12.27.2007

Before and After the Storm



These are images of the house and yard before and after the storm.
You can see the bulldozer tracks if you look closely where the downed trees were scraped away.
Hurricane Katrina wiped out a very large number of trees in our area.
Our neighbor who stayed, saw tornados move through our yard and watched as trees fell all around.
The large Long leaf pines, slash pines, magnolias, dogwoods, quince, tulip poplars and old growth camellias to name a few... are gone. Now there is way too much sky! Sunlight is great for grass and gardening, but I don't need a "great lawn" .
We miss our shade and flowering trees. I have fewer of the native piney wood shade loving delicate violets and bluets sine the storm... hopefully the few long leaf pines that we have replanted will grow in time.

12.26.2007

A Grazing Gaggle of Geese


The geese wanted to free range this morning
so we let them out into the herb garden.
They raided the bird seeds on the sundial.

12.25.2007

ICE COLD



We had our first really hard freeze here and the ice on the bird baths were at least 1 cm thick. I know that is not much by most of the world's winter standards, but for us.. it's chilly!