Ice!

The ice storm story........Christmas day 2009

We woke up knowing that we were going to have ice.  However we did not know that we would have this much.  It was supposed to warm above freezing during the day but it never did.  We were supposed to spend Christmas with family eating great food and having a great time.  We never did.  This is a picture of my back yard.

Our poor blue spruce!

Another back yard shot.

I took this picture around 9:00 Christmas morning.  We still had hope then that we would be able to be with our family.

Never happened.

Then around 12:00 the power went out.  We had been scrambling to get things ready for the power outage that we knew was eminent.  By the way...that little bird is sitting on an Elder Jones sculpture.

This is a feather that Brian left on the fence.  Notice the broken rail in the background.  The wind blew and it sounded like shots were being fired from the trees losing their battle with the heavy ice.

Another feather shot.  Nature has a way of sneaking up on you when you least expect it.

Icicles on the fence.

More fence damage!

This used to be a pasture.  The fence line where the trees are is now buried under debris.

This is the mule pasture.  More missing fence.

I was in awe at how beautiful everything was and at the same time scared and upset at the damage that was happening every time the wind would pick up.

Even the weathervane was frozen.

I love the way my garden gate looked.  Made it myself!

After the storm....Melting begins.....Still no power.....Could have been much worse....I am very thankful for all of the people that risk their lives working very hard to restore power to our area.   We had power back within 4 days.

Beautiful Elk Knob state park.   It really is strange to walk on a thick sheet of ice atop over a foot of snow that was still on the ground from the previous storm.  I am a short person and it really felt good.

Well....nothing to do except play Extreme Mountain Golf!  Brian teeing off.

My turn.  Notice that I have on my snowboarding pants and about three other layers.

Now THAT is how you get to the second tee!  Brian reached the bottom without killing himself, so I thought I would give it a try.  Brian was wearing jeans....I had on my slick snowboarding pants......Well, you can guess what happened.  I started down the hill slowly enough and then hit warp speed.  See those trees at the bottom of the hill?????  Luckily Brian caught me before I smashed into them.

Zippy jumped for joy when the sun came out.

The End...........

More Snow Pictures

I guess this dog is blue for a reason.  Brrrrrrr...... You can barely see my stump planter.  These first photos were taken before the second round of the snow storm.  We got about 6 more inches the next day.

Oracle!  He loves the snow and flies around the pasture.

Danza and Eco however do not like it as much.  Eco was trying to get the little balls of snow off of his whiskers.

The poor little minis were not too happy.  May stayed in the shelter with her new coat on the whole time it snowed.  Brian had to plow their paddock so they could get around.

Bumble LOVES the snow!

Even though she is too short to go into the deep stuff.  I have realized that she does not do as well while it is snowing; she tends to have problems with the snow falling into her nostrils and has a hard time breathing.

Out of the way Gus!

Zippy getting stuck.

HELP!!!

Never mind!

After the storm.  The sky was just beautiful and very clear.  This is a shot of Snake Mountain.

We were lucky to have such nice weather after this storm.  We had little wind and the temps were in the 40s.  We got lucky during this storm with the wind.  We could have had some really large snow drifts and that was kept to a minimum.

A nice shot of Elk Knob.  One of NC's newest state parks.

See ya....I am going raccoon hunting!

Zippy Adventure

I started the day with a walk to see the beautiful snow that we had over the weekend.  The wind was not blowing and temps were in the 40's!  We have not been able to navigate very well, because our driveway is still quite covered.  Brian has been plowing snow for three days.  I took Gus the Labrador, with me because Bumble and Zippy are not tall enough to walk in this snow.  They get bogged down and then try to jump through it.  I will post some pictures of that later.  I did decide to take the short dogs for a walk this evening however.  Brian joined us and we decided to stick to the plowed areas so Bumble and Zippy could walk without getting stuck.

Well....as you can see Zippy had a little adventure.  He took off when we were coming up our drive and I was so worried that he was stuck in the snow somewhere and could not get out.  We back tracked and found him doing this.

Please take note here.  This is probably the only time you will ever see a Bull Terrier and a Bulldog treeing a raccoon.  I am just so happy that the little guy was able to escape and was not hurt in any way.  I was scared that he would jump onto Brian when he reached over to grab Zippy.   Poor little guy.   I had to use my scarf as a leash to get Zippy back up to the house.  

He or she looks so sad.  That is a large raccoon!

Zippy

In the past few years I have had a lot of fun with the animals during Christmas.  I am not quite sure that they have had as much fun as I have, but the pictures are pretty neat.  I was going to take some pictures this year with the dogs in front of my tree, but I had a bit of bad luck when my tree decided to take a

dive.  I lost about 15 of my handblown glass ornaments.   Let me tell you, a tree with glass ornaments makes a VERY loud noise when it hits the floor.  Next year I will remember to tie the tree back to the wall.  This experience has also made me revisit the fact that material things are not the most important things in the world and it is best not to waste time grieving over them.  I hope that you all enjoy my Christmas pictures and most of all have a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Bumble Claus

Miss Bumble does not like having anything on her head and I had to put the hat on her while she was sleeping to get a picture.  I could not get her picture in lights because she kept trying to eat the lights.  This picture is from last year.

This is Comet....sweet Comet.  She would pose for pictures and was very easy to work with.  A true professional.

Here we have Benson.  He was a little grumpy when I took this picture.  He was about 12 years old and did not want to put up with my shenanigans.   I am glad that I have this picture of Benson, because it really suits his personality.  He was a bit of a curmudgeon.   He and Comet however were great friends.

This is another shot of Comet.  What a beauty.  I really miss her.

Comet close up.

This is also Comet.  I added the antler and red nose in PhotoShop.  I left the contrail from the plane in the sky because I thought it looked like a Comet.

This is little Miss grumpy Bumble.   She is really giving me the evil eye!   I think she would like to eat a deer and not be a deer.

Even the equines here are put through the embarrassment of posing for a Christmas picture.  Poor little Otis.  I also have pictures of the horses with antlers, but they promised to protest if I posted them.

Here we have little May.  She looks the most upset of all.   I will have to see what I can do this year.  I really want to get a shot of May with lights.  I think it would look neat with the big ears.   I wonder what Otis and Ollie will think.