Thankful, Indeed

In a lot of ways, it's been a tough year. But one thing that I can say I'm thankful for is that I wasn't standing in my backyard at around 7:30 last night. The tree shown above snapped from the weight of the snow and ice, after having been pummelled by heavy winds earlier in the day, and rained major sections of the trunk and countless branches onto the yard. It wasn't one of our healthier trees, anyway--it looks like it might have been hit by lightning sometime in the past and had previously lost a huge branch, and was probably starting to rot inside.

No casualties, other than a bent birdfeeder pole and possibly Maddie's sandbox, which bore the full weight of the biggest section of trunk that fell. Both of our neighborhood brown squirrels, who I think might have lived in the tree, survived and have spent most of the morning happily engorging themselves on the corncobs and peanuts I left for them.