I don't yet know if the trees around the vineyard suffered in the windstorms we had over the past 48 hours. It was especially gusty yesterday morning and into the afternoon. We got less than an inch of rain in all. I woke up at 5 this morning and, from the sound of it, it was pouring outside. I just rolled over and went back to sleep for another hour.
These are photos I took last week, before the storms. They show what the landscape around the hamlet looks like now.
It's pretty stark, don't you think? A few trees blown over every winter. When the day dawns in an hour or so, I'll go out there and assess the situation. I don't have to go out as early now that the hunting season is over. Hunters normally arrive at 9 a.m. sharp.
It's not as cold now as the photos make it look. As you can see, the grass is green even in the dead of winter. The round balls of growth among the tree branches are clumps of mistletoe.
This last photo shows the little road that leads down the hill to the highway and connects us to Saint-Aignan, which is two miles away. We have to be careful when we drive down because you can't see around that curve. If another car is coming up the hill, both cars have to drive on the shoulder to pass each other. So far since we've lived here — nearly 14 years now — the road has never been blocked by a fallen tree. And no falling branch has pulled down the phone line and interrupted our internet service.
It's funny that I wrote what I wrote this morning. Walt just went with our neighbor the mayor's husband to try to move a tree or big limb that has fallen on our phone line down the hill a ways. If you don't see comments or posts from me later today or tomorrow, that will mean the line is down and we have no internet service.
ReplyDeleteI went and helped a little bit. We got the tree off the wires after the mayor's husband cut it in a couple of places with a little chainsaw. So we still have phone and internet service.
ReplyDeleteThat was close, I guess.
DeleteWe are all dependent on the internet these days. So we were lucky that the tree on the wires wasn't too big or heavy. We actually brought it home to burn in the fireplace.
DeleteIt's fun to work on a neighborhood project, especially when it gets you firewood and internet service!
ReplyDeleteThat is true.
DeleteJust like the frozen fog, mistletoe is something I've never seen in the US.
ReplyDeleteThere is a North American species of mistletoe, apparently, but I don't remember ever seeing it, or not often anyway. Hard to remember. I'm not sure what the geographical range of mistletoe in North America is. Maybe it's too cold for it in northern regions, and/or too hot in southern parts of the continent. I have read that European mistletoe has been introduced in California.
ReplyDeleteWe have mistletoe (gui) here in WC. In fact, we took down a tree last year that was full of it. We wanted to avoid the tree falling into the main road into and out of our little community.
ReplyDelete