Looking Back December 26th, 2015

A topic of conversation around here for the last couple of Christmases has been recounting the ice storm at this time, a couple years ago. Even I remember that. As for Christmas last year, I'm not sure. Seems it wasn't bad if I remember right. We were in St. Catharines then though, which is known for its milder winters anyway.

I went for a walk today on my usual path but didn't take any pictures at all, so instead of coming directly home, I went to the park across the street first. It brought back memories. This was what the park looked like in 2013 after the ice storm. 

 

And this is what it looked like today. Nice green grass. This spot is pretty close to where I took the shot above. I couldn't even get to this spot after the storm. There were just too many fallen trees—some were huge—note the stumps. It took the city weeks to get the area cleaned up—other areas of the city were of a higher priority.

This stump is over 2 feet across.

The black on the stumps must be some type of fungus. There sure wasn't a fire here. Anything but.

Not many trees seem to escape wood borer attacks. You only see evidence of them if the bark peels.

They can make interesting patterns.

A couple quick snaps before I went in the house. Colour in the garden on December 26th. These are under our crabapple tree. Jane has told me the name of this one at least a half-dozen times—and I still don't remember what it's called. 

Update: Jane reminded me that it's a type of Geranium that has small pink blossoms.

And this is Helleborus, budding in December—a first for us. Jane picked a couple blossoms from it a few days back.

We were without power for 42 hours during the ice storm. To be on the safe side, we ended up throwing out all kinds of food from the freezer. We kept some but not much. 

We'd checked into a hotel since we weren't sure when the power would be restored. Turned out we didn't need it. We went for a drive after we booked the room, then went home to pack and the power came on. One of life's little adventures that we'll always remember.

Our record-breaking temperatures are slowly slipping towards normal, though there's no snow to speak of in the forecast. That's fine with me.

- fini -