on the first big log. 

Nature is amazing!

The maple tree split in half at the bottom. 

Larry said to just give him a couple of weeks, he'd get that sucker sawn up!

It just gets bigger, and bigger....

And bigger....

The top of the tree is just to the right of the streetlight in the picture below.  Some branches are at the front of the cedars, some at the back, and some start at the back and end up at the front.  A crew came along clearing the line that runs through the cedars, and trimmed some of the maple branches off.  

The power pole was pushed and is leaning into the road a bit now and the bottom line crossing the road is hanging too low.  We are hoping when a crew comes to sort that out, that we can get some info as to whether we are going to have to hire someone to get that tree down for us. 

Fingers crossed that the power company will do it.

I was kind of worried as we supposed to be doing an egg run to White Rock that Saturday afternoon. 

In the end it seems that 99% of the weight of the tree is being supported by the cedars, so Larry and David were able to saw the bottom branches away and there was room to drive under it! Hooray!!

We were able to drive to White Rock, although there were still trees down on the roads close to home, but White Rock was like a different world with no snow or ice.

The tree also pulled our internet line off the peak of the house, but it is still connected at both ends, so once our power line was reconnected, we had internet again. Yahoo! Right now it trails down the driveway and goes under the big tree.

Each year around this time we try to take a family photo, and aim for a different location each time.  This year I was glad we were late taking it, as the tree became the obvious choice!

Happy New Year everyone!