Warmer in Antarctica than in Illinois ?????

My dear friend Laura, who has a fascinating blog, has persuaded me that it's not only OK but desirable to create blog posts about everyday life. Since my "normal" life contains little material that is nearly as interesting as that in the past few posts--obviously one does not skip off to places as exotic as Antarctica that often--I am somewhat skeptical. Nevertheless, I will soldier on and see how it goes. If nothing else I will be creating a sort of journal of what's going on around here.

When I returned to Southern Illinois from Antarctica on Weds, Feb 13 I left an area where the coldest temperatures I encountered were in the 30's, albeit with some pretty fierce wind chill factors at times. However, when I got off the plane in St. Louis, the local temperature was 16 degrees F!!! Yikes. There was snow and ice all over the place, and, Louie, the van driver who picked me up at the airport, told me the area had been hard hit by a nasty ice storm on Monday and Tuesday. As we drove further south toward Carbondale, the amount of snow and ice noticeably increased, and I noted tree limbs down on the roadside.

I arrived home shortly after 1 pm, and as Louie was helping me drag my luggage up the slippery driveway, my neighbor Jeff from across the street walked over. He told me there was a large limb down in my yard that had pretty well trashed the fence. I immediately thought of my dog, Madison, who will grab any opportunity to flee the yard. However, when I unlocked the door, Madison greeted me as only a dog who loves you can greet you, wagging his entire large body, and grinning and panting and slobbering his welcome. My housesitter had come by on her lunch hour to let him out to do his business and put him back in the house, knowing I was expected in the early afternoon. Thanks, Bridget!

I was so exhausted that I could barely stand up, but after dragging in all the bags I opened the back door to survey the damage. All I can say is Jeff is a master of understatement. There were at least 3 huge limbs down, 2 from a large maple near the north side of the house and one from an enormous white pine on the other side of my yard to the south. I say "limb", but one of the parts of the maple that was broken off was about 10 inches in diameter at the broken stub. That limb had taken out two sections of cyclone fence, bending the top railing of one section nearly to the ground. The top of that limb was lying against my neighbor's house, and I was relieved to see that it didn't appear to have broken the window against which the upper branches rested. Thank goodness! The second maple limb was on my roof! It was smaller than the one lying across the fence, but plenty big enough to have done some damage to my new roof, just put up last summer. I couldn't see any obvious damage, and there was no way I could remove the limb, so I turned my attention to the pine tree. The upper part of that limb was also on the roof, but the base, approximately 6 inches in diameter, lay in the yard directly in front of the heat pump, which it apparently missed by inches. Again, thank goodness!

It was risky to try to assess the damage, since the entire yard was a glazed sheet of ice. During the storm there was rain, followed by sleet, which accumulated to a three inch layer, and then about 2 inches of snow on top of that, all of which was still frozen solid, since it was currently about 20 degrees F. Oh well, no sense crying over spilt milk, or split trees. There was virtually nothing I could do about it, so I gingerly picked my way back to the house to begin unpacking.

About an hour later Brenda, the lady who cleans my house every Wednesday arrived, all bundled up against the cold and accompanied by her husband, Jerry, who does handyman chores for me. He immediately checked out the back yard and announced he would drive to True Value and rent a chain saw to get the biggest limb off the fence and sawed up. He assessed the limb on the roof and decided he would have to wait for the temperature to warm up since the limb was frozen solid to the ice on the roof.

Jerry sawed up the huge limb and propped up the fence so Madison couldn't get out. He assured me he would come back the next day to fix the fence and deal with the rest of the limbs. After he left Brenda was cleaning and I was lying down, too worked up to sleep but too tired to do much else. All at once there was a noise that sounded like a train was coming through the house. Brenda yelped and I came charging out of the bedroom! The limb on the roof had decided it was time to come down rather than wait around for Jerry to pry it loose. The weight of the limb was enough it had dragged loose from the top layer of ice and came sliding off the roof and crashing down into the back yard directly in front of the back door. How it managed to miss the bird feeder, bird bath, and heat pump I'll never know, but it did. As I stood looking at it, Madison shoved past my legs and jumped onto the back stoop. When he saw the limb with all its attached branches in his path, he screeched to a halt, backed up, and whined! Apparently he needed to go to the back of the yard where the doggy loo is located, but he couldn't figure out how to deal with the obstacle. He looked back at me, as if to say, "Make it go away, Mama!", but I just shrugged and told him if he had to go he was going to have to deal with it. Eventually he figured out how to wend his way through the branches and leap over the main trunk of the limb.

When Jerry came back to pick up Brenda, we showed him the limb. "I'll be back tomorrow to cut it up," he promised, and he was as good as his word. Since I hadn't unpacked my cameras yet, it didn't occur to me to take any pictures of this situation. However, after speaking with Laura the following day, I put a new memory card into my little Kodak and snapped a few pictures.

It had warmed up considerably by Friday, when I took this picture, but you can still see quite a bit of ice. The green plastic fencing holds the leaves and small branches raked up last fall, so I can compost them. To the right you can see bamboo, which sustained no damage that I could see from the ice. There's a lot to be said for being able to bend.

This shows some of the logs from the middle section of the largest limb, the one that took out the fence. Again, you can see the bamboo is upright and undamaged. I love that it stays green all winter. Peeking out at the far right of the picture is a leg of one of my patio chairs, which were stacked at the end of the patio. Somehow the limbs missed them too, or I'd be out buying new patio chairs this spring.

Where the ice and snow have melted it's very slushy, muddy and still treacherous to walk on. I did manage to get to the feeders and put out

sunflower seeds. Within minutes the yard was full of cardinals, sparrows, finches, and later some greedy grackles.

This is the other side of the yard. See what I mean about the heat pump, and also my compost bin and storage shed, which also had a narrow escape. Jerry had already dragged some of the branches around to the front, but said he'd have to wait to load up the rest, since he couldn't get his truck into the dump site because the road was still bad.

The sound of whining chain saws fills the neighborhood today, since I'm not the only one with downed limbs. At least my power was only off for a few hours on Tuesday. There are some folks in the rural areas around here who still are without power. I expect I'm going to have to hire a professional tree trimmer to clean up the fractured stubs and take down a few other large limbs that could come down in the next ice or wind storm. I might not be so lucky next time. As near as I can tell, the roof appears undamaged. The thick layer of ice that was already on it when the limb came down probably saved my new shingles!

About an hour ago my next door neighbor rang my bell to tell me Madison was out of the yard. I checked and found that the limb that broke the fence had jostled the end post attached to the gate, moving it so that the gate latch barely catches. Appparently while barking and lunging at a passing dog or the mailman, Madison pushed the gate open and took advantage of the opportunity for a little walkabout. I scolded him and he was suitably chagrined. He knows he's not supposed to leave the yard unless I'm with him and he's on a leash. I found some wire and implemented a temporary fix on the gate, but there's another job for Jerry.

When I went out front to bring Madison in, I noticed several bright yellow crocuses blooming like crazy near my front patio. It's in the 40's today, and the smell of spring is in the air. That's the way it is in Southern Illinois. We can go from extremely nasty weather to the promise of spring in a couple of days. Chances are, however, winter is not quite done with us. According to the newspaper, local farmers and orchard growers are nervous, worried about premature budding followed by another cold snap. That happened last spring and we lost nearly the entire apple, peach, and blueberry crops, plus some of the early vegetables we look forward to when the Farmer's Market opens on the first Saturday in April.

So that's how it is here in Southern Illinois on February 18.