I have not written much lately, even on my holiday schedule, because we’ve had other things to deal with. On Tuesday and Wednesday, there was an ice storm in northern Virginia, and we lost a couple of trees. Unfortunately, we lost these trees across the driveway and power lines.

Things are back to normal now, but for a few days there we didn’t have any phone service or electricity. And we’ve got electic heat: brrrrr.

You can see a larger version of these photos by clicking on them.

In the background, you can see the Jeep, as far up the driveway as we could get it before chainsawing began. What you can’t see is that the generator is in the Jeep. Fat lot of good it did us all the way down there. That’s me in the yellow coat, by the way.

The next day. The driveway is clear, but the wreckage — and the two giant holes in the lawn — remain. The two trees whose roots you see sticking up in the air there (with giant balls of mud around them) were hit by a very large branch that broke off yet another tree. The impact and weight then pulled the two fallen trees right out of the waterlogge, rocky ground.