On ice

We're near the end of our second day housebound because of the ice storm of 2007 (that should be in all caps with theme music, I think). Yesterday, we made it out of the house for some grocery shopping and a trip to get the expansion pack of World of Warcraft — but Mom, it comes out today and we do have the day off from school. The street doesn't really look icy, does it? — before the snow and sleet started to fall again mid-morning.

The garden — and everything else — is coated with ice at least a half inch thick. It's beautiful and strange.

We lost one large limb of the big magnolia in the front yard this morning. We were sitting in the living room chatting when this huge boom sounded from somewhere outdoors. I don't know why I hadn't thought about any of our trees losing limbs but somehow it hadn't occurred to me. We went out just to take a look around and there was a limb, probably eight inches in diameter, lying propped against our neighbor's house. Fortunately, it not only didn't damage their house but also seemed to have spared the mountain laurel that it grazed on the way down. So far that's the only limb that's obviously broken, at least on our property. A tree in our neighbor-on-the-other-side's yard split and half landed on our roof, again apparently doing no real damage although we'll have to get up on the roof to see if any shingles were scraped off. We called a tree guy this afternoon and, surprisingly, he said he could come out tomorrow and get it taken down and maybe do something about the ragged break in the magnolia as well.

The orchid tree in the backyard is bent nearly to the ground as is the Old Blush and Maggie roses. I'm worried about breakage in both of them although I think they'll survive the cold just fine. The coldest it's actually gotten here is about 28 but mostly it's stayed around 30 so I don't think much of anything will be lost because of cold (okay, I'm hoping since this is the most protracted cold spell we've had in a long, long while; who knows about some of the newer plants).

I tried to shake some of the ice off the orchid tree but the cracking sounds scared me. I couldn't tell if it was ice cracking or the tree itself so I gave it up and came back indoors. The orchid tree still had almost all its leaves (as, of course, did the magnolia and the roses) so they're in the worst shape with ice all over not only the branches but the leaves as well.