New plants & a check-in, from OK

10 years ago

Hello, all my friends! It has been a rough couple of weeks for me, here in southern OK. I was lucky to enjoy a lovely Mother's Day, with the gift of several new plants. My hubby & son got me another beautiful Monstera. My grandmother gave me a baby sucker off of one of her African violets, as well as 12 leaves to attempt to propagate.

Then I came down with what seemed like severe allergies, but morphed into a very unpleasant chest infection that kept me laid up for over a week. My car decided to take a massive crap on me & the ignition locked up...a very expensive fix, with paying to get towed to the dealership a few towns away. While I was stuck up at the dealership on Monday, I watched the Moore, OK tornado unfold live on TV. Just heartbreaking.

All I could do was sit there, stuck at the dealership, & wait for our friends to be able to come pick me up & take me back home. They got there to pick me up right in front of a different tornado-warned storm & we barely outran it for the 30 miles home. As we turned onto my street, the tornado sirens went off & we all rushed into the closet. We had 5 separate rotations with tornado warnings swirl by us, but fortunately stayed in the sky. That was an adrenaline-rush filled evening, as I hustled my son & 3 large dogs in & out of the closet several times.

Our power was off for 2 days straight from those storms, & yesterday, just as I was catching up on the housework that'd piled up from that, another severe storm rolled in. We've gotten about 7" of rain this month, most of it in the last week or so, & I've been very on edge. Such tragedies, these tornadoes over the last weeks down in TX & up in central OK. My heart just aches for those affected. However, we were very luck to escape the worst of things here where I am.

I will post a follow-up with some pics of the new plants when I get caught up around the house & in my yard. The flooding from all this rain has washed away some of my side flowerbeds & I have to replant seeds, pull all the weeds that have grown a foot in a few days, & finish mowing the back half of my yard before I need a hay baler to do it. I just wanted to check-in, in case any of you were wondering what had happened to me.

Please pray for all those affected by the tornadoes in TX & OK, it is going to be a long road to recovery for them.

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Comments (5)

Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
10 years ago
Oh wow! That's quite a tale of woe, so glad you're OK and able to check in. Tornadoes are the scariest weather, IMO, as we've unfortunately seen again. Heartbreaking doesn't begin to describe... just wow.

The car thing and getting sick really stinks too. So sorry!!

Does your mower adjust higher? You probably know but that really helps when it gets like that. Ugh! Bet you're just glad to have a yard to mow at this point.

Looking forward to seeing your pics!
Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL
10 years ago
The weather has continued to be brutal to your state... hope all is well!
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Here's a couple of recipes that may fit into your diet plan. This is an easy recipe to fix ahead of time and pop in the oven to heat. Serves 4 Spinach & Ricotta Manicotti 1 pkg frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry, 10 oz pkg. 15 oz ricotta cheese 1 egg 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese 1 tsp garlic salt 8 manicotti shells, cooked (if uncooked, add a little extra water and refrigerate a few hours or overnight before cooking) 1 can, 15 oz, diced tomatoes, undrained 1 6 oz can tomato paste 1 tsp. basil leaves, crushed 1 tsp, oregano, crushed 1 cup mozzarella cheese, grated Mix spinach, ricotta, egg, parmesan cheese, garlic salt. Stuff manicotti shells with mix and place in a baking dish, 12x8. Mix tomatoes, tomato paste, basil, oregano with 1 cup water. Pour over manicotti. Sprinkle with mozzarella. Bake uncovered in preheated 350 degree oven, 30 minutes or until heated through. This is good served with crusty French bread to sop up juices or over steamed rice: Eggplant Casserole 1 large eggplant Salt Flour 1 large onion, sliced 3-4 Tbs. olive oil 1-2 sliced bell peppers 1-2 sliced zucchini 2-3 sliced tomatoes (I like to add Italian spices to saute) 1 cup grated cheddar or Monterey jack cheese Garlic pepper Slice eggplant 1/2 inch thick. Lightly salt and let stand on cutting board for 15 minutes. Dipp eggplant in flour and set aside. Saute onion in olive oil, set aside. Add eggplant to pan and brown on both sides. Put onions on top, then layer peppers, zucchini and tomatoes. Let simmer gently until vegetables are tender. Cover with cheese for last minute before serving. Sprinkle with garlic pepper. You can add ground meat if you want. Saute after the onions.
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Thank you all for the check-ins! It sounds like most of you are able to stay reasonably cool, more or less, in the house. Wanttoretire, sounds like the whole east coast is getting it bad. Any forecast of it cooling down at all? I don't think I knew anybody growing up who had A/C in the car. Riding in the back seat to our little family car with my two brothers and sister was horrible on those many hot days in central CA! Jay/mushcreek, yikes! That does sound depressing! I do remember you talking about your super insulation when you were building the house. The Hardi board is pretty solid insulation in and of itself, IIRC. Glad to hear about the mini split, since I'm planning to do that. llucy, glad to hear you're cool by comparison, lol! I remember being in Daytona for a race back around 1997, and it was over 90 and pouring, torrential rain! I'd never experienced that. Cooper, my brother lives in New Mexico, is a geochemist at the nuclear power plant. When they moved there a couple of years ago, they bought a house without a pool, thinking they'd put one in later. Never got around to it. So a few weeks ago a house came up for sale just around the corner from them. Pool included. So they bought it, quick close, and are now enjoying the pool, haha! Chris/Shades, again, good to hear about the mini split! My power bill was $59 last month, but I'm sure it will be more this month, because I've been running the window A/C and the fans more. Lass, yep, me too with the rain yesterday. I'm in Cheney. I was in Spokane Valley, and now from Cheney it's about 45 minutes to Post Falls, ID. So we're fairly close to each other. Today was lovely! Steph, so great to hear from you! I'm glad you're OK. I do the same thing, both to save gas, which seems to be going up daily here, and to avoid going out in the heat, which isn't heat at all compared to 110 in AZ! But I try to do all my errands in one or two days out of the week, I only grocery shop once a week on one of those days, then I can stay home, mostly inside, for a few days. Since I work from home, it also helps me stay on schedule. Hope everything's OK with the CT scan! murraysmom, I don't blame the dogs, haha! Sounds like things are under control with the A/C and the fans. Wow, I've never seen that iPhone message either! It must have been really, really hot. Good thing it didn't melt! I guess the watchword of the day is "stay cool!" :-)
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faerybutterflye
Original Author
10 years ago
Yes, unfortunately, it has. And we're in for some more today, from what I understand. It has been more brutal to central OK than it has here in southern OK, but it still breaks my heart to watch my fellow Okies suffering (even though I'm a native Texan, Oklahoma is my home & I love it here). Watching the Weather Channel's coverage streaming live yesterday of the tornadoes was like deja vu of a week before...can you imagine how the people of Moore, OK must have felt hearing those sirens sounding off barely a week later, with another tornado emergency & another mile-wide monster approaching? Just watching it gave me goosebumps & made my hair stand on end for them. I think so many of us here in the heartland are feeling beyond helpless in the face of Mother Nature's wrathful month of May. But, if I've learned one thing about OK in the 4 years I've lived here, it's that we are an extremely resilient state that pulls together in hard times to help each other.

I've been meaning to get pics posted...just with everything going on, it's not high on my to-do list. Mesonet data is incomplete at the moment, but I've heard reports of 14"-16" of rain in the last 30 days here. Which is wonderful & much-needed, but unfortunately is also causing flooding. I haven't seen the rivers & creeks so full in the last 3 years. The last time we had an event like this was 2009. I just hope that folks remember how dangerous flood waters can be, also.

Purple, you're so thoughtful to think of me, my friend! I promise that here in the next few days, I will post you some pics to enjoy. Something told me that I'd better wait to reseed my shady flowerbeds that have been repeatedly washed over with runoff from all this rain...so glad I did, because there are rivers running down the sides of my house yet again! Fortunately, we got the lawn mowed & the weeds pulled before this round of rain. But, I bet by tomorrow, it won't look like we did anything. Everything is growing like crazy from all this rain!
Lamora
10 years ago
I am just glad you and your family are ok. Dogs included :)
i cannot imagin how scary that would be. Been praying for everyone effected by the tornadoes.
faerybutterflye
Original Author
10 years ago
Thanks for the thoughts, Lamora! This time of year, living in Oklahoma, my nerves are always frazzled & I seem to be perpetually on edge, monitoring the weather. This year seems to be worse than most years. I'm glued to the Weather Channel constantly & my weather preparedness borders on obsession (or so says my crazy, adrenaline junkie husband, who likes to stay out & video the storms).

When storms knock the satellite out, I turn to my computer. If that fails, I'm subscribed to text alerts from TWC & our county's Blackboard notification system. We don't have an underground shelter, but I have 2 interior hall closets. The one that backs up to our bathroom shower plumbing is for us humans & the other one is for the dogs. It's always an adventure to get those 3 mutts to cooperate with me. Two of my dogs are like me & want to hide until the storms go away, but my youngest pup is like my husband & wants to go out in the storm & run the zoomies around the yard in the thick of it all.

Luckily, my 4-year-old son's take on things is more like mine than his father's, b/c he will stay in the closet with me & worries constantly about any rain or storm bringing a tornado. I don't shelter him from the news coverage on storms & definitely want him to have that healthy fear. Mission accomplished, especially after the last month's coverage on TX & OK monster tornadoes. We've watched live coverage on the Moore tornado & yesterday's OKC area tornado. If watching something like that live isn't enough to scare you half to death & make you take storms seriously, I don't know what is.

Our area down here in southern OK hasn't had any extremely damaging tornadoes hit in many, many years & people here have fallen into complacency. They say that b/c we're in a valley, any rotation that comes our way will just magically lift & go over us. Despite TWC stating over & over again that this is a false statement, many people in my area just don't take the warnings seriously. I fear that it will take a tragedy of epic proportions to put that fear back into the natives of this area, but I have a great fearful respect for these storms, & you won't find me brushing warnings off lightly. Better safe than sorry, in my experience.

Living in Oklahoma (& formerly in North Texas), these storms are just a fact of life for us. May is always a bad month for tornadoes, but we've had tornadoes in the immediate vicinity of us anywhere from February to December. All it takes in those "off-season" times to get the weather to go severe is an unseasonably warm, humid day out ahead of a powerful cold front. I find it in my best interest to always stay informed of the ever-changing weather b/c it takes literally minutes for the sky here to go from sunny to scary.

New plants & a check-in, from OK

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Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL

Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL

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New plants & a check-in, from OK

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Tiffany, purpleinopp Z8b Opp, AL

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