New England Halloween Surprise

We had a pretty bad storm over the weekend. For our part, we lost some parts of trees but not much in the way of property damage. We didn't lose power. I have friends whose power is out and have no visible sign of relief.

This is the garden. Just to give you a flavor of what the snow looked like. If you look in the background you can see the body of a swamp maple. More on that in a moment.




This is the persimmon tree next to the garden. It was twice as tall as it is now. Very nice persimmons.












This is a chestnut tree we planted several years ago. It, too, is about 1/2 its size.










Finally, here is the swamp maple I referred to. 1/2 split in the middle. This picture doesn't do it justice since it just shows 20 feet of the main trunk. The tree is about 60 feet tall so this is about a third of what's on the ground.

We're glad we made it through but many people fared worse than we. One friend of mine had a tree fall on the line that fed his house. It ripped off the circuit box. The city will string line to the box but won't fix the box so he's stuck until he can get somebody to repair it.

My friends in Hartford described their neighborhood as a "war zone." No power. Houses broken. Cars smashed. Power lines down. Street cordoned off.

And there are still those who would have us dissolve FEMA instead of making it work.

*sigh*

For anybody out there with 1/2 a brain, the first human impact manifestations of global warming isn't temperature; it's increase in chaotic weather. Massachusetts had its first tornado in generations and this particular storm is unprecedented. Add it to the 500 year floods we've been seeing every few years.

And we huddle right on the tracks in front of this oncoming train, fingers in our ears and eyes tightly closed, chanting to ourselves, "There is no train. There is no train. There is no train."