Winter Storm Janus 1-22-14

Well, Winter Storm Janus blew in last night in a bad temper. Snow is one thing we all enjoy every once in a while, the high winds are another thing. Then, too, temperatures in the teens are a shock to our sensibilities around here. My camellias are frozen. Not nice, Mr. Weather! In truth, we had only 4 inches more or less – with the blowing it is hard to measure how much actually came down – but here on the Shore, 4 inches might as well be 4 feet. The phones started ringing at 6 AM with cancellations. The radio had been broadcasting nothing but cancellations since 5 AM, foregoing all other broadcasting except ABC News and Mike Huckabee and a couple funeral announcements. I mean, who needs to listen to advertising when you can’t get out of your driveway anyway, right?

One interesting comment by our announcer (and owner of the station) was to tell the Good Old Boys to stay off the road. “Yeah, I know,” he said, dropping his voice and adding the drawl of the uneducated, “I got 4 wheel drive, man, I can go anywhere. I am out here to help people who get stuck!” Then he paused for dramatic effect, “And you end up in the ditch with the rest of them causing more problems than you can ever could fix, blocking road clearing crews and even emergency vehicles. So stay the heck home and off the roads!” Of course, the bulk of the sales on days like this are – guess… go ahead… milk? No. Bread? No… Baby formula? Nope, not that either… beer. Well, if you can’t get to work what else is there to do? So, half of the 4 WD pick-ups in the ditch are drunk drivers anyway. Whoopee.

OK, I digress… so what else is new? Anyway, here is the scene out my back door onto the carport which is protected on one side by the house, a little by the furnace room, and, of course, has a roof over it. Look at that snow, will ya? It was all the way up on the top step. See how it has drifted by the bottom step? I had to sweep off the steps to get to the snow shovels. I have 2 – one is an old aluminum shovel, one is plastic. This was an aluminum shovel type of snow because that is ice under there on the ground and on the concrete. My van was covered with almost as much snow as my truck that was sitting out in the yard.

   

The greenhouses were struggling to stay above freezing with ice crystals on the doors. My little incandescent bulbs were working overtime keeping my bucket of bricks warm. I hoped none of them burn out during this below 20 weather. I would hate to open the doors to change a bulb!

It was not a ‘pretty’ snow. The high winds blew most of the snow off the branches. On the other hand, that kept things from snapping and coming down on power lines… unless the wind did it. The prayer flags got a good workout blowing so hard you couldn’t even tell if it was Sanskrit or Hebrew on them. But the early morning sun was pretty and a promise that things would thaw. Eventually. The daffodils have been up, some as much as 6 inches, but they were invisible this morning. In a good year, they bloom the end of February. I have a feeling they will wait until March this year. But, who knows?

The Buddha was wrapped in a nice blanket of white while St Fwankie kept an eye on the birdbath deicer. The little critters were very thankful for that tiny pool of not quite freezing water. However, I have a couple wrens and sparrows that have discovered the cat’s heated water dish and take an occasional drink out of that. I tried to get a shot of one of the little fellows last week when it was so cold hunkered down at the bottom of the door to the furnace room. When I opened the back door, he hopped out a ways, but went right back to the door after I shut the kitchen door once again. I think he is smarter than Spook who has abandoned his heated box now that Punkin is no longer there to defend him. Bless his heart. A friend renamed Spook last week calling him a kittidiot. I have to agree. He is such a scaredy-cat that it often applies.

The new generator is here… but the inspector has not been here and I am on a long waiting list for the gas tank. I can only hope I don’t need it.

And these last 2 shots are of my CoCoRaHS official precip cylinder – minus the inner core that stays in the house during freezing weather where it will measure the melted snow for water content.

I hope the storm was not a bad event for you and yours. Stay in, stay warm, stay safe!

END OF OCTOBER, BEGINNING OF FROST

Well, it finally happened, our first frost… fortunately it was a very light frost. Also fortunately I have all the house plants inside the house and most everything that could be killed by frost outside is in the greenhouse. I was so embarrassed to have to call someone to come and help me move the grill… the tank is full so I could not lift it. Fortunately I had some paperwork for someone to take care of and 3 gallons of water-seal that needed to go to the Train Station, so I let one stone take care of 3 birds. Then I rebuilt the “greenhouse annex!”LOL It filled up quickly. I had taken cuttings from most of the coleus, the frost got the ones left out in the yard.

I covered the tomatoes and they made it… likewise my last serving of beans. Guess I will get to pick them end of the week.

Ice Angel opened early this year and is blooming up a storm. Someone suggested I do a post on a different camellia each week. Sounds like a fun idea except I get so busy, I just don’t have time. Ice Angel is probably about 15 feet tall by now… maybe taller. A beautiful bush! See how little the Buddha is and only 3 feet from the bush. Those wooden posts are 4 feet tall.

My Birthday camellias out-front are well up over the roof. They have been blooming for over a month now.

Also higher than the roof is this double pink. Yule Tide has started to open. There are still some azaleas blooming.

But it is going to warm back up. How do I know this? I put the electric blanket on the bed. Yep. Works every time. Put your summer clothes away, storm windows in, close the house vents… and I promise it will warm up.

We have lost some leaves, but the colors, muted as they are here, have finally started to change. Maybe I will have some pretty leaf pictures next week.

I hope October has been beautiful for you!

BUILDING PROJECT

OR MORE OF WHAT KEEPS ME SO BUSY… Sadly I have slowed down to a crawl lately. The Lyme's has been in its mean, bad , and nasty cycle… which means not just a lot of pain, but it means my muscles have been locking up when I try to do certain things – like bend over… reach over my head… sigh. So, it has really slowed me down. Somehow I thought I would have a lot of time to get things done before it got too cold to work outside – but today is the last of the warmer days, and so much has not gotten done. Cold is an enemy of Lyme's.  I did get my addition to my greenhouse finished… got the heat lamps installed yesterday. It is also painted since it is not made with pressure treated (called salt treated around here) wood and there is an added roof of 2 rug samples and a half inch piece of plywood that goes on it when the sun is not shining to keep it a bit warmer – and to keep the cats from scratching the quarter inch Plexiglas. That sheet of Plexiglas for the roof cost a small fortune… double what I paid the last time I had any 1/4th inch cut for me. The rest of the Plexiglas is only 1/8th inch – some of it scrap, most of the wood is scrap, too. It seems I just get more and more plants somehow… and then, I take cuttings of Strobilanthus and coleus – some of them make it, some do not. I am trying to winter over some begonias this year. The Mini-greenhouse will come apart come spring as it is held together with only 4 screws and several corner braces. The floor is brick, for retaining heat. It is amazing how many plants one can cram in a space 4 feet long and 2 feet wide. 

The heated cat box is on top of the larger greenhouse… and is already well occupied on chilly days and nights.

CATCHING UP

 Life has been busy, more than busy, and I just have not had time to be on here. Sometimes "life' happens. And then Sandy happened, and even tho I did not have any more damage than one downed tree, still, as an old friend of mine used to say, my tempest fugited! Where has the time gone? 

Many of the leaves are down, camellias are in serious bloom, and the colors are fantastic. It seems the frost we had killed the daisies, but they were awesome for a while and covered with butterflies. I had so many more plants this year, I had to build an extention onto my little greenhouse! Enjoy the pics!

Who would believe I have had to turn the heat on in these little greenhouses already! Frost is predicted for the morning... yesterday, we were working out in the yard in T-shirts. Oh, well, It is that time of year.

If you are interested, the greenhouses are made out of plexiglass. The "roof" part is 1/4 inch plexi, the sides are just 1/8th inch. Most of the wood is scrap stuff left over from other projects. The plexiglas is held in place with corner braces so it can slide out if I need to get inside to do something. It all comes apart by removing 4 screws.

FRUSTRATIONS

FRUSTRATIONS... oh shame on me for being frustrated with this computer. This will not be much of a post, mostly it will be to see if I have loaded my photo programs right... I gave all my discs to the computer dude down the street - he makes his living doing this stuff, drives a new Mercedes to prove it - but things are still never quite right. None of my photo discs got installed, for example, and that is just the tip of the iceberg. So, to see if things were working, I went out and took a picture of the pot of pansies (aren't they beautiful? Especially to those of you buried up to your knees in snow or ice today?) I got from Bobbie yesterday... and a shot thru the door of the greenhouse with its heating system on - the brooder lamp on a bucket of bricks. Hey! It works! The ordinary incandescent bulb heats up the metal and the bricks - the bricks retain the heat... and it keeps the greenhouse in the 40s or 50s depending on how bad it is outside. Here on the shore, lots of folks keep their pumps from freezing in the winter just with one incandescent bulb. So I figure if it will keep a pump from freezing in a pump-house outside that is as big or bigger than my little greenhouse, well, it ought to keep my geraniums toasty and my impatiens from freezing... and my other plants and cuttings, too.
Did you notice the size of the daffodils next to the pansies? They are up about 8 inches. This may be a year when they bloom in mid-February.
But, back to the shame on me part. Living in this country, we tend to moan and groan over the most trivial things. OK, let me rephrase that - I tend to moan and groan over stuff that is merely inconvenient at the moment, and forget how darn lucky I am. Here I am complaining about having to load a couple photo discs so I can download pictures from either of my Nikons, and for the moment not thinking about the millions of people who still live without electricity, let alone computers and cameras. Yes, it is hard to believe that such people exist, but they do. Believe me, they do. We are so spoiled here. Even the poor in this country somehow manage to have cell phones, and other devices even tho they do not have decent food on their tables. So, I am ashamed of myself for grumbling about having to install a bunch of discs myself. But then, I paid someone else to get this computer back to where it was - minus the virus - and, well, it isn't. Hard to believe that the old computer was 8 years old before it had to get wiped clean and this one was but 8 months old. So much for McAfee.
I know I am going to have to change my ISP, and I so dread that... mostly I dread trying to wade thru the crap on the phone with Verizon. You would think the phone company would have an easier system to access. Oh how I long for the old days when there was an office down on the corner where I could go and pay my bill in person, add a phone, a new phone line, change a listing, put a phone in another house 40 miles from here, and get a nice visit with the real person doing all this for me. Often Progress ain't! Yet, there are those who have to travel over 100 miles to get to a phone or to a service if they have a cell phone. So, here I am grumbling again in a house with so many phones I can't count them. There is usually one in reach wherever you are. Spend some time in a wheelchair or being unable to get up and walk and you will understand.
So I guess I need to do a gratitude list... not just that my brain worked well enuf to install the photo programs... not just that I own a computer that is working (more or less) - and a camera or two... but that I do have electricity, heat, a roof over my head, food in my tummy, managed to get myself dressed, fed the cats, and got outside to take these pictures. Then I must add that I have a wonderful friend that gave me these pansies... and I can go on and on.
Like I said, shame on me for complaining.