Day Two, Send PortaJohn

Apparently our water supply is reliant on electricity, and yesterday the tanks went dry.  I am writing this from Athens, where the power is still on and homes are blazing with artificial light, inside and out.  Meanwhile at home, we carry on with a kerosene heater and candles, coming out for heat, light, and of course the all important functional indoor plumbing.

The storm that started on Tuesday left the area looking something like this (photos by Marty and my son Ben):

This is our back fence.  See the big tangle of vines?  That’s my jumbo wisteria.  Note the ice coating the cable and electric lines leading to our house.

This is the tree in our front yard, and the neighbor’s house across the street.  You can see the approximately 1/2” of ice we received overnight Tuesday into Wednesday.  I am grateful it wasn’t the 1” we could have received.  Today the wind kicked up while we were scraping the overnight accumulation off the car, and you could hear the branches creaking like arthritic knees.

This is the field at the end of our street.  The trees are all frosted and the corn is barely a memory.

This is the field by the county home.  The hills are beautiful in their frosty coat.  It’s a Currier and Ives landscape, to be sure.

You can see how the ice weighed down this tree near the Route 33 interchange.

This is the intersection of Routes 13 and 550.  Look at the piles of snow.

More trees on the side of Route 33.  Some of the lower branches are broken, hard to see in this photo.

Finally in town, the East State Street exit.  More traffic than there was on Wednesday night, and they have power!

As beautiful as it is (and it is beautiful, like being on the set of Narnia when the Queen is still in charge), I will be very grateful when our power and water are back.