Dan's Ramblings

Dan here ~ 

Christmas evening, and what a week it has been. Violent winds and torrential rain overpowered us last week. We had a little over 3” of ice in the pond last Sunday. After the storm the ice was gone and there were branches and trees down all over the area. The pond rose about 10’ up the beach and the storm runoff is still pouring in. 

We were out of power from Monday morning until Friday morning. A rather large tree blew over across the driveway and onto the power lines after the drainage ditch saturated the soil.  

Calls to CMP went nowhere, we were trapped until they finally showed up Friday morning. It took them about 15 minutes to remove the tree. By this time we had been babying the generator in an effort to conserve fuel. With the tree gone I immediately called for a propane delivery. I was informed that because I had not called earlier I would need to wait until after the holiday to get a delivery. I said there was no point calling earlier because they would not have been able to drive down the driveway. Back and forth went the conversation and has us hoping for fuel this week in case we get hit again like we did last year with back to back power outages. We continued to baby the generator until the power was restored.

We had a nice lull in the storm during the late afternoon last Monday, the sun came out and we had a beautiful rainbow, a double even. 

We got the driveway cleaned up, hauling most of the small branches down to the fire pit and burning them. 

After they got the tree cut I proceeded to clean up much of it. Most is split and stacked. 

We were “gifted” a swim float from up the pond somewhere as a result of the storm. I managed to get it pushed over down the beach to get it away from in front of our house and anchored it to a tree. 

Today I got out on the beach and could get some of the pine needles out. A lot were frozen in place, but I was able to remove 5 wheelbarrow loads and a lot of sticks. A few less for the clean up next spring. Although beach is still a mess, there is not much else I can do with it. Who knows with this year, it may warm up again. The pond has re-frozen but only about 1” thick.

We had our usual grouping of Eastern bluebirds join the other birds for their Christmas dinner. 

I did get quilt #43 for 2023 finished before the storm. I am very pleased with how it came out. I again used the concept of a framed set of 4 smaller blocks (in this case 4” finished) Added a sashing strip, this time with 1-1/2” V-Blocks making a star in the middle of the set.

I fussy cut a chickadee into the center of all the stars. For the sashing strip I used 3” V-Blocks set together in groups of three. Two pointing in one direction with the middle one oriented in the opposite direction. I framed this 3 block set with background fabric larger so I could trim sashing to 12” x 5” unfinished. This now matched my framed blocks of 12” unfinished. I put it together, added the borders and began thinking about #44 for 2023, which is now well on its way. 

2023-43

Until next time stay safe and dry. I hope all is well and you enjoyed your holiday.