Storm Francis

And on top of everything else - the storms are back . . .  Francis has done its worst, which was mainly to bring down part of the ornamental 'palm' in the back garden (itself a reincarnation of one we lost to our last really snowy winter back in 2010).

On the whole we escaped the worst of it, and as you can see there is still a healthy offshoot, so the palm isn't done for yet.  We also avoided a scheduled 'switch off' for network maintenance as electricity crews were too busy dealing with the fall out of the storm.

Here's hoping for a quieter end to the year weather-wise!

Sunday Sights

More storms and what probably counts as drama in mid-Wales on a sunny Sunday . . .

Our morning trip to the gym brought evidence of the impact of Storm Jorge - named by the Spanish before it reached us - which  has seen flooding up and down the country. 

Luckily mid-Wales appears to have got off relatively lightly again, and the only real damage we saw was this tree down outside the local leisure centre.

Later in the day we took a still rather breezy walk along an admittedly pebble-strewn prom, but nothing too serious.

Then back at home we noticed the air ambulance parked up in the field next door.  They were there for some time, but we didn't see them actually pick anyone up, so hopefully nobody was seriously hurt.

And it did make for a good photo opportunity!

Tree Surgery

Time to do something about the Leylandii by the woodshed - while it looks ok from this angle, it had died off completely round one side, and it was getting too high to trim safely.




So out came the chainsaw . . . and an afternoon of chopping, and lopping, and sorting of sticks, and stuffing of leafy bits into bags to take to the tip ensued.


Took a while but in the end it was reduced to a stump - something for the firewood store for 2015!