A rather unpleasant surprise.....

I was up way too freakin' early Sunday morning and took the dog outside at 6am.  Our yard isn't fenced, so he goes on a run that's stretched from the corner of the garage across the yard to a tree way in back.

I clipped the leash part onto his collar and stood up.  Then I wondered why the run was lying on the ground instead of pulled taut....?  I looked out across the yard (in the dim pre-dawn, snowy light) and wondered what the hell I was looking at.  I thought it was a branch in the yard.

Nope.

???????? 

(still hard to see what it is - taken at 7:15ish am)

Not a branch, but the entire 30+ foot pine tree !!!

We got over 6 inches of wet, heavy snow Saturday and that with some wind we got Saturday night apparently was too much for this tree that has been dead for several years. It snapped off about a foot up from the ground and luckily fell into the clear part of the yard.  It didn't hit the shed or weather station or any of the other trees.  Jack's run was the only casualty, whew!

 Some rather unhappy carpenter ants.  I hope the buggers froze!

So yeah - no idea what we're going to do with it.  We need to find someone with a chainsaw and maybe we can donate it to our neighbor's wood pile that just about 3 feet away from the stump.  It's dead and pine, so it would burn in no time!

Now to get rid of the other 2 dead trees in our yard! 

My poor lilac has 2 broken branches on it, too.  It was almost flat. 

 This tree of the neighbor's is usually totally upright.  Here it is touching my driveway.

 It's supposed to be slowly raising in temperature until it's around 50 Thursday / Friday so all this crap will be mostly gone - hooray!

#TFTLS