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Friday, January 4, 2008 - THE STORY OF THE WOODSHED ~ the beginning

We were awakened around 5 am by the sound of limbs crashing onto the roof. The operative word is ONto not INto. The wind was howling like a banshee and the power was out. Good thing, otherwise we might have turned on an outside light and seen the trees swaying back and forth. As it was, the relentless roar of the freight train kept us both awake and on edge for a long time. The max wind in Roseburg (28 miles away) was clocked at 38.9 mph. It must have been a lot higher up here.

In the light of day, we were surprised how few limbs were scattered around our front yard and how small the limbs on the roof really were. No trees were down or damaged that we could see. Whew! Around 11 am, our neighbor Cheryl called to make sure we were all right. She said Jerry hadn't been able to make it to work at 6 am. Our road was impassable. Lots and lots of trees were down. She said everybody on the hill was out doing road work. So we bundled up and headed out to do battle with the litter left by the night's storm. It took us an hour to go 3/10 of a mile. Nothing that needed a chain saw, but plenty of limbs that we couldn't have driven through. We made it to the Y that branches over to Cheryl and Jerry's, right by the Miller's house. The Millers are our resident loggers. Thank God for loggers! At that Y was the butt end of a tree that had blocked both sides of the Y. It was at least 18", maybe 24" in diameter. But except for debris, our loggers had already removed it from the road.

By the time we got to that point, the wind had kicked back up. Limbs were flying past us and it started to rain. Neither one of us was wearing raingear. It hadn't been raining when we left the house, only windy and cold - 42ish. As the wind whipped the trees around and sent branches falling around us, we decided road work wasn't worth getting killed for and headed for home. When we turned into our driveway, Dianne let out a yell, "Oh my God!" and took off running. Nancy took off after her to see what the problem was.

We only thought we had come through the windstorm unscathed!

This is what we discovered upon our return from road work:

That's our woodshed. Well, it used to be our woodshed. Now it represents a lot of future work.

This is what the woodshed used to look like:

It was 60' long and 12' deep. It housed our tractor, log splitter, chipper-shredder, tiller, lawnmower, box trailer, tractor attachments, about 3 cords of wood, and a couple thousand other little odds and ends. 10 years' accumulation of garden supplies, building supplies, parts and pieces of a bunch of things. A 30 year old croquet set.

Apparently, a gust of wind used the roof as a huge sail, picked up the building from its foundation and flipped it over 180 degrees backward. The roof you see in the photo above is what ended up on the ground about 8 or so feet behind it. The miracle of the event is that all the major pieces of equipment survived unharmed - very wet, but not hurt in the least. They just stood there while the building was removed from around them. We can't say that for the items on the shelves along the back wall or the stuff stored above the rafters.

The tin you see along the left-hand side of this photo is the inside of the back wall. When this picture was taken, we'd already done some work to protect things from the rain. Protection before pictures! The blue tarps are covering the gasoline engines on various pieces of machinery. The white plastic is over the wood pile. (Hmm... needs another 2x4 to hold the back side!)

It is hard to believe that these pots survived the tumble, but they did. The piece of 4'x8'x1 1/4" plywood in the foreground had been the FLOOR of one of the empty wood bays. When the building flipped, that sheet of flooring got pulled along, then SLAMMED down on top of the items that were below it. Not a pretty picture! (We still haven't looked under it.)

Everything in this picture has been flipped 180 degrees -- the roof is on the ground upside down and the back wall is facing south instead of north.

We spent 2 hours covering things with tarps and trying to pick up what we could. We hauled all the garden tools (which you can see in the photo above) to the "tool shed" right by the house. It used to be an outhouse, and we've saved it because it's "cute" but now it is very functional: filled to the brim with rakes, hoes, shovels, and the completely intact croquet set. We put a bunch of things in the box trailer and bunjied a sheet of plywood over the top to keep the rain out. After 2 hours we were so cold, our hands were in pain, our clothes were soaked. (We did have on rain gear, but we didn't put it on until we were already wet.) We were exhausted, so we headed back to the house.

We stripped out of our wet dirty clothes in the garage, went inside to the toasty warm house and changed into dry clothes. We sat in front of the fireplace trying to get feeling back into our hands. That's when Nancy said, "What's wrong with the power lines?" For those of you who haven't been to Long Shadows, there is a power pole about 25' east of our front deck and another about 30' west. The pair of power lines run across our view - in parallel lines. They were NOT parallel now. Back into jackets and hats and boots (dry ones) and we headed back out. This is what we saw:

Notice anything funny about the top of that power pole? It has no crossarm with power lines connected!!! Where the devil did the crossarm go?

Oh, there it is!

Well, that was one half of the crossarm. The other part was higher up in the same tree. That problem did not upset us too much. That is the powerline to Cheryl and Jerry's. Of course, if the line where hot, it could set that tree on fire. So we called the power company and reported the problem.

By now it is 3:30 pm. We are both so tired we can't stand it. Oh, did we mention that this exciting day was Nancy's birthday? And we still plan to celebrate it, somehow. The menu was supposed to be pears and apple salad, fresh homemade garlic bread, Shrimp Diane (a Paul Prudhomme special) served over brown rice, accompanied by a glass (or more) of chilled chardonay, topped off with a fresh baked spice cake with cream cheese frosting. No power! Plan 2. Forget the cake! Use cooked brown rice from the freezer and frozen french bread (it was homemade, just not fresh baked). All the other ingredients had already been measured, toasted, chopped or otherwise prepared the day before. Thank goodness for Dianne's planning ahead! We opted to work on dinner early, so that even if it had to be cooked on the grill outside in the drizzling rain, at least the cook could see.

While there was no cake to put candles on, there were candles on the table, lots and lots and lots of candles. (The power is still out, remember? Nancy's not allowed to blow them out! She can wish all she wants.) We even used real silver. The meal was wonderful. The garlic bread was delicately browned, the shrimp cooked to perfection, and the rice piping hot. God bless aluminum foil! It was a wonderful meal. Very memorable, for lots of reasons.

We sat up by lantern light and played cards for the rest of the evening. The house was toasty warm, the roof was intact, we were unharmed, so we considered ourselves very fortunate indeed.

Saturday morning. A dusting of snow on everything. Three power trucks appeared in our yard about 9:15 with 8 guys. We got to watch the show while they grappled with lines and did the repairs. A little over an hour later they were gone, and 15 minutes after that, we had POWER!!

We decided to take a little stroll around the property and assess damage. We walked most of our land and found 3 significant trees down. All of them will be very easy to reach to retrieve for firewood. One was a total mystery - temporarily. Rootball sticking up way in the air, 15 feet north of the power lines leaving the lower meadow for Cheryl and Jerry's. Top extending 50 feet south of the power lines. The thing lies crosswise under the lines. Because of the position of other, standing trees, it couldn't have slid off the lines. How did it fall there and not snap the lines? It seemed impossible. Oh, wait a minute! It WAS impossible. The lineman put these lines back together yesterday. (Later, when we limbed the tree, we found the places where the two hot wires burned some shrubs. )

But we heard more bad weather was in the forecast. We were not going to waste a minute of valuable power time. We washed clothes, dishes, the floor, and ourselves. We'd been wanting to bathe since we came in yesterday afternoon! We baked bread, made soup, recharged batteries. We're ready for the next outage!

And then we piled in the car and made a trip down the hill and to the post office to see what carnage was wrought elsewhere. Here's what we saw:

Those of you who have been here probably remember the landmark Tree-In-the-Middle-of-the-Road. Well, it's not a very tall tree anymore. Now it's the Snag-in-the-Middle-of-the-Road.

But the spot will more likely be henceforth known as the Butts-in-the-Road. Here's what was just past the snag.



One tree had come down and been cleared a week or two ago. There are two others that joined it. You can't see in the picture other downed trees down the hill to the left of the picture. There were 5 trees down in this one spot.   You also can't get perspective: These trees are about 30" in diameter.



Not insignificant trees! Our logger neighbors were extremely busy yesterday, and we are extremely thankful for them.

There were trees down all along the highway down to Idleyld Park. We heard the highway was closed for several hours last night till they were cleared.

Latest forecast has snow down to our elevation through at least Monday. Multiple inches accumulation. Let's see.... soaked ground plus trees already shaken up by strong winds plus heavy snow load = no power. We hope that's the worst it means for us.

We're ready!

February 17, 2008 Chapter 2 in the ongoing saga of the woodshed

Here is a photo of the shed the day of the incident. There are 2 red brackets in the photo outlining the 2 maples that were behind the woodshed. Well -- originally they were behind the shed, but in the picture, one is coming up through the roof, the other is squashed flat by the roof. The closer tree is lying flat on the ground. The farther tree has a serious lean because the piece of roof tin is pushing against it. By some miracle, the front 2 X 6 had been torn away when the building flipped and allowed that one piece of tin to be forced back by the trunk of that maple.

As the days have gotten brighter and the trees have started showing signs of running sap, we have worried and worried about that flattened maple. So for the past couple days, we have been hard at trying to rescue it.

Before you can even get to the roof, you have to work your way through a lot of "stuff." Notice that here Dianne is standing in snow.  It has not snowed here for 3 weeks. The temperature has been hitting the high 50s everyday, but the nightly lows have been below freezing. That means the snow starts to melt, then freezes solid. So that is not really snow in the picture, but more like a 4" thick layer of ICE. Or 8 or 10 inches where we had shoveled out the tractor road. Slippery as the devil. Wicked to walk on.

Well, about 4 this afternoon, Dianne called Nancy away from pruning fruit trees to come help. The "stuff" and rafters had all been removed and the tin was ready to be peeled back to uncover the maple. This is what we found under that unbelievably heavy roof:

An UNBROKEN tree trunk. It had been bent to a full 90 degree angle for 5 weeks and 3 days! And when the tin came off and we freed it from the snow and ice encasing the top branches, it immediately started springing back up. We were both amazed and thankful. It did need a lot of encouragement to come all the way up to vertical.

Both trees are now standing straight and tall. In fact, the taller one is the once-smashed one. It is tied with a guywire to a piece of rebar driven into the ground. Pretty amazing chapter in this story.

By the way, if you compare this picture to the first one you may notice that a substantial part of the wood shed is missing now. Slowly but surely the shed is being de-constructed. We learned something interesting today - the people that built this structure certainly did a darn good job -- TOO good a job. Each seam on the roof tin is caulked. Do you know how HARD it is to separate tin that was caulked 10 years ago? Pretty darn hard. Not to mention the fact that each and every screw has to be hammered out. With the screw heads on the bottom side, it is impossible to remove them any other way. This is going to be a very labor intensive process. Do you know how HARD it is to stand on sloping tin covered with snow? Pretty darn hard. A slip in there could be very dangerous - screws are sticking up everywhere. They are long enough they could go through the sole of a shoe and would do a real number on flesh if someone fell on them.

We are ready for the snow to GO AWAY!   It was fun for a while, but it stopped being fun a long time ago. Even Thibodeaux is smart enough not to walk on the stuff anymore. He's done some serious skidding a couple times on the slippery stuff.

February 29, 2008   Chapter 3 in the ongoing saga of the woodshed

The work of dismantling the woodshed continues.   Despite interruptions, we are relentless. Progress is being made.

There are no standing walls. Most, but not all of the 4x4 beams have been removed.

We've even moved the box trailer. The day of the storm, it was the only place to put things to keep them dry. But that meant we couldn't haul anything to the dump. So today was the day to empty the box trailer -- after we built a dry place to store the stuff.

Not exactly 100% waterproof, but neither was the box trailer. Stuff is packed tight in this cozy little storage facility. In keeping with the green woodshed motif, we have a green room for storage.

The weather has been in the high 50s or low 60s for days on end. The sun has been shining and the working conditions great. But believe it or not, a couple small patches of snow remain.

Almost all of the photos of the woodshed have been from the east looking west. We've worked from the east headed west. Here's what still lies ahead for us.

The forecast is for rain tonight (100%) , tomorrow (70%), and the sun returns on Sunday. Guess we'll pick back up where we left off. But don't expect too much progress in the next week. Saturday we go to a cheese making class. Karleen and Jocko are coming up Tuesday. Wednesday we make lasagna (that's a whole other story). Friday we get ready for Saturday. Saturday is the Glide First Citizen event. Sunday we crash!   Life resumes after the GFC event is over.

March 13, 2008 - We take a break from it all
March 16, 2008 - Well, vacation is over and the rain has stopped - at least for one day, so it was time to get back to work.

It was a cloudy day with occasional periods of sunshine. The high for the day was a chilly 45, but it was nice for working hard, kept us from sweating too much.



Dianne hammers away trying to pry the 2x4 from the tin. It is impossible to unscrew the screws so there is no other way but brute force. Why the earmuffs? Do you know how much noise is made by a hammer striking steel prying on tin?



See the little irises popping up by Dianne's feet? If we don't get that tin out of here soon, those flowers will start growing crooked.



                                   Madam Destructo hard at work!

While Dianne was prying and hammering, Nancy was separating caulked-together roof panels. This involved chisel and hammer to create an opening, then a straightened-out hoe (courtesy of Cheryl and Jerry) and a lot of elbow grease, shoving and prying. In her rest breaks, she removed screws from the separated panels or the newly exposed ground. With both of us wearing earmuffs, there wasn't a lot of conversation on this work site.


Thibodeaux is observing from a safe distance.   He has shown no interest in prowling through the debris. We're glad -- a screw in a paw would not be fun for anyone.

Here is the view looking west. Compare it to earlier photos and you can see what progress we are making.



In case you're wondering, the two piles -- neat and sloppy -- are not because of differing work ethics. It's because the neat pile is nail-free and the sloppy pile still needs to be attacked with the crowbar.

The rain resumes tomorrow. Good thing - we are both aching from all that leaning over. It is killing our backs. But we really need to get this stuff cleared up. David Kennaday, our contractor, is supposed to call us Monday to schedule a time to come up and look over the situation. He will be telling us when he will be available to work on the project.

March 22, 2008 - We are really making progress on the woodshed cleanup. After constant interruptions from weather, we had a beautiful spring day. It was sunny and in the 60s. AHHHHHHH! Springtime has finally arrived in the Pacific Northwest. Well at least for Saturday.

A couple days ago, Dianne managed to finally uncover the emerging irises.




The last remaining wall tin has been removed, and de-screwed. Sounds kind of strange, but it is worth you life to deal with a piece of tin covered with screws sticking out like thorns on a rose.

The crossbracing 2x6s have also been removed from the remaining section of roof. All that remains is the laborious process of breaking the caulk seal between each seam. Nancy has become the expert in that department.   After a couple hours working in the garden, she tackles the job.



Once a piece of tin is freed, then the screws must be removed.

It is essential that all the screws be removed. Somebody's well being depends upon it.



The excitement builds, as Nancy pokes and shoves her way through the remaining panels of tin. Finally she is down to the last seam, the last few inches, then she breaks free!!



If Dianne had been a better photographer, she would have snapped another photo immediately and caught Nancy collapsing on the tin as her momentum threw her forward.

Now the work site is a little more manageable looking. There are still nails to pull from rafters, cinder blocks to relocate, and the tractor mower to be moved. But the tasks that remain should not require nearly as much physical effort.

To remove everything, means it has to get MOVED somewhere else.   There are small piles of stuff all over the place. Our huge crawfish boiling pot is under the cedar tree; the log splitter is under another tree; the tiller is in the green room, and the grader box has just found a new home.



The forecast calls for 80% chance of rain now so we can kick back and rest. Both of us are moaning about our aching backs.

March 26, 2008 - Our last entry talked about springtime having arrived. HA! Oregon weather is sooooo fickle!



Remember those little irises trying to emerge in spite of the tin? Well, their lives are filled with more than their share of difficulties. (They don't know it yet, but they're going to be dug up before construction starts. We don't think they can handle concrete.)



Tucked safe and dry under the protection of a huge cedar tree is this little primrose, trying to herald the arrival of spring!



This evening the contractor will be here to start talking about building the replacement. Well, maybe. He doesn't "do" snow. Hope the snow stops soon.

March 31, 2008 - The woodshed has finally been moved completely from the old site. Funny, but it is SO much smaller than it used to be.



Hard to believe it turned into such a small, neat pile of stuff. But never fear, that small, neat pile of lumber has an exciting future. Ashleigh and Meghan will be returning again this summer. In fact, plane reservations are already made. The cabin they built last summer did not survive the windy winter, so it will need to be replaced with a better structure. By mid-summer we will be posting photos of all the building projects.