Warren, Connecticut.
We have bunches of wild daylilies growing around our place and their leaves (are these leaves?) are quite good at collecting water droplets. I’m out of practice taking pictures so figured this would be an easy way back in. Not as easy as I thought.
Click through to Flickr to play this video. I’ll try to embed a copy at some point.
A pair of pileated woodpeckers working on a stump next to our house.
Note: My sister-in-law thinks it’s probably a male-female pair and I now agree. I didn’t see enough difference between them and didn’t know the female had as much red on her head. So, my narration is probably off.
I heard a pileated call that seemed closer then usual, looked out my office window and this is what I saw. Grabbed my iPhone and recorded this through a window. Clipped the initial futzing around and zooming in.
These magnificent birds are very shy. We hear them in the tree-tops behind our house but never see them this close. It’s not unusual for them to work on trees at ground level though; more insects there.
In walking around our place I found three more stumps with recent pileated wood-pecking on them, hopefully they’ll come back.
I’d say we got between a foot and a foot and a half with three foot drifts in places. Going out to do the driveway… Oh boy.
Warren, Connecticut. During the deep freeze a week ago I went into our backyard to photograph the ice on our stream.
This beautiful chunk was over a rock, standing on its own in the center of the stream. It was like an iceberg except it wasn’t floating, it was really just a rock that had accumulated a beautiful coat of ice.
Warren, Connecticut. We still have no power and may not until Sunday and I’m posting this from a friend’s house in Goshen where they got power yesterday. Anne and I got our first shower since Saturday, it was heaven.
We had a lot of damage at our place, the oak trees hadn’t lost their leaves yet so got burdened down with snow and ice and the tops broke off. One of those tops gently landed on our roof and was hanging by a thread; our good friends at Arbor Services of Connecticut came by and took care of it for us (thank you Leonard and whoever else helped out).
Today I cut up all the big downed wood and piled the brush for the birds to make nests in.
Anne and I are roughing it but we have a great wood stove and plenty of dry wood so we’re warm. We’re using stream water to flush toilets and cooking on a Coleman burner on the deck.
Last night we went out and had a pizza and put the leftover pizza in a secure box on the deck along with our milk and other refrigerator stuff. Unfortunately a raccoon found my pizza and ate it and opened all our boxes and pawed through everything getting red sauce on most of it. Sigh, if life weren’t tough enough.
I’ve been going to the Danbury Mall to use the Apple store wifi network and the mall is nice enough to let people plug into the mall’s power outlets. I bring a power strip and recharge both iPhones, both iPads, both computers, and my iPal radio that I listen to updates of our situation on NPR on.
We’re frustrated but we’re very lucky to have wood heat and we’ll live.
My apologies for lack of posts or attention to this web site. The storm that hit the east coast killed our power and we may be without power for as much as a week more. It sucks. But, we have a wood stove and we’re warm.
Many trees down at our place, a huge amount of cleanup to do over the next month or so. This was a freak storm for this time of year and it hit oak trees with leaves still on them, weighing them down and causing a lot of them to either lose limbs or fall over completely. We have a lot of this around our place. No damage to the house thank god but there’s a large limb on the roof that’s a bit too precarious for me to get and our good friends at Arbor Services of Connecticut will help us with that.
We have no network and so, this site sits unattended for a while. If you post a comment and it’s in moderation be patient, I’ll get to it as I can.
Not much we can do except roll with it. Thank god for Danbury Mall and the Apple store there.
More soon, hope you’re warm and safe wherever you are.
You know the storm is over when a hummingbird hovers in front of the living room window glaring that his feeder isn’t up yet.
All bird feeders back up, our stream is down a foot already, the yard is littered with tree detritus but hey, the trees are still standing so a bit of cleanup is no problem at all.
Many roads in our town are still flooded and closed and some big trees came down but they’ll get it fixed. Snow plows are going by pushing branches off the road (genius).
May all of our hurricanes be this easy.
Warren, Connecticut. Standing on the bridge I made out of telephone poles and 2x pre-Irene (yesterday). Stream running from recent rain but nothing big yet. This stream’s entire drainage is less than a mile before it joins another stream 1/4 mile down from this.
This is 3/4 of a mile of watershed drainage.
Standing on the bridge this morning. Stream getting fuller, making a lot of noise.
The eye of the storm won’t hit for another 6 hours so the stream will most likely top our bridge which I’m standing on as I take this (getting soaked).
Standing near the bridge yesterday, pre-Irene.
Standing near the bridge today, during the beginning of Irene. Water will most likely top the bridge, shouldn’t wash it away (telephone poles are heavy) but who knows?
The path of Irene’s eye will take it pretty close to our house. Looks like Torrington, Connecticut will be where the eye hits. Mt. Greylock near Pittsfield, Massachusetts where we were the other day will get hammered this afternoon.
Town truck just went by with a snow plow on it, scraping up downed branches on the road of which there are plenty.
Warren, Connecticut. This was my submission to The New York Times’ A Moment in Time project this morning.
We have a pair of mallards that come to our pond to mate each year. This year they’re sharing the pond with a pair of wood ducks as well but today the mallards were here. Just after I took this the male got agitated and flew away.
