Winter Aftermath

April 18, 2021 by Erin Wade in Yard Work

It is, of course, Spring - for nearly a month now, technically speaking. And with spring there is always yard cleanup. It’s an inevitable, unavoidable part of the season out here in our old house.

Yard cleanup is one of those tasks which never seems to be easier from year to year - I don’t ever gird myself for this activity, look around the yard and say: “hey, not so bad this year”.

But this spring is something... special.

Our past winter really offered some beautiful snowy vistas, with freezing rain followed by freezing frost coating trees earlier in the season, and then later alternated with wet, heavy snow just coating everything. It was truly impressive at times:

But while it’s truly a natural spectacle, it’s also naturally hard on the trees. I realized this a bit even at the time, as the old fir tree line remnant at the back of the property had some fallen limbs. It turned out, however, that they were simply the most outspoken members of our arboreal family. The others - especially the maples, stoic in their presentation - were apparently hiding their pain until they just couldn't any more. As late winter thawed into spring gusts, all of the broken material these stalwart soldiers were holding in was then released in a cathartic blast of broken branches, sticks, and twigs.

And so we have yard cleanup.

Not only is the volume of these prodigious, the number of very large branches on the ground is really quite astonishing. Enough so that I’ve actually separated out several of them as being big enough to cut up for firewood:

And the thing is, it isn’t all done - not just yet. The pictures here represent two separate weekends of activity that mostly removed and the things that were on the ground. But in some cases - for both the evergreen and deciduous trees - they aren’t ready to part with their damaged limbs.

In the case of the maples, branches break free and splinter off at the base, with portions of the limb remaining attached. You can see them hanging in the trees, just waiting for the wind to twist and turn them enough that they can finally break free. And for some of these I can reach them with my handsaw and a latter, or with my telescoping pruning doohickey:

Others are simply too high up for that, and will need to come down on their own.

For the most damaged trees in the old tree line there were two sizeable branches that were broken and twisted to the degree that the piny part of them were laying on the ground. But the soft, malleable nature of these trees is such that they were still attached - they had broken, and would soon completely die, but they didn’t know it (one could hear them saying softly “I’m not dead”, but they weren’t fooling anyone... or was that just the wind?).

For these, then, more substantial effort was required. And for the first, and smaller of the two, I initially started to work on it with my handsaw.

I did this for about three minutes of exhausting, largely vain effort before I remembered that I actually own an axe...

And that was definitely better. The first one separated with relatively minimal effort. The other one was broken higher up into the tree, and I ended up needing to cut it up in sections to get it down into workable pieces.

I always find working with the axe very satisfying - it’s a real workout, it lets out all of the frustrations of the week, and makes one feel, well, rather manly. However, by the end of working on the second branch I’d be lying if I didn’t at least idly wonder why I don’t own a chainsaw...

My two separate weekends of this were nearly a month apart - one in mid-March, and then this weekend. Finishing it up became a thing, tho, because the grass has begun to grow again, and it’s really hard to mow over fallen branches. This put some urgency into the idea of moving forward, and so I and my yard crew had to get to it.

They are good company, if not really good help. And no so great at posing for pictures...

A Little Winter Color

February 28, 2021 by Erin Wade in Country Life

To the south side of the house we have a large evergreen tree. It sits just outside my home office windows, as well as just to the left of the large picture window in our dining room. This has been a delightful source of entertainment over the years that we have been there, because it is a year-round favorite of our feathered friends.

Usually, in the winter this is a contingent of LBBs, but this season I realized that we had an additional, somewhat less usual set of tenants occupying our natural avian apartment building.

It’s not unusual to see cardinals out here - they stay in Illinois year round, and I see them both in the yard from time to time, as well as when I am out cycling in the snow. So catching the flash of red the first time or two was not a surprise. But when it kept happening I suspected that this fine gentleman had taken up residence.

And when I saw the lady of the house I was more certain.

She was a little harder to catch under the tree than he was. I’d see her there from time to time, but she was usually in a position that made a pic difficult to take, and/or she would relocate before I could get into position to capture her image.

And then a couple of weeks ago she apparently warmed up to me enough to spend a little time outside the office window:

And that pretty much cements it in my mind - they really do appear to have taken up residence. And so far they seem to be good tenants - they keep their area clean, don’t play loud music late at night...

But I am concerned that she might be hanging out with some rifraf...

When this picture was taken we were absolutely not seeing signs of spring. About a week before Punxsutawney Phil had run from his shadow, and of course we all know just how reliable the weather predictions of sizable rodents are.

...which is to say, probably about as good as those of any other weatherman...

But the point is that the robin just isn’t supposed to be here yet, right? He’s the metaphorical sign of spring - a season that was a month and a half away in a technical sense, and at least a few weeks away in a felt sense.

So I was concerned that this robin was a bad-boy, here to be a corrupting influence on our otherwise incorruptible lady. It might as well be wearing a leather jacket and engineer boots.

Apparently my perception of the behavior of robins is a bit off the mark. It turns out they do hang out in winter weather, and alter their diet to match what is available in winter weather. This article on the Cool Green Science website covers all of that and more about these red-breasted folk, and it’s a good read.

So - I guess it can stay, as long as it doesn’t cause any trouble...

Winter Lessons

January 10, 2021 by Erin Wade in Weather

I grew up right near where I live now and, while I moved away for sizeable chunk of time in-between, I have lived in northern Illinois in one place or another for most of my life. And, given the way our seasons work here, about half that time has been in the winter.

One would think, after all that time, that one had seen it all. But every time one thinks that, winter out here says “hold my beer”, and then we get something like we’ve had over the past week.

It all started with freezing rain changing into snow. While this is treacherous - loose powder on top of a sheet of ice makes steps, sidewalks, and streets an impromptu and undesirable skating rink - it’s not new in and of itself. We get to contend with that combination at least one or two times each winter, it seems. And it can offer some visual delights when it happens, something to appreciate as long as you don’t really need to go anywhere in a hurry.

But it was followed by freezing fog. This is much rarer - I don’t think I’d ever even heard of it until the past 10 years or so, after we moved out here. This is a situation where fog occurs when the ambient temperature is at or below freezing. It causes low visibility, just like fog always does...

Top view without fog, bottom view with. There could be monsters out there and we’d never know till it was too late…

...but because fog also keeps moisture suspended in the air at close to ground level, it also coats everything with that moisture. And, of course, then it freezes.

Frost on top of ice on top of frost on to; of…

While it is considerably less common, we’ve had freezing fog out here a couple of times in the past decade. Mother Nature’s twist this time, the novel idea she came up with while she was in her cups, is to have it hang continuously for oh, say 3-4 days in a row.

It was like living in a Stephen King story. I’m just glad we were at home and not trapped in a supermarket. And when it lifted late in the day on Wednesday I was astonished to see that there were other houses on our road. It had been so long - I’d forgotten they were there...

The longer the fog went on, the more ice accumulated on, well, everything.

Looking out the windows each morning became an exercise in determining how many additional limbs had fallen from the day before, finally taken down by the accumulating weight. The remnants of the old tree line at the back of the house had a particularly hard time of it.

It also offered up the novel puzzle of trying to sort out why the garage door wouldn't open - each time I pushed the button the automatic opener would try, and then give up. Walking - carefully - around to the outside revealed a door so coated with ice that it now weighed more than the opener could lift.

Pro tip - gently smacking it gently with a rubber mallet is an effective removal approach. And it offers some exercise in the bargain as well. I’m sure it will soon be a part of a CrossFit routine.

While this was all going on I was mostly content to wait and observe, while being thankful that the power hadn’t gone out.

Which, of course it then did, in the wee, dark hours of Wednesday morning. Fortunately it was a brief event this time around, relatively speaking. I’ve gotten into the habit, when this happens, of driving along the power line network that feeds the house to see if I can find the break, and this time it was about a mile down the road and around the corner. Most houses in the area have some type of lighting that is on all night, so one can extrapolate if one is on the right track by looking for where the lighting ends. Once I found it I called it in to ComEd. I fancy that this makes it easier for the line workers to get us restored because at least they don’t have to find it first. I don’t know if it really makes a difference, but at least I feel like I’m doing something.

You know, I do like learning new things and all, but maybe someone could let Mother Nature know that I think I’m good when it comes to winter weather phenomena. And while you’re at it, maybe cut her off from the bar...