that caused a great deal of damage. Nothing quite like waking up, and noticing that there’s a fucktonne of tree down, everywhere. No one escaped damage. Fortunately, the only damage to us was our burn can. It was with great trepidation I made the trek to the front, afraid I’d see my Elky crushed. Photos 9 and 10 are of a neighbour’s tree, which is now resting, in great part, on our trees. I feel awful, because I think it could be saved if someone got it upright again, but I can’t do anything, Rick isn’t here, and the house is empty. People are out all over, trying to unblock roads and clean up. We are going to have a very busy weekend. Click for full size.
© C. Ford.
This is what happens when one rat, stuck in a bird puppet, decides to inflate to the natural forty-foot size. The puppet held out for awhile, and then explosively disintegrated. I would suggest checking to see if Canada is still basically where it should be, it very possibly detached and is now drifting at a speed of knots into the Arctic Ocean. The useful advantage is there is now a moat between it and putative trum-pratsland.
The Ents should be arriving to deal with the trees. In the meantime, hide yer axes and piles of firewood — an annoyed Ent swinging a forty-foot high not-so-killer rat by the tail like an Olympic hammer-thrower is an impressive sight to be avoided.
Ack! Glad you are safe. Wind storms are impressive but terrifying.
If it will help improve things, the house Dems are holding a sit in right now led by Rep. Lewis in an effort to force a single vote on gun regulation. GOP has shut off c-span coverage, but Periscope and Twitter still exist, so.
It seems it was close call for the Elky. I’m glad that you escaped the worst of it.
Onamission5:
I slept through everything, and I normally don’t. Last night was an extremely heavy one, emotionally, so I was around enough to note “woah, pretty good thunder grumbling. pretty lightning. need rain.”, then tossed down my meds and whoooosh, out. Then, this morning, staring out the kitchen window at a whole lot of tree where it was not supposed to be.
Ice Swimmer:
Yes. The Elky being crushed would have shattered my heart. I’m very fond of that ancient piece of equipment. She’s won a lot of races. And she’s just fun to drive. I’m glad we didn’t have worse. Last time, a neighbour’s tree came down right on top of a power line and pulled it down to the ground. That was fun.
Last time I saw damage like that was several years ago when the Redhead and I were visiting relatives on the other side of Lake Michigan, and saw severe storms on the West Shore of the same (where we live) on TV. Power was out for slightly over a week after we returned, due to a tree taking out the power line to a dozen houses a block and half away. Very low in the triage rating used by Com Ed, which restored service in order of number of people affected.
Gosh, haven’t seen an outside burn container since the nineteensixties. Even in Dah YooPee, no burning allowed, as I lived in a “city”.
Burn containers are de rigeur here, but you do have to check if it’s okay, weather wise, to burn.
Peas won’t stay still long enough to burn (and a burning pea running though the bush is obviously not a good idea), horses are rather awkward (with a similar danger), and there is no effect on British Industrial Cheddar. The only thing left to burn — that the mildly deranged penguin can think of (besides politicians and lawyers (see: horses)) — is everything else, which gets boring after awhile. How many times can you do the return-to-orbit thing before yer button-pushing-wing tires? So what are you burning? Tattered bird puppets?
Tears were shed for trees that once offered their cool protective shade, then saws go to work. The fire wood pile will be the short term winner.
And many walking sticks will be made.
Blf:
Paper, boxes, stuff like that, mostly.
Stuff that can be recycled, mostly.
Collecting waste paper and board may not be mostly profitable in sparsely populated areas nowadays.
Blf:
Sure, if there’s a recycling station anywhere near by. We recycle what we can, but it’s as well to remember that we’re over an hour away by car from any type of recycling station. So, burn some paper, or burn a whole lot of gasoline?
I appreciate the fact that many people are able to recycle anything and everything, and do it with ease. That’s not the case here, and I’m not up for being frowned upon when I’m the one who knows my situation, okay?
Common solution is a collective local collection point, with the material taken away by truck which is otherwise empty(or has space available). Little-to-no excess fuel burning, and little-to-no excess burning. The law can help: In Germany, e.g., shippers / producers have to take back the packaging.
Also, is the car never-empty whenever you do go an area with a collection point or recycling station?
And sometimes burning stuff is satisfying.
Blf:
That’s sweet. Why don’t you come to North Dakota, and fix everything, Blf?
No, it isn’t. We recycle aluminum, plastic, and glass. As it stands, the plastic has to be saved, then stuffed into the car, it takes many trips, because there isn’t one ‘plastic recycling station’. Only certain types of plastic are accepted at one, there’s more travel involved in getting to a station which accepts old prescription bottles and such. Oh yes, it all has to be washed and cleaned, too, so there’s that little water situation. I already told you I’m not in the mood to be frowned upon. Do you feel like getting a fuck off, too?
I checked Wikipedia for some numbers and North Dakota has population density less than 4 persons/square kilometer. In France it’s 111 persons/sq. km (the most sparsely populated departments are in Massif-Central with 15 -- 26 persons/sq. km). The logistics of waste management must be on a different scale in rural ND compared to urban Western Europe.
Not that long ago I lived in an old apartment building that had more apartments (>100) than a certain city in ND had inhabitants in 2010 U.S. Census.
Yeah, we’re very spread out here. We don’t have all the things other people take for granted. Everything has to weighed against other concerns. Fuck, we don’t even have mass transit. Bismarck finally put in city public buses into play, about 10 years ago.
As for burning, we don’t do much of it anyway. Most of the time, we can’t, because conditions are too dry.
We’ve got a burn barrel—but it’s been years since we’ve been able to use it, due to poorly-chosen intersections of wind/drought/time constraints.
I’ve been agitating to haul off the ever-mounting, and to my mind, increasingly-dangerously-flammable, yard waste pile. We’ve got Son’s trailer parked in our back yard, free for our use—but Husband is still holding out for burning it.
:( :( :( :( :(
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Cicely, yeah, there have more years where I’ve decreed the burnable pile simply has to be hauled off, because we can’t burn.
Sometimes one’s situation changes, and that changes the recycle dynamics. We have a 60 gallon recycle bin, but it doesn’t take larger boxes, without cutting them down so all the pieces fit inside and will come out when easily when upended. I used to take the large boxes to work and toss them in the recycling dumpsters there. That option was cut off when I retired. I haven’t been able to find something similar by the city or the waste disposal company.
The closest I have been able to find is just magazines and newspapers at a nearby Catholic Elementary School.
I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen a burn barrel here and I think the original post is the first time I’ve seen the name of the thing (I might have seen one in some American movie).
People in rural areas here either burn paper and such under the water-heating kettle (normally heated with logs) in sauna* or barn (and curse about the amount of ash that comes from paper) or they make an open fire in a suitable place (for example a ploughed field or potato patch for leaves, twigs, carcasses of sick animals and so).
The open fires do create a hazard here, especially on spring, when dry dead grass can catch fire easily.
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* = Kiuas (=stove with stones onto which water is poured) used for heat is only heated with clean fuel for both practical reasons and tradition, though newspapers can be used for kindling. Water can be heated with dirty stuff.
Ice Swimmer:
That’s a major risk even with a burn can, which is why we can go for very long periods unable to use one at all.