Farewell Curly Willow

Many years ago a friend gave me a twig from her curly willow that had come down in an ice storm. She said if I put it in a bucket of water it would root. She was right. It did, and we planted it at the end of our driveway, where it flourished. 10 years on and we had an icestorm last night. After flickering for a while, the power went out just after 6am. (For us no power means no water as we have a well, so we had to get the generator going so we could shower and make lattes. We have our priorities right!). It was still dark and we could hear branches snapping off the trees outside. When it finally got light we saw this. The curly willow had come down, had taken the mailbox out with it, and was blocking the road. So we had to fire up the chainsaw and hack the tree to bits. Have I mentioned how I am soooooooo over this winter? On the bright side, for once my procrastination has paid off. The past couple of months we've been saying we needed a new mailbox, but I hadn't got round to ordering one. Now imagine how p'd off I'd have been if the new mailbox had been flattened!