ICED

   On December 21st the weather changed. Rain fell and then the temperature dropped. All was covered in ice. The same thing happened again the next day and this caused our city some major grief with many power outages. Two large city hospitals were without power. By Monday the city traffic was in chaos. Subway trains were out. Street cars wee cancelled. No power was there for them to run. Street traffic lights were out. Driving was a challenge that needed much patience. And to make matters more difficult many stores could not open. Of course there were thousands of homes that had no power. It was a very tough pre Christmas situation.
   By Tuesday some repairs had been made but it became clear that in our city there would be homes without power on December 25! Imagine the old fashioned Christmas those families would be faced with if they could bear to stay in their unheated homes while the temperature had dropped to -14C during the night. Most would have had to find a warm shelter or friend and relatives to get through this. Some homes will not have their power back until Friday!
   Our area was not badly affected as it is newer and not many trees were large enough to fall on hydro wires to cause outages but we saw a lot of damage nearby.
   Our small trees looked rather pretty coated with ice, iced. 

We hope your festive time is going well and that you were not chilled by any bad weather. 
   We wish you all the very best at this special time of the year.

P.S. I wonder if my two roses will come back after such a nasty icy time.