Historic Early Storm--No Power!!

Oh dear.   It is indeed one thing after another.  The storm caused much more damage than expected.  I'd gotten off relatively easily after the hurricane and the floods--but this time, although it was spectacularly beautiful to watch the world suddenly turn white, all that heavy snow and all those leaves tore down many many lines, leaving me without power.

I had been feeling quite pleased with myself after my shaking out of the lilac branches in the late afternoon.  After eating  my beef stew I was typing away next to my little electric radiator as the snow continued to fall.  At about 9:30--without a second of warning at about 9:30 the lights went out.  No power.   I dealt with it by crawling into my sleeping bag (after dutifully sending a message to the power company).

Woke up in the morning to blue skies. The lilac bush was once again laden with snow, but I do think I prevented further breakage by my intervention.   I was  convinced the power would soon be on again but set about trying to put things in relative order.

The water is run by electric pump, so no electricity means no water, no showers no flush toilets.  Before the hurricane, I'd filled all sorts of containers with water--but this time, along with most everyone else (despite warnings that there could be power outages) I  didn't do due diligence.  Luckily, the same snow that broke the lines can be converted into water to fill toilet tanks, wash dishes, etc.  I soon learned that a bucket of snow equals only a few cups of water--but did manage to accumulate enough to last a few days.

The large clumps made for easy snow harvesting.

The next task was to check the road.  That was initially pretty discouraging.  Towards the end of the driveway, near Wayne and Suzy's there were thick clusters of branches covering the road.  I managed to shake some of them, but had to go home for gloves before I could really tackle it.

In fact it was not as bad as it looked.  Well, it was pretty bad, but almost manageable.  As I studied the branch configurations and was figuring out how to clear them, Wayne and Suzy showed up.  We made some progress, then Wayne got a little hand saw--and wonder of wonders we got most of it cleared.  I returned later in the day with my lopper--and now the road is as navigable as can be.

And as a special treat as we were chatting after the road work, three of the four bears (or perhaps they were a different threesome) bounded across the adjacent corn field.  An excellent sighting.

By the end of the day, I'd accumulated lots of water for the plumbing, a good deal of the snow had melted, and the road was cleared.  The lake almost looked like a fall landscape.