Picture day
Ice storms came through here on Sunday and Monday (click on a picture to enlarge).
This is our neighbor’s tree:
The crape myrtle bush in our front yard:
Our persimmon tree:
Each blade of grass and each twig was encased in ice. My son is showing off a blade of grass and a twig here:
Everything was encased in ice, which is pretty when it’s your lamps, like this:
But not so nice when it damages your trees
or goes on power lines. I didn’t get any pictures of the power lines, but here’s the sort of thing that can happen:
We lost power for about nine hours on Monday. There are several hundred thousand people still without power, so we consider ourselves fortunate.
The wind-up radio I bought on a whim was a real blessing, since we didn’t have gasoline for our generator. The natural gas was on, and the water was fine, so we were able to have hot meals and hot chocolate. The cities here are smart; they put priority to the water treatment plants and homeless shelters, then get people working on the lines right away.
The kids were upset today that they had to go back to school; our school district is the only one in the area that was up and running. 
So that’s where I’ve been the last few days. How are you all doing?
December 14th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
wow! I am glad you are ok, thats a crazy ice storm. I sure hope you get a warm snap for a day or two to thaw out.
December 14th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
Eh, it’s been around freezing all week, not even any sun. We’re supposed to get two to four inches of snow tonight.
At least we have power. There’s still over 100,000 homes without electricity, five days out.
December 18th, 2007 at 1:51 am
We’ve been really baking a lot of breads around our house as well! M y wife makes a really simple and very soft and flavorful wheat bread, also from home ground wheat flour from white wheat berries, as well as a standard white bread for everyday school lunches and such. We don’t use wheat gluten, but you can find dough enhancer in any good baking supply store, or even grocers that have a good baking section. Also, since you now have a sourdough start, you absolutely must try sourdough pancakes. The wife makes them on the weekends and we have yet to have any leftovers. You’ll never go back to mixes! I’ll try to get that wheat recipe up on my blog, perhaps this weekend. Good luck with the baking, maybe it’ll help warm up the house from all the ice and snow!
P~
December 19th, 2007 at 11:21 am
I’m going to have to try white wheat berries, the flour I’m using is from the hard red ones. Sourdough pancakes sound great! I’ll look into a recipe. Thanks