Stormy Selfies and a Guest

 Petcretary is working this weekend...first one in over three months! Wow! (Everything is fine and she can do her job as before...)

Anyways; In Canada where she is from it is a long weekend since it's Victoria Day on Monday. Its a fun day of celebrations. We don't have any new images to show you of ourselves, so we thought this redheaded dude would fill in well, and red is a good color for Canada

Mr RedHeaded Woodpecker is enjoying his peanut!

We had some horrible storms come through our area on Thursday night, into Friday, with at least three tornadoes touching down, two of which were very close to our home. The power outs are phenomenal, and the outage map looks like a broken up jigsaw puzzle...petcretary needed to go to the store for groceries, so she'd have them and not needing to go out on her working days...anyhow, she had to make major detours to get there, since the highway was closed...as were many side roads. Downed trees and wires all over the place. 

Amazingly we and a few others nearby did not lose power...but the areas to the south, north and east of us, who knows when they'll get their power restored. 

In all the years we have lived in this home (since 1983, and 1987 when we both were here), we have not ever had a storm this ferocious come over us. and we've had some humdingers, but this one will go in the books as the worst.

When she finally got back, she did her usual walkabout of the yard after any storm to make sure the fence is OK. OMD!!! OMD:((

There are all kinds of trees uprooted, or broken off, and some of the neighbor's trees did the same, and fell on the back of the fence, squashing parts of it. He had no idea, until *she* pointed it out to him...he'll need to get out his chainsaw to move them off the fence, and then we may need to install a temporary one till we can get it properly fixed. In our yard, there are a few trees hanging in the tops of other ones, threatening those as well. What a huge MESS! 

Downed tree right in the middle of a nice patch of may apples...

The edge of the 'groomed' part of the yard, with the woodsy area, all covered in tree trunks and debris.

One of the neighbor's trees on our fence.

Another tree on our fence...

One of 'our' trees almost on the fence, its hanging in another treetop...and you can see another ssnapped tree in the other yard...

Anther 'hanging' tree...the ground level is not shrubs but tops of downed trees.

Anther tree and a destroyed section of the back fence. This part of the fence is so squashed that if the tree is removed, then the dogs might be able to exit the yard...Yikes!

Uprooted tree in the background

Tree uprooted and anither broken off and 'hanging'.

This tree that was snapped in half, used to house a wild bee colony...now they've lost thier home....and we can't enjoy the honey either.

But we are glad those trees didn't ruin anything other than the fence, and they are far away from  any shed or house...and we were not under them. She did find an empty nest thrown far away from the tree it was in, and when she walked through another area she found a dead nestling, she thought it might have been a blue jay...poor thing. She gave it a bit of a funeral...she didn't see any dislodged nests there or any other casualties.

Petcretary's work place is running on a generator, and hopes to have the power on before she gets there. Time will tell. Well, when she got to work the power was still not back on...they had thought it would have been on by 6 am...but nope! So when it became dusk, she had to use the flashlight feature on herr phone to go into the closets and store rooms...and the kitchen was improvising with the meal prep...apparently kitchens in nursing homes are not considered essential?? Really?? Sheesh! Same with our in-house laundry. 

At about 8 pm the power suddenly surged back on, and all the various tvs and computers started to make noise again. Some residents came out of their rooms shouting the lights are on! yup, we knew, LOL! The place had been without power for almost 48 hours! When petcretary left at about 10 pm, there were still several crews working in the city limits and on the highway where the road had been closed since Wednesday evening.

The cities where our unfurbros live also got hammered by the same storm system...but neither of them lost their power. Our church is out of power, and sustained a lot of water damage inside, as the roof was being worked on...but not enough to cancel the services.

So now the chores that need to be done in our yard have changed....from weed control and other such tasks, to branch pickups, and lumberjacking!...maybe we'll have a bonfire!! Maybe by the fourth of July...Oh unfurbros, could you come by and give us some help!?! We'll feed you with weenies and smores, BOL!

Oh, here are couple of 'pensive' selfies...cause they came out there with me to see what I was doing...or to help me, BOL!

Some of my favorite sniffing and digging places are out of my paw-reach now...and how am I going to do all my zoomies back there? The pathways are all blocked.

Wow, everything is such a big mess...all the pretty wildflowers that were starting to thrive are under all these big trees and branches...here if you look closely you can see a baby jack in the pulpit and some ferns.
And since it's Victoria Day Weekend, (in Canada), here is our 'offering' to help all our Canadian friends and ourselves as well remember and celebrate!

We are in the Sunday Selfies Blog Hop