looks like it's time to buy a chainsaw

nope, i haven't updated in a bit, for two reasons. one, it didn't seem as though anyone was checking in anyway. secondly, i was too busy playing in the snow.

and then we took a u-turn from playing in the snow to watching everything get coated in ice and hoping the electric lines didn't come down.

i heard a crash around 4am thursday morning and sure enough the neighbor's tree was down in our yard.

but we fared pretty well considering. we lost power, but it was a street issue not just our line, and it only lasted a couple hours in the middle of the night. last i checked 280,000 in the puget sound area were without power that may not be restored for a day or more.

 this is the tree i was most worried about. see that big branch leaning to the left? see those branches from a smaller tree poking up from the bottom of the picture? by the end of the day, they were touching.

 

here's why. those thin twigs of the weeping birch were coated with ice as thick as my finger. today thankfully it's all crashing to the ground. 

in all 5 limbs came down from this tree, none falling on the line leading to the house. 

one did land partly on the roof but another limb caught most of the blow and no damage was done.

living in washington i thought we'd have more evergreens but this is the only one. 

you can see it's a little lopsided now.

i had to stay clear when taking pictures, chunks of ice the size of baseballs were tumbling

 down out of this one. not to mention that a huge branch that i watched break is still lodged in the tree waiting to come down.

something pretty in all the mess. 

last night this one gave way. when i heard it i assumed it was the neighbor's tree finishing itself off. 

i didn't like this tree. it was in an odd place and wasn't much to look at. 

but it sure did go out in style.

the chicken wire that covered the top of the pen the previous owners kept chickens and rabbits in.  i had to resist the urge to shake it and watch the ice shower down.

this is our "pond" which is now host to a few tree tops.  when i'd come back here the day before i was hearing a snap and a crash every 15 seconds or so. there are trees all around us in all of our neighbors' yards. it sounded like some of them fared far worse than we did.

if you look to the left of the frame you'll see two trees leaning towards each other and branch from another making a sort of an A shape. the path between those trees is normally clear and how we get from one part of yard behind the pond to another.  you can see at least 3 trees in the right half that have been snapped in half. i see a lot of bonfires in our future.

 standing halfway back in the yard looking toward the house. there's the stable/coop on the right and the demolished tree spread out on the ground to the left.

 looking around toward the back half of the yard. the pond is behind those trees. the big tree laying down was like that before.

here you can really see how surprised i was that we didn't lose power. the twigs that are 4 feet or so off the ground, from the two branches you see arched over at the top, were touching the ground just earlier this morning. 

i'll be sad when it's gone, but i'm relieved to see most of it over with.  i'm going to try to finish the year in review by the end of the month, but for the next few days, i think i'm just going to be enjoying the snow. and maybe clearing a few branches.