Hurricane Dorian

Just about a week ago, the Maritime Provinces were hit by Hurricane Dorian, which actually sped up as it powered up the East Coast.  That was unusual, because most often, hurricanes slow down as they approach our area, and tend to reach the Maritimes with just some gusty winds and rain.  That wasn't the case this time.  Hurricane Dorian made landfall in Nova Scotia on Saturday, September 7 with wind speeds reaching 150 km/h (93 mph), essentially a category 2 hurricane.

I had left our home to go for a week's vacation with my parents in Prince Edward Island, starting on Friday, September 6, but Marc had stayed home for a couple more days because he wanted to come to the Island on his motorcycle.  The night of September 6, I slept off and on (more off than on) in our rented cottage on the Island, where I listened to sounds that made me think the roof might come off, and watched the back wall of the cottage flexing in the wind, about 1.5 inches each way, from what I could see.  It was a very scary night.  Marc was woken in the early morning hours by a tree falling on the roof of our house. 

By morning, the Maritime provinces had more than 500,000 residents without power, thousands of trees and power poles were lost, and even a construction crane collapsed in Halifax, Nova Scotia.  Many cell phone towers were damaged, leaving people without service.  In addition, more than 100 mm (4 inches) of rain fell in 24 hours.  Our situation was nowhere near as dire or catastrophic as the situation in the Bahamas, but it was very challenging none the less.

Our vacation was hampered, to an extent, by the loss of power, given that we were in a cottage where the water is pumped from a well, and when the power is out, there's no water.  We did a lot of reading and walking on the beach and enjoyed some lovely times despite the inconvenience of no power.

Upon arriving home yesterday, I was able to survey the damage around our home.  It wasn't pretty.  One of my favourite shade trees in our yard lost its largest limb, which I think is a fatal loss.  I will have an arbourist come and look at it, but I don't think it can survive this kind of damage.

From a distance in a picture, it doesn't look as bad as it does when you get closer, and when you see the size of my lens cap for scale.

The trunk has more-or-less been ripped in half.  Marc started some clean up of it yesterday.

There are some sizeable logs that will be useful for the next time we lose power in the winter - they will be burned in our wood stove.

The falling limb also took out my clothesline.  I will have to have a new post installed.  The old one is laying next to the chicken coop.  Thank goodness it didn't fall ON the coop!

The clean-up of the maple will take some time.  I'm really sad to have lost such a beautiful shade tree.  It narrowly missed my new arbour, for which I am grateful. 

It also missed my raised beds. My beautiful squash vines are pretty much toast, but the root crops are all OK.  The tomatoes have suffered somewhat but I am confident I will still get some more ripe fruits from them.

The tree that fell on the house and woke Marc in the middle of the night is on the back of the house.  It is a very large big-tooth aspen tree (Populus grandidentata).

Unlike the maple, the aspen was uprooted rather than snapped.  You can see it also took a couple of smaller spruce with it.

We are fortunate to have a steel roof, so there was no roof damage.

We do, however, have a badly cracked window that will need replacing.

I feel lucky that my bird feeder poles weren't taken out.  Amazingly, the hummingbirds are still around so you can see I still have the feeders on the window of my home office.

 Removing this tree will take some care and planning to ensure that no other windows are damaged.

I am very grateful for the limited amount of damage we have in comparison to so many others who were affected by Dorian, and am also very glad that none of our animals were hurt.  At the same time, we definitely have a lot of clean up to do, and I suspect I will have to have the rest of the maple taken down by an arbourist.  It is close to our power line and we need to be very careful about that.  I sure hope that's the only hurricane for this year.

Weekend Roundup: L and M

I didn't do my usual blog last week and I'm pretty late doing it this weekend, too.  Just very busy and I haven't been taking many pictures at all.  I feel like there isn't much of interest to photograph - just more ice, snow, ice, snow, rinse and repeat...

I'll do the prompts for last week and this week together.

Starts with L
My goat is named Lucky Nickel. I've told the story before, but for newer readers, I'll tell it again.  Her mom was having a lot of trouble during the birth and I had to call the vet.  The first baby was too big to come out, and the vet was unable to save it - in fact, it had to be decapitated to remove it from the mother, which was very distressing.  It took a long time, and the vet, Dr. Nicholson, had said that any other babies would likely be dead because of the difficulties.  He then pulled out the second baby - a doe who lay on the straw looking dead, but then suddenly coughed and we realized she was alive.  So, she was lucky to be alive, and also lucky that Dr. Nicholson was there, so she became Lucky Nickel (also a bit of a play on lucky penny).  Lucky Nickel's mom died shortly after the birth, which was really sad, so LN was raised in the house on bottles, and was spoiled to bits, which is probably why she remains a spoiled, bratty goat to this day!  On April 19th, she will be 8 years old.

Starts with M
This is a picture of my chicken, Maple.  She is a cross between a Swedish Flower and an Isbar, both fairly uncommon breeds of chicken.  She's just about reaching laying age. 

Maple is often found with her friend, Star, who is an Isbar-Icelandic cross hen.

And here's Marble, who is a Maran crossbred hen, having some melon for a snack.

Long
I've been trying to get out for some walks lately, since the weather is slightly less frigid and the snow and ice on the road is not as dangerous for walking.  This is a view back down the road having walked up the long hill that is part of my 1-hour walk circuit, and I'm about to head down the other side.  I do this part at the beginning of the walk because it is the harder part and I don't want to do the climb at the end.

You can see there is still a fair amount of snow here, and our house is surrounded by woods (and thus shade) so the snow in our yard is still over a foot deep throughout.  The fields in this picture get full sun all day on sunny days but they have a way to go before they will be clear of snow.  It is always a LONG winter here.

Middle
Back to Lucky Nickel for a moment - you can see that her horns have grown long enough that they now meet in the middle - just at the tips.  This can be troublesome in a young animal if the horns rub against each other too much, but since Lucky Nickel is older, her horns only grow a tiny bit each year, so this won't be a problem for her.

Favourites (2 of them, one for each week)
Our rabbits spend a lot of time in mutual grooming sessions.  Here's Epinette patting Pippin on the head, which she sometimes does during grooming. 

Here's my second favourite photo for this week - our cat, Mitten (bonus M) on the middle shelf of my cookbook shelf unit.  He seems to like this spot!

Friday's Hunt v 2.17

Almost didn't make it under the time limit this week.  Again, it's been a busy week and I was away this past weekend at a yarn spinning retreat.  I just got home, and here's my Friday's Hunt post, to keep myself going on the meme hosted by Eden Hills!  The three prompts for this week are "Starts with Q," "Week's Favourite" and "Fall or Spring."

Starts with Q
As I mentioned, I was at the Maritime Spinners' Retreat this weekend, and I had a great time connecting with fellow spinners and knitters.  We were able to participate in a fibre challenge by spinning 4 oz of merino fibre any way we wanted, and then creating a project with the yarn we had spun.  I needed to make something QUICK because I received my fibre quite late, and then had very little time to get it finished.  Spinning coiled yarn is fairly quick, but it also makes a short amount of yardage due to the structure of the yarn.  Short yardage meant a smaller project, and thus a quicker project!  I decided to use my rigid heddle loom to weave the coiled yarn into a short runner or even a neck scarf, just to emphasize the nature of the coiled yarn.  So, this was my quick project.  I'm hoping to do a blog post soon showing all the other projects made with the same fibre.

I like the way it turned out - it makes me think of ocean waves or ripples in a pond.  I might use the woven fabric to make something else eventually, when I have more time.

Week's Favourite
While in PEI for the retreat, I visited McAusland's Woollen Mill, where they make yarn as well as a lovely blankets.  The mill was built in 1868.  It was originally a lumber mill and then became a wool mill.  One of my favourite pictures is this shot showing bobbins of maroon coloured 3-ply yarn which are waiting to be skeined.  I love the contrast of the maroon and the steel and the wood of the empty bobbin.

Here's a bonus shot of the skeining machine where those bobbins are headed next!

Fall
Since I'm in the northern hemisphere, it's definitely fall for me!  Here's a picture of a young maple on our slope in the front of the house.  I do love the fall colours!  I had hoped to take some nice fall pictures at the retreat but it rained buckets all weekend - not very conducive to pictures outside.

Maple Leaf

I decided to have a little bit of fun with a maple leaf that I found on the ground under one of my maple trees.  The leaves, in general, have not all turned red yet.  There are a few that are turning yellow, but this red one was probably the result of a damaged branch or other circumstances that made it turn red early.  It caught my eye, and I wanted to photograph it in different settings.  In part, I wanted to play with lens and camera settings.  Here are the results of playing with a leaf!

I took quite a few shots of the leaf on stones, especially those with interesting lichen or other visually different characteristics.

I took a few pictures of the leaf on pine trees, as if it had naturally fallen into the boughs of the tree and nestled among the needles.

I tried a picture of the leaf against the bark, but it looks a bit too contrived.

My favourite series of pictures are the ones I took of the leaf against the stones that form the wall at the bottom of my driveway.  I liked the red leaf on the grey stones with the lichen and the pine needle debris.  It makes a good setting, I believe, for an autumnal feeling.

I moved the leaf along to one of my preferred tree stumps which has a covering of lichen and moss.  I like this picture too.

The contrast of the red leaf and the green moss caught my interest, and I tried a few different versions of this.

This one captures my favourite elements - the stone, the lichen, and the green of the moss.  I think it might be the best of the bunch, but I still love the ones against the stone wall.  I'd love to know what your favourite is!