A Touch of PTSD

Those of us living in the Northeast are a bit nervous about freezing rain. Eleven years ago we had several days of it in a row in what became known as the Ice Storm of '98. We went without power for a week and were among the lucky ones. Some rural areas had no power for up to a month and areas of Quebec were without power for up to 6 weeks.

I well remember being afraid to walk out into the yard because the ice was breaking limbs from the maple trees which came down with a crash every few minutes. If you were hit by a falling 4" thick limb that would be bad enough but add an inch or more of ice and they were really dangerous. The 35 maples around my acre lost about 50% of their limbs in that storm and it took them about 10 years to recover. We lost a couple of them since the storm, in part I suspect because of what they suffered then.

We had freezing rain in the early hours of this morning. It wasn't nearly the scale of the Ice Storm of '98 but after an experience like that your mind jumps back and you hope it doesn't turn into another 3-4 day storm. This one was mild. Maybe ⅛" of ice. Enough to make everything slippery and a few things picturesque. The photo is of a vine on one of the garden trellises. We had a couple of different sorts of vines planted there and I'm not sure what this one was.