I get so busy that I delay too long to say thank you. Garden 2 garden, you suggest cutting the dead wood and I have done that. I think I will also wait to see what happens. Ann, thank you. I will count on the rain, but not temps under 90. I think I saw that it is 86 today, and that is getting hot. I won't hesitate to water though. Kaye, thank you so much for posting. I am so sorry that your "Signature Roses" have been badly damaged. You have a great attitude about it, but then, what are our choices. I think it will be good for me to just remove the dead wood, and watch to see what happens. I have had quite a bit of damage in the past couple of years, and have waited to remove the dead wood, so it looks like there is more damage from the ice storm than there really is. It is so hard to keep up this time of year. I had the front of my house cared for, and went to the back. Now a couple of weeks later there are all kinds of weeds that have crept up in the front. Thanks again Sammy

Here at our house we were without power for 11 days plus 7 hours...from 11:30AM Jan. 27th., to 6:30PM Feb. 6th. Since we have a wood heating stove, I did all my cooking on it. I had 5 oil lamps, and plenty of oil. I used the closed off spare bedroom for a refrigerator. It is the farthest from the heat, and kept items in good shape. I had to throw out a lot of frozen foods. My trickiest job was bringing in our firewood. The woodshed is only about 25 feet from the back of the house. I spread ashes on my path. It is open front and back. The front has the slab wood. The back has the rounds. One trunk of our 4-trunk River Birch bowed down to the ground in front of the shed, closing off that access. I had to pass between an ice laden Red Oak and the shed to get back to the round wood. I could reach across and get some slab wood also, so that was okay. It was a little scary with breaking limbs overhead, and the crashing ice! But my guardian angel kept anything from hitting me. :-) Our trees took a severe blow, but our house and out buildings were unscathed. The 4-trunk Birch lost 2 of it's trunks. The Heritage Birch in front was bowed to the ground, and frozen into the ground ice. It was not bouncing back up as it ought to, when the ice was almost all off. I decided if I pulled it lose from the ground ice that would release it. WOW! Did it ever release it! I almost went up with it! I laughed like an idiot! It is still slightly bowed, But I am hoping it will straighten up eventully. It did in the past. The Tulip Poplar took the worst hit. It is a large tree, and it lost at least half of it's canopy. I am considering having it cut down. The problem is...there is not a clear space to drop it. We have a bunch of hanging limbs, in yard situations. I have not approached anyone about taking them down. Anyway, we (hubby and I) survived okay. I think I have been suffering post traumatic depression, but this too shall pass. All in all, we were much more fortunate than many.

Kadasuki - What kind of trees have you lost so far? We cut down a silver maple in our back yard after our big ice storm here two years ago. It might have lived but it looked pretty bad. We cut down an Autumn Blaze(I think) maple in our front yard that had extensive damage but kept another, same kind of maple, that wasn't quite as bad. We had two London Plane trees that had only a few broken limbs. We cut down one while we had people here to help us because it was planted in a bad spot and kept the other. We kept a tulip tree that still looks pretty awful and probably should've been cut down. My parents have one about the same age that had heavy damage but has recovered nicely. Their hard maples looked horrid but they kept them. They're not recovering well at all. Still have no tops and a really weird shape. We have a pin oak in our front yard that did pretty well. It had the very top broken off but it looked good compared to some of our other trees. They don't tolerate limey soil very well if you have that. The worst thing about them is the way the limbs continually grow down. It makes them hard to mow under. You would need to make sure it's not too close to any buildings because it's hard to keep the limbs trimmed up away from the roof. We had a red mulberry that had nothing left but part of the trunk and we had to have it taken out. It surprised me how badly some of the oak trees did around here. Some that were very old that lost huge limbs. I think you're smart to drive around to see what looks the worst and also try to note which trees regain their shape after being damaged.

Tom, If you are going to put back three individual conductors, I would use #8 THHN copper. However, you may want to consider a triplex cable assembly. Aluminum #6 would be fine, much lighter, and easier to install (no need for spacers or for even tensioning of the conductors, etc.) Also, the insulation on the triplexed cable will hold up better over a period of time as it will be sunlight resistant, etc.