Saturday, October 30, 2010

Storm Aftermath

By now I'm sure most of you have heard about (or even experienced it for yourself) the wild weather system that passed through Minnesota earlier this week. Our house sits up on top of the hill and we catch a lot of wind. Some of my trees have gotten big enough to function as a windbreak -- especially northwest winds -- but most of the wind in this storm came from the west-southwest and I don't have any big trees close enough to the house to block winds from that direction. The finch feeder pole attached to my southwest facing, second story deck was no match for 50+ MPH gusts and this is the awful sight I woke up to last Thursday morning.

Don't you think this poor little goldfinch looks really sad at losing its favorite dining spot? I was really sad too.

So as soon as I got home from work on Thursday, I grabbed the cordless drill and some much longer screws and went to work getting the thistle seed feeding stations functional again. I even managed to find another good perching branch to attach to the pole. YAY!! Hungry and happy finches are back!

After getting the finch diner restored, I decided to walk around the yard and see if there was any other damage. I headed down to the weeping willow tree -- notorious for dropping limbs and branches in any wind event. In my little aspen grove I did spot 2 trees that had blown over (you can see one of them in the center of this picture), but I think they were both already dead, so now Mr. Johnson can rev up his chainsaw and cut us some more firewood.
I think Sophie's following some hot raccoon scent in this little grove.

Surprisingly there weren't too many branches down from the willow tree, but lots of leaves.

I piled up the branches I found and this should be a good start for our next backyard recreational fire.

9 comments:

KGMom said...

I thought of you, and of Lynne.
By the time the system got to central PA it was pretty well blown out.
Some weird weather, though.
Glad the finch feeder is back in business.

Mary said...

It was such a large wind storm, we had turned on our little TVs in our offices during those days for weather news. Yes, in Public Safety, we all have small Sanyo televisions in our offices. Glad you didn't have much damage, Ruthie. Good size tornados touched down and flattened five homes about 30 minutes drive NW from me.

Mama Pea said...

What a wide-spread storm that was. I just now came in from helping hubby pick up the branches from all our trees that went down. We ended up with more firewood and now a BIG burn pile out in the middle of the field. I think we'll wait for a couple of inches of snow to burn it. Glad you didn't have any more damage than you did.

Anonymous said...

We had lots of branches down all over the yard, maybe Anna will take them for her fire ring. Every time we have a wind she gets the remains. The evergreens didn't have any damage at all and all the leaves are pretty well gone. After Thurs nite the gingko tree is empty. Now all our outside cats are up in the gingko tree again, that is their jungle gym.

MOM

stephen said...

Ruthie,
I'm very happy to read that the storm didn't cause severe damage in your area. Thank you for letting us know that all is good there and with your household.
Are 'smores on the menu for the next "backyard recreational fire"?

Ruth said...

The winds died down somewhat when they crossed into Ontario. But there were power outages in some areas. Glad your damage was not worse. That was quite the storm!!

Jayne said...

Glad you all did not sustain too much damage Ruthie. It's been a weird stormy week for sure. I know your birdies were happy to get their feeder pole back.

Lynne at Hasty Brook said...

That was such a strange storm. No damage here other than some blown down branches. We almost had a tree limb come through a window but wound up with only a cracked winsow. Art called our neighbors up at Hasty. They said there was a good five inches of snow on top of a bunch of rain. trees down and the creeks full.

Birdsong said...

Glad you didn't suffer more severe damage! I love the perching branch attached to the top:)