Yard-work And Roof Repair In January

Both occupations are not what we usually do in January, but winter is still very much absent. If this is Global warming, bring it on. In spite of several weather forecasts predicting snow, it’s just not happening. A very slight dusting a few days ago, disappeared the next day again. We do have frost at night, but I read that’s even happening at Q-site these days. Storms, however, have been rushing across the island and have ripped a few shingles of roofs all around the neighbourhood, our own roof included.  While Bea was raking brush for a burn I had been doing some service work on our Buick this morning. When I got back inside the house to prepare lunch, I saw that there was a message on the phone. It was from one of our neighbours, a lady in her 70ies, and she had several shingles blown off her garage under the last storm-wind and rain would be pouring in through the roof. She was wondering whether I could help. Of course I could, but I had no tarpaper to nail over the damaged area. However, when I was just leaving our property, I saw a contractor on the other side of the road just leaving. I stopped him in his tracks and asked whether he would have some tarpaper in his work trailer. And BINGO….he had an almost full roll, which I could borrow from him. With that I reached our neighbour up the road and went about to fix her roof. 90 minutes later it was all done and I was rewarded with a wonderful full-size apple cake and a cup of hot tea.  Marvelous. But hey, it is only January 26. It’s supposed to snow and be really cold and wintry. So being able doing this kind of work is definitely unusual. The picture below was taken on January 24 2016. Snow even on the beach. It does look quite different today.