Starts with D
We had a major ice storm earlier this week. For the provincial power utility, it was the worst ever storm on record for power outages. There are still people without power. We lost power for one night, but fortunately it was back on the next day. Anyway, the letter D applies to lots of things related to the storm.
Dropped (or Downed) tree branches. We had a lot of them, and there were also downed power lines all over the province. It's taking a long time to clean up. This branch is over part of our driveway - it's a big one!
Here you can see the damage at the top of a tree.
Here is the piece that dropped to the ground from that damaged tree - it nearly fell into the sheep and goat pen, but was stopped by other trees in the way!
Drooping trees. The ice was so heavy on these birch trees, they were drooping down to the ground!
Dripping water, due to the temperature going above freezing for a short time after the storm. Here you can see the drips on the top part of my bird feeder pole.
The driveway was a rather dangerous - rather like a skating rink!
Week's Favourite
It's not a great picture really, but this week I was very excited to see a male evening grosbeak at my feeder for the first time here in Sackville. I hope he will come back!
I took a lot of close-up shots of the ice after the worst of the storm was over. Here are a few of those that I thought turned out well. This old, dried birch leaf was encased in ice.
The cheerful red of this crab-apple still shows through its icy cage.
The yew shrub's branches were also encased in ice.
I think it's fascinating how this branch looks as if it has thorns, but those are just formed by the ice encasing the branch. They must have formed when the precipitation was between rain and freezing rain, so as it dripped from the branch, it froze.
Finally, another tiny leaf - see how its serrated edges are so clearly defined inside the ice, and you can even see the patterns within the ice caused by the freezing water.
