January 16, 2007
The Big Chill
Frozen Dogwood Buds
10PM It is so cold for the area. I cannot imagine what it must be like for the nearly a million people without power this night. Only a few miles from my door, the blackout streaches accross hundreds of miles deep into Oklahoma, one of my co workers has 15 extra family members in his house after their power went out, then last night the power lines failed to his place. Fortunatly his giant wood stove heats the house and he can cook on it too. He told me this morning that his camping coffee pot and thermal sleeping bag he uses for hunting are his best friends.
Glistening Oaks
I stayed home today and worked my desk from here. There were over one hundred fallen trees in our community, some which fell on the roads nearby. I set out for work at six am and felt that it was too risky to go before sun up, and even then it was snowing and sleeting. So staying home was the best thing....12PM 1-16
As it turned out there were trees at both ends of my access routes out of the subdivision, which were cleared by mid morning. Woody went into work but they closed the lot early. It faces the wind and with the wind chill it was below zero, No time to be out trying to sell a car.
The Oaks in our park dangerously coated with ice some of them have had a lot of breakage....
Bella Vista is in a sort of "brown out", they are cutting back power as lines are being repaired to take strain off of the grids. All around our house there are cars, refugees from homes without power in neighboring towns, Our prayer is that the juice stays flowing untill some of these folks get their power back on, because there is no where to go if we all lose power.
I am very thankful that we were spared the worst of this. Co workers that live south of Fayetteville were flooded out, others that are west of here were iced out, we are just cold and amazed at it all. The Kitties walk around all fluffed out and last night they couldnt wait for us to climb into bed so they could get in with us, do happy paws and snuggle up. We listened, the four of us, to the brittle rustle of icy branches with the occasional explosive pop of a ice coated tree limb snapping off and crashing to the ground. It sounds like a war zone, and it is of sorts. A struggle between the cosmic forces of nature, living vs icy death, winter vs summer, cold vs heat... Fortunatly the warm will return and release us from the Big Chill of 2007 very soon...
Crape Myrtles Glazed with Ice
