Mother Nature's Tree Trimming Service... It's Free!

Yes, we're experiencing an Ice Storm unlike anything I've ever seen in this neck of the woods, with Mother Nature hard at work being a total bi-atch.





Until today, I haven't left the house for 3 days but just as I was was starting to show signs of cabin fever, we decided to drive around a few blocks in our hood, just to see the damage. The roads aren't quite so slick as they were early this morning.

                             

We lost a big limb off one of our scraggly fruitless mulberry trees in the front yard and the oleanders look close to dead in the back yard. I guess 3 years of severe wildfires, drought and water rationing wasn't enough so the Old Girl came back to ravage us again. However, we are still alive so it can't be all that bad, right?

We also lost our water well this last summer, which is really just as well since the water had a big hand in all that we lost in the yard, including the grass. It turns out that the water had something like 10 times the sodium it should have had, thus taking out shrubs, lawn and trees, one by one.

After the water well went dry, we had to wait for 6 weeks before the city could get the sprinkler system on city water. They had to dig a trench across our street, stopping all traffic for 2 whole days. I was able to experience two days of a jack hammer, which was way fun. The house has always been on city water but not the sprinkler/bubbler system for the yard. Not a very fun experience but it was certainly more fun than this ice storm.

At this point we're just thankful for no typical high winds, or we'd be in fear for our lives. The last picture was the worst we saw within our 3 block radius. It was a huge red oak tree which just seemed to have come apart and fell over against the front of their house and into the street. Oddly, it didn't seem to have damaged the house, as far as we could tell.

Others suffered quite a lot of damage and all oleanders seem to look the same as ours. Everyone seems to have suffered one kind of damage or another. The ice is thick and quite heavy.

There is no way of knowing what the total damage will be when this nasty handiwork of The Ice Queen is done. It's not the desired way to receive water here, and it still doesn't take us off water rationing, by any means.

Strangely enough, the WIDIOTS (weather idiots) refused to tell us it would be an ice storm, insisting even today that we were getting snow. Ummm, no. Didn't happen. It's been an ice storm since Friday yet no one called it that even once. They're going to have to own up to it in retrospect, if they have the guts... But, probably not.

Since writing this, it has been in the mid to upper 70's, with today topping out at 80 degrees. It doesn't really make me feel *Christmas Cheer* like cold weather does. But not to worry... We're getting freezing temperatures in a couple of days. This weather is giving me whiplash!