On Winter Wonderlands...

[ShadowHM]

and devastation.

Last weekend, there was a storm in cottage country. The recent stretch of warm weather was just about to end. It rained during the day, but as the temperature dropped, it changed to wet heavy snow and it just kept coming down - 23 inches of it.

The electicity went off on Saturday evening and was not restored until Wednesday, because there were innumerable line breaks from trees falling.

A cottage neighbour (who lives there full-time, and had the joy of dealing with that lengthy black-out) alerted us that there was damage. So we went to the cottage this weekend to assess.

Our cottage lot is small - 170 by 100 feet. And we have lost at least 20 trees. There is no way to know yet how many, as some are bent so far over that they may not survive. The electricity line that leads to the cottage is under two downed trees. Some of them are literally uprooted; some of them are snapped; a couple have shattered boles and some are 'merely' bent over to the ground.

This is a place with no soil cover. There is bedrock, then about 8 inches of old morraine rubble and a bit of soil mixed into it. Trees take roughly forever to mature. One tree that my husband's grandfather planted a good sixty years ago is all of 20 feet tall. So the lost trees are old.


It is hard to show this in photographs, because I cannot give background adequately to explain what you 'should' or 'should not' be seeing.

For example, you 'should' be able to see from the road to the water, along the side of the cottage. When you stand at the poplar stump, looking toward the back of the cottage, you 'should not' be able to see the cottage at all, due to the number of trees that 'should' be in between.

The 'invisible' lilac is 15 feet high, but it is under another downed tree right now. Birch trees should not look like weeping willows in outline. Cedar trees do stand upright.

The bottom line is: we don't yet know the bottom line. We cannot do anything until at least another month has gone by, and the intervening weather could make the damage much worse.

I do know this for sure: the shade gardens that I have painstakingly been building for the past few years are no longer in shady locations.

But the snow sure looks purty on the trees....

Photographs / slideshow available here:

http://ca.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/shadow1.../my_photos

[Zyr]

Odd how the (well, my) brain reacts; my first thought was, "That poor lilac!" I've been away from them for more than 40 years, and miss them very much. Only much later did I realize that the cottage itself was apparently spared significant damage, or you'd have mentioned it.

From the Department of Inconsequential Silver Linings: The ice crystals on the Tamarack reminded me of camping trips half a century ago, and how thrilled we were to find downed and dried Tamarack branches or trees-- best campfire fuel I've ever used.

Great pictures, and thanks very much for sharing them. I hope warmer weather reveals less devastation than now seems likely.

[Scrape]

Despite the trouble, those are some beautiful photos, Shadow.

[Kylearan]

Hi,

sorry to hear about all the damage, but...some of the pictures are really beautiful! Thanks for sharing.

-Kylearan

[KingOfPain]

Sorry to hear that

*sends Shadow hugs*

On another note, good to see you putting your digicam to use. I was just going to comment what a cool picture this is - I was afraid I will fall.




KoP

[ShadowHM]

Update:

We really did lose most of those trees. :uhh:

After several weekends of work, I am ready now to import some topsoil and start all over again.

First, the electricity had to be disconnected, as the toppling trees had taken the line down.

Second, the broken trees had to be cut down. We hired this job out, and asked the fellow to cut down the one tree that we didn't want too. (Poplars may be fine trees, but they have the most invasive root systems of all. This particular tree had been previously spared because the only way to get it out was to take out the electricity line to the cottage. Since the toppling cedars had already taken out the electricity line, it was a good time to eliminate the poplar too.)

Then we got the electricity company to re-connect us.

Then, on Easter weekend, we moved all the bare poles to a storage area (my husband is convinced he will use them for lumber some day), and burned all the brush. That took two days.

This weekend, we pulled all the stumps and moved some of the rocks that are mixed with the pitifully small amount of soil. We hired a man with a tractor to come help. Many of the stumps were fused together and/or had poplar roots entwined with the cedar roots, and we would have been lucky to pull one stump a weekend if we didn't have his help.

And it is blackfly season. :unhappy:

It looks worse than ever - so open and barren.

For some photographs of the work and progress to date, a slideshow is here.

Next step: Getting topsoil delivered and spread around to give the new trees, shrubs and perennials that I will plant a good start.

It will take a long time to get our privacy back. I counted rings in the stumps - the lost trees averaged 60 to 70 years old.

I had not expected this sort of gardening/landscaping project. But I am going to make the best of it and plunge ahead.