Day 1:
Thursday morning and falling snow darkens the sky... many of my photos appear to be in black and white, when in fact it's simply the result of the ongoing storm. Our earlier snow had disappeared with some major rains a few days earlier.
Snow had been falling since the previous evening and the gardens had begun to fill up...
They called it "Snowstorm Draco"... I think "Draino" might have been more appropriate because when these couple of days would be past, I felt drained of energy! "Draco" refers to a large serpent or dragon... I guess that works as well because I'll tell you I was "draggin" when this storm was over!
Once I completed taking photos on Thursday morning, I got to cleaning out driveways and our parking areas that were filled with about ten inches of heavy wet snow by then... the first clean-up took three hours...
The snow backed off a bit around noon but soon returned with a passion. By 12:30 p.m. our power went out and we would not see it again for 29 hours. The wind was ferocious but my new fence and windbreaks really made the yard rather cozy as I spent part of the evening getting the heavy snow off many trees and shrubs. I learned something about myself... I would have been a horrible pioneer! The longest night of my life ensued. When I wasn't feeding fuel to a 40 year old generator every hour... it hadn't been started in ten years (I know... I'm still amazed) all there was to do was sit and watch the flickering candle light... now that's kinda cool for an hour or two, but all night long... no way! We did get a bit of excitement later in the evening as every carbon monoxide detector went off in the house. Apparently the fumes were sucked in through the garage and dealing with it did pose a challenge to help pass the hours. All I could think about was those poor folks who had this sort of a situation for weeks after Hurricane Sandy... I can't imagine how they managed.
Day 2:
May I add... without water... I felt like I was ripening nicely!
It would be into the evening before we finally got power, but what a gorgeous, albeit windy, day. The remainder of this post will be photos from Friday. There is a goodly amount of damage... broken branches on various white pines and the 20-25' arborvitaes may not recover... some actually broke off at the ground level. Many of the fastigiate English oaks are damaged as well. This is a good lesson for the future... I'm only planting conifers that can handle the weight of the snow and wind... weepers for example. I should have learned this lesson years ago, but better late than never! I'm not upset though as I see this as an opportunity for more change in the gardens... (if you recall... one of my favorite things!)
Enjoy the photos and I'll see you sometime after Christmas... Blessings to you all!
Larry
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