Recovering from Storm Eunice
Posted: 19 February 2022
Today the wind had dropped and it was time to inspect the damage. The first twenty minutes was spent on the lawn beside the house where the willow had shed a wheelbarrow load of twigs. Having collected them I wheeled the barrow towards the twig pile. We store them until needed to help reinforce and raise the level of the paths where the ground is low and close to the level of the lake as the low level paths can get very boggy when there's a lot of winter traffic.
However, I could reach the pile as the way was blocked by a fallen Crack Willow. Abandoning the barrow I ducked through the trees to its right in order to reach the decking on which we have the "Ruston Bench". We had seen from the house that the tarpaulin tied over it for the winter appeared to have been partly blown off. But now, as I approached it, I could see the entire double seat and integral coffee table had been upturned and nearly blown into the lake.
Moving on round the path I also got to see that in the dip in the path where the boat is stored all the paving grids that were to be laid come the spring had been scattered. Apart from the one seen in the lake in the photo there was another seen floating in the channel that leads towards the cottages in the distance.
At this point Diana arrived and together we turned the picnic table and chairs the right way up. She continued to clear the paths of all the small twigs and branches the wind had brought down and I got to work with a chain saw clearing the fallen tree. Once that was done all the debris sorted onto one of three piles.
The first two are those that can be seen in the photo of the fallen tree at the top of the page. One is for the finest twigs and the second for slightly thicker branches that we put through our chipper and then used to dress the tops of any paths that need repair. The new pile was for the various branches removed from the top of the fallen tree. I'll return to it at some point and split its contents to got on the other two piles.
It was only after I'd completed the job of sorting the fallen tree debris that I went to take a closer look at the base of the fallen tree to discover that, in fact, two of the crack willow had been uprooted. While the second, closer to the camera, appears relatively upright at the moment, it will need to be taken down in due course.
The next job was to launch the boat and take it round to the house and attempt to recover the tables and chairs lost from the patio in yesterday's storm.
The first of the chairs was easy to spot. Its legs were just visible above the water line. Armed with a rake it was easy to hook the chair and lift it onto the boat and, with Diana's help transfer it to the decking. Then it began to rain and together with the water pouring from the second chair I abandoned taking photos as phone was at risk of getting a thorough soaking.
In spite of the rain work continued. The third chair was found and lifted, as was the underframe of the table. However, we failed to find the table top and after disturbing a lot of silt on the lake bottom decided to abandon the attempt at recovery for the day.
Later, when the rain had given over, we returned outside to tidy up a bit. One of the things that needed doing was removing from our music room, which overlooks the patio, the other three chairs that had not gone into the lake and some of the pot plants we had moved into the house after seeing the furniture disappear into the lake.
The table frame was left on the decking, while the chairs that had been in the lake were moved to behind The Gazebo where we hoped they'd be a little better protected from the wind.
We hear that another storm, named Franklin, is now on its way, but is likely to pass well to the north of us, so hopefully won't have the impact of Eunice.
