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.