Housebound, day five

Yesterday I walked a few blocks to check on a old friend who lives nearby, and the streets in our neighborhood looked like this. We were expecting a warm-up, but the temperature didn't get above 28 and the freezing rain encased every twig and branch with heavy ice.

Finally! We're above freezing this morning and it will rain (the liquid kind) all day. Still, it will be some time until things are back to normal-- almost 300,000 are without power in the Puget Sound area. Luckily we're not one of them. To add insult to injury, a wind storm is predicted tonight. But everyone is happy this long frozen week is finally melting away.

It's good to hear the drip, drip early in the morning. The palm tree will finally feel warm rain on its frozen head...
Time will tell what survives, but it's amazing how resilient most plants are.

Like bamboo...

Here's the first lines from a famous poem by Robert Frost called Birches. It was written in New England in 1916, and it isn't "about" bamboo smashed to the ground by ice in the Pacific Northwest. Or is it? Might as well enjoy a poetic moment while you check out the wreckage.

"When I see birches bend to left and right

Across the lines of straighter darker trees,

I like to think some boy's been swinging them.

But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay

As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them

Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning

After a rain. They click upon themselves

As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored

As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.

Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells

Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust—

Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away

You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen."

Spring, please?