Icepocalypse, or Icemageddon 2013?

Well we did not dodge this ice storm.  While the ice and sleet are beautiful in a Narnian winter way, the damage being wrought upon the vegetation is not.  My Globe Willow is shattered.  I am unsurprised, since it is a soft wooded tree, and still had a lot of leaves to catch and hold the ice.  Still, it does/did provide much needed shade in the back yard in summer.  Depending on the total damage to it, we may have to cut it all down.

The oak out front has fared better, being a hardwood, but since it has not yet shed the majority of its leaves either, it has lost limbs too.  DH went out at 4am today to beat ice off the lower limbs with his pole saw extensions.  It at least has saved some of the limbs.  The issue later will be how to remove the broken ones high up in the tree.  They are 2-4" diameter branches, and far too high up for us to climb after.  DH says there will be a lot of chainsaw work to do this weekend, which by the way is still calling for more freezing rain for the Metromess.  It looks like a good quarter inch of sheet ice.  I guess we should be happy the other 2" fell as sleet and did not do damage.

The oak--the damage is hard to see.

Our neighbor had his Bradford Pear explode, whilst the Monkeys were playing out front in our yard.  They said it sounded like a gunshot.

The tree on the right is about to die...

And now it is gone...It was pretty before it shattered.

Total loss.

Still there is great beauty out in the ice.  Fantastic forms, bent low under the weight of mere water.  Icicles form, on almost anything that holds still long enough.

In the eye of the beholder...