Clearing up

It is two weeks now since the snows started to fall and the winds started to howl…

Whereas we have certainly had clear and reasonably pleasant days since that belated and unwanted burst of winter, the temperatures have remained low enough that we are still waiting for the last of the snows to melt and/or wash away.

It is fair to say that this quantity of snow is unusual on the island – or at least at this end of it – and that if we have to wait for another seven years or more for a repeat performance that would be no bad thing.

Because the winds came early and were pretty ferocious when they did so a fair amount of detritus was blown from the trees. When the serious snows started two weekends ago they not only covered up the considerable debris field that had by then formed beneath them but the weight of snow on the taller trees brought down a number of larger branches, the which were themselves then buried in the drifts.

To this point there they have remained, since there is little incentive to try to get things properly cleared up whist there is still a great deal of wet snow around.

Foliage aside we seem to have made it through the winter storms relatively unscathed – with one somewhat sorry exception.

The good ship ‘Dignity’ is in most respects well enough designed to be able to brave all that the elements can throw at her. Sadly her canvas top – which has of late in any case been looking as though it were nearing the end of its useful life – was clearly not up to having a foot and a half of snow dumped on top of it. After holding out for a couple of days a seam split and dumped what was by then a fairly serious snowdrift into her cockpit.

I got thoroughly cold and wet cleaning her insides out and now ‘Dignity’ must suffer the ‘in-dignity’ of having to be protected by a somewhat ropey green tarpaulin until such point that I can get a replacement top made.

I suspect that she has seen worse!