It seems that neither of us is sleeping.

We are missing it so far. 52 here at the present. Hope both of you escape the chilly weather and get at least a few more weeks of growing weather. Jay

44 here @ almost 6! Dew point is 40 so I'll only have to use the wipers on the windshield this morning! Dawn, doesn't it make sense that we should have a strange transition into Fall this year? After all...why should Mother Nature break a weird weather cycle just because season's are changing? sheesh....

At least you won't have to worry about snakes in the garden this morning!

we're at 39 @ 7:30... i guess i'm a weenie.. i had to turn the heat on in the house, as i didn't have any wood up here to put into the wood stove...brrrrr is right!

Wow, you've dropped colder than us a couple of nights now!

Diane

It did eventually drop to 37 degrees but no frost.

Carol, That's true. It is hard to sleep when the outdoor plants are knocking on the windows and doors and begging to come inside. I did go back to sleep later. I hope you did too.

Jay, Our weather was supposed to be really nice last night. I really can't explain why we sometimes get so much colder than the forecast low but surely it is because we're in a low-lying area in the Red River Valley.

I still am baffled the forecasters can be that far off. The NWS forecast I was relying upon was for a forecast point less than 2 miles from our house, so I didn't expect our temp to vary that much from it.

Paula, Yes, it does make sense but that doesn't mean I like it. It has been a crazy weather year all around and I don't think the craziness is ending.

I haven't seen a snake in about 4 days (and I'm happy about that) but Tim saw one yesterday. I wish they'd go ahead and hibernate already.

Dody, Usually I am the cold weather weenie at our house. Yesterday morning I came inside from doing some early-morning chores and DH had turned on the heat for the first time this autumn, so he gets the 2010 Weather Weenie Award at our house.

Diane, It is crazy, isn't it? Blame it on the lovely Red River Valley. I thought of you this morning when I read the article about the young lady from Poteau who killed a bear on the first (and last) day of the 2010 OK Bear Season. Hope all is well there at your new place.

Since I mentioned the young lady who killed the bear, I'll link the article. It is somewhat gardening related because the article mentions that acorns haven't fallen yet. (At our house, a few Burr acorns have fallen, but we don't have bears......as far as I know!)

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: First Female to Kill Bear in OK

Dawn - that's a cool article!!! I hadn't heard yet!!! Thanks for sharing! But how did she pull of hunting with a cross-bow since she's not over 60 or disabled? I finally drug out my BowTech Equalizer this year, took it to the archery shop and had it adjusted down so I can draw back. I've been practicing and I can most times hit a target at 20 yards so far. DH saw two deer at his lease last weekend, but didn't get a shot. He's threatening to take me mid-month and put me in a blind. My first reaction to that is "OH BOY!"...immediately followed by "YIKES!".

That's interesting that in Poteau the acorns haven't fallen. Out at the FAA, they're all over the ground with still some on the trees. Here in NE Norman, they've started to fall also. But we had a freeze Sunday nite so maybe that hastened things a bit.

Ha-ha! OkieTim got the 2010 Weather Weenie Award!!! I'm not in a hurry to start paying for propane...so we're waiting.

Paula

Ha-ha! OkieTim got the 2010 Weather Weenie Award!!!

Paula,

They changed the law for the first time this year to allow crossbows to be used by anyone, I think, and I am wondering if they now regret that since the bear season opened and closed on the same day. For prospective bear hunters who, perhaps, worked on opening day but intended to go out on the second day of the bear season, I would imagine there's a lot of frustration that the season only lasted one day.

I am not a hunter, but it is my understanding that no one really expected so many bears would be taken in one day. Last year, the 'quota' was 20 bears and they intended to close the season after the 20th bear kill was reported. However, only 19 bears were taken. This year, they got 31 bears in one day? So, was it the use of crossbows? Was it that more bears came to areas baited by hunters since the mast crop hasn't fallen yet? And that raised another question in my mind.....just how many acorns would it take to make a bear fat and happy?

I am wondering if the acorns in southeastern OK aren't falling because of the drought. In drought years, often our acorns form in spring but fail to properly develop if we have months of drought and then in the fall there's just not many of them available. I'd be inclined to think SE OK's prolonged 2010 drought must have affected the acorns somewhat.

It isn't really looking like fall here yet, although a few trees are showing a little color. I haven't noticed many acorns falling either except those from the burr acorn in the side yard, but then I stay away from the woods until snake season ends, more or less, with the first frost.

Keith, It surprised me that Tim won the Weather Weenie Award of 2010. He grew up in Pennsylvania and likes cold weather. Or, at least, he used to. After living in this part of the country for almost 30 years, I guess he's finally adapted to the warmer weather. This might be the first year he's ever turned on the heater before I have! It is too early to have had the heater on, but it ran for less than an hour. Even on these cold nights, as soon as the sun is up, it seems to heat up quickly.

Paula, that reminds me of another sign of fall....propane trucks driving up and down the road delivering gas.

We don't have any gas at our house, propane or natural. No fireplace either. I don't know if all firefighters are this way, but after fighting many, many housefires caused by gas problems or fireplace issues, DH and DS are not fond of gas heat or wood heat, and we we're all-electric here. Luckily, in our part of OK, the big ice storms are rare and we've never had a winter power outage since moving here or we might have to rethink the all-electric policy.

Our weather is having wild mood swings this week....down into the 30s and 40s at night and now headed for the upper 80s, even close to 90 degrees, by the end of the week. The poor plants are looking a little stressed, but who can blame them?

Dawn

dawn, i'm a former "yankee" as is your husband, (albany NY) and when i left there, i moved to CA, then OH, then back to CA, then WA, CO and finally settled here in OK. i don't remember if i liked the winters when i was younger, but i can tell that my blood has thinned to the point where i couldn't do them now...:)

we got the wood stove because of my fibromyalgia. my two triggers are being cold, and not getting enough sleep. the radiant heat keeps me warm in a way that electric just can't do. and during the winter, i use the cook top more often than i use the gas stove...i think if i were i firefighter and had put out enough house fires caused by wood stoves, i'd probably think differently as well. tell your husband this ex-yankee says "hello" :)

Dody, I think his blood has thinned to the point that he couldn't and wouldn't move back up north again either. He gets mad when I call him a Yankee because he was born in Norfolk, Virginia, but I think they moved to Pennsylvania when he was a year or two old, so for all practical purposes, he grew up as a Yankee! He does enjoy living in the southern part of the country and always says "I got here as soon as I could". I'll tell him a fellow Yankee (OK, former Yankee) says hello and I'm sure he'll send you a "howdy" right back.

Dawn

Dawn,

Any man who will risk his life to protect lives and property has nothing 'weenie' about him. A chilly morning while drinking coffee is nothing compared to fighting a fire in sub-freezing temps when everything turns to ice and the fire rages on.

I was disturbed about what happened in Fulton Tenn. I know it was probably a topic of discussion at the Fire House and also the dinner table. Would you care to share your thoughts?

For anyone who hasn't heard of this fire, this is a link to a local Fulton news story and video. "Fulton Tennessee Fire"

Thanks, Keith

Don't most insurance companies require you to pay that fee, or did I misunderstand? We pay a fee.

Keith,

You know, I'm just kidding about him being a weather weenie! He is, in fact, the bravest man I know and puts his life on the line for his fellow citizens all the time, both in his professional career as a police officer (back when he was hired, they all were cross-trained as firefighters too) and in his volunteer capacity as a firefighter. Our son is the same way...he works as a professional firefighter/paramedic and then also as a volunteer firefighter on his own private time.

You can bet that we immediately had a discussion here at our home about the Fulton fire as soon as we heard the story. Both DH and DS said the family clearly was at fault for failing to pay the fire membership fee (or whatever the heck they call it there), that the family knew the consequences and that the family gambled they'd never need the fire dept., and they lost. So, the family received virtually no sympathy from my two firefighters. Also, please note that they were burning trash in metal burn barrels and set their own place on fire by leaving those unattended. (I'm assuming the barrels were unattended since a person sitting there with a water hose could have quickly put out the fire when it spread from the barrel to the grass.). I would have liked to see them stand in front of the camera and say "This is entirely our own fault and we accept full responsibility.

Since this particular area's fire fee has been in effect since 1990, there is no doubt in my mind that the family knew exactly what the consequences would be if they didn't have fire protection and had a fire because the same thing happened there just two years ago to another family.

I have really mixed feelings about this, but I do want to defend the firefighters. Their hands were tied. If they had fought that fire, each and every one of them who fought the fire would have been dismissed from the department. Those firefighters had a moral and ethical obligation to obey their policy and could not fight that fire. I hate that the family put them in that sort of position to begin with.

After all, if you choose not to have auto insurance or homeowners insurance, you surely do not call up an insurance company AFTER the fact and ask them to pay for your damaged home or car. Why should fire protection be any different? If the fire dept. disregarded their own policy and fought that fire, they'd be opening the door for every resident to decline to pay their annual fee. Then, the dept. wouldn't have enough money to operate and would cease to exist and no one would have fire protection. So, it is just a big mess, isn't it?

My personal feeling is that while the family was wrong, in my heart I wish the fire dept. had the latitude to fight the fire and then to bill the family after the fact. In that case, the fire dept. should be able to bill the family for the FULL COST of fighting the fire, which my son tells me would be approximately $500 per hour. Then, it would be your choice as a homeowner to pay the $75 per year annual fee or to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars per fire incident in the event you had a fire. However, that was not an option the Fulton firefighters had available to them.

You might be surprised to learn that more property owners in this country are in areas covered by volunteer fire departments than by professional fire departments. Volunteer departments receive miniscule amounts of funding from the state of Oklahoma and the amount that most receive from their county or city are not very large either. In our county, if you add together the money you get from the state and the county, you might...just might...have enough money to pay your annual fuel bill. Sometimes you don't have enough. I have personally witnessed, quite often, volunteer firefighters paying for fuel for the fire trucks or parts to repair fire trucks using their own personal funds with no expectation that they'll be repaid that money by their department. In order to have money for gasoline, insurance, fire station utilities, etc., we have to spend tons and tons of time on fund-raising. Our guys spend as much time on fundraising some years as they spend fighting fires. Something is wrong with the way we fund volunteer departments in this country, but you cannot blame departments for that. It is the fault of the governmental officials we elect.

Do some departments get federal, state or local grants to help buy equipment, fix equipment, buy personal protective gear, etc.? Of course they do. However, to receive a grant you have to apply, apply, apply over and over and over again, year in and year out, and if you're lucky AND extremely good at filling out tons of paperwork over and over again, you might get a grant once or twice a decade. Smaller depts. who lack grant-savvy members rarely, if ever, receive grants because they haven't mastered the paperwork nightmare. Our dept. is very fortunate because we have a couple of guys who spend probably hundreds of hours per year working on grants, so we get a grant about once every 2 or 3 years. Without them, I don't know what we'd do but think we'd be in worse financial shape than we currently are, and we'd have older, less safe and less reliable equipment.

It used to be that professional departments had the funding from their entity, be it a city or county or fire district, to cover their needs adequately. However, in the tough economic times we're in now, every fire dept. I know of, no matter how big and marvelous they are, is fighting to do more with less. Many depts. nationwide have laid off firefighters and even closed down entire stations because they lack the funding to maintain the level of service they once had. I think incidents like the Fulton incident will continue to occur because you'll always have people who won't pay their fair share until their house is burning...and, by then, it is too late.

For the members of our fire department, there is nothing worse than being unable to save a burning structure, but sometimes by the time you arrive, the home is already fully engulfed and all you can do is try to keep the fire from spreading to the adjacent dwellings. I cannot even imagine our dept.'s firefighters standing by and watching a house burn because a family hadn't paid their fire protection fee. Doing that would go against everything the members of our department believe in. However, our county doesn't have a fee like that or a policy like that, so it isn't something we have to deal with.

The only thing that really disturbs me about the Fulton policy is this: what if people are inside a burning home and are likely to die if firefighters do not suit up, go inside the house, find them, and carry them out? What then? I think that, morally, it is one thing to stand and let someone's home burn because they CHOSE not to pay the fee. It would be something else entirely different, though, to stand by and let someone perish in a fire. I would find that morally reprehensible.

I know this isn't gardening-related, but I am glad we discussed it. For all of you who are involved with your local dept as a volunteer or who financially support your local dept., THANK YOU. For all of you who don't, please remember they need your support!

There used to be a bumper sticker (it first appeared during a campaign to unionize firefighters and give them collective bargaining rights) that said "Suppose You Had A Fire, And Nobody Came?". Well, if you don't support your local volunteer depts., that could happen to you.

Carol, If you're in a fire district with a required membership fee, I believe the insurance companies do require you to pay it or they can deny you fire coverage. Our county doesn't have a fee, though, so I have no first-hand experience with it. I do know, though, that if we send an insurance company a letter notifying them that we fought a fire at a piece of property they insure, most of them send us back a letter of gratitude and a check to help cover our costs. Unlike some residents, the insurance companies understand EXACTLY where they'd be without the volunteer and professional fire depts.

Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this: our local fire department had a big fund-raiser a couple of weeks ago and our whole community turned out in force and they brought their money with them. The fundraiser was a success and virtually ensures we'll be able to pay our bills for the next year, assuming no major disaster occurs. I am SO GRATEFUL to all the Love County residents who attended and who made our fundraiser a success. The residents are the reason that we do what we do, and they also make it possible for us to serve them by contributing money to the department to help pay its operating expenses. I feel so fortunate that in Love County the citizens support their VFDs.

Dawn

I was so 'fired up' (pun intended) about the Fulton fire story that I forgot to mention that once again, we went ten degrees lower than our forecast low! Our forecast was for 49 degrees and our low was 39 degrees. This is just really bizarre. I am starting to think we may see an early first freeze in our county....we've come remarkably close to that a couple of times this week.

Here, 32.4 mon. morn. 34.4 tue. 35.5 wed. Frost mon. and Tue. and very little wed, only formed for about 20 min.

Fulton, very poor judgement all the way around, there has to be a better way. And, yes I pay my dues.

Larry

Larry,

Brrrr. Y'all have been really cold there. Did you have any plant damage from the frost?

It is better here today...we only went down to 45!

Fulton was poor judgement all the way around, but I still won't blame the individual firefighters....they had to obey the policy and it is my understanding that the policy is unlikely to change. Why? The alternative is to pass a new tax to pay for fire protection and to tax everyone in the county. Since it is estimated that a new tax assessment would cost each property owner more (in some cases much more) than the current $75 per year annual fee, the property owners do not want that new tax and it is believed by those in the know that they'd vote down any such proposed tax. That just seems shortsighted to me!

Dawn

Dawn, it looks like I may have a few leaves on the top of my green beans, but very little. I placed a plastic tarp over part of the garden the 2 ND night and that may be where the leaf damage. So far only 6 or 8 leaves show damage. I think in this case spraying water worked best.

Fulton, maybe a system in place where fire would be put out, a lean placed on the home and if not paid in 60 days, or what ever, the home to be sold to the highest bidder.
If it cost $500.00 per hr to fight fire, then through in another $1000.00 per hr for legal cost.

This method would give the owner a way to save pictures and other things that can not be replaced. The fire dept. gets paid, the legal dept. gets paid, the county keeps a tax base, and someone might get a good buy on a home. If the neighbors think the owner is treated unfairly they have time to have a fund raiser to pay the debt.

The system in place is like stacking money up on the side walk and burning it, nobody wins, it only creates ill will.

Larry

up until watching the link provided above, i was under the impression that this way some how a "new" requirement. apparently not... i would like to think that if it was just this one year that he forgot to pay, the fd would be forgiving, but if he had never paid it, and then expected to be covered, that would be another thing...

also, when i was watching that, i was shocked to hear the reporter say that it took 2 hours for the fire to move from the barrels to the house. did i hear that wrong????!! i'd be interested to know a more exact time line of when the first 911 call was made... if you knew it was moving to the house, why in the name of all that is holy, would you not remove your animals....i'm either incredibly dense, or i missed something very important in this story.

it's a no win all around imho. the man lost his home and his animals. however, he must bear some responsibility for not paying attention while he was burning trash. the firefighters, needing their jobs, had to follow orders. they, and the city are being vilified in the press for their non action. i have to believe that had their been a human life at risk, they would have done everything in their power to save that life, regardless of the consequences. if i can't believe that, then i will have lost all faith in the human race. and that i couldn't bear...

dody

Dody, My best guess from having observed such fires here is that the 2 hrs. is probably the elapsed time between the time when the homeowners started burning trash and time they found the fire approaching their home. I'd assume that the grass was dry and at some point either an ember or radiant heat from the metal trash barrel ignited the grass, and that sort of fire could have happened long after the trash fire was started. We have been to fires here in our own fire district that began just that way...with embers (even from a brush pile or burn barrel that was used on a previous day) from an "old' fire flaring up and igniting something.

Also, I'm not sure if the people were at home the whole time or if they left and returned but didn't notice fire spreading from their burn barrel towards their home because it likely was behind the house and they probably parked and entered from the front.

Like you, I have to believe that if there was the tiniest chance a human being was in the house that some firefighter would have decided to risk his job (and his life) to go in and find them. I feel really bad for the pets because they were not at fault...they didn't decide to pass on paying the fire fee....but they lost their lives.

I am here to tell y'all that there are lots of people who expect to have good emergency services but who do not wish to pay for them. We have, at times, seen that here. Of course, when fire is moving towards their home, they have a "come-to-Jesus" moment and change their mind. On the other hand, there are a lot more people who show up at every fire dept. fundraiser and donate more money to the dept. than we have a right to expect, and there are others who regularly send their VFDs a check every year. You'll always have people at both extremes...those who give freely with a grateful heart, and those who never give the fire dept. a nickle. That's human nature for you.

Dawn

Dorothy I Grew up between Albany and Binghampton NY! And here we both are in Jenks!!! HOW WEIRD is that????

shut up!! you did not!!! that's awesome! you and i absolutely must get together! i'll say that's it's not weird....it's fate. ha! so cool!

dody :)

It is odd but it also is cool. It would seem that you were fated to meet. To add to the strangeness of all this, DH and I were introduced to one another in Dallas in 1981 by a friend of mine who was a co-worker of his...and that friend and his wife had moved to Dallas from Binghampton, NY! Seems like it is a small, small world.

As for the cold nights, it is hard to believe it and it makes me wonder what the heck is going on, but our forecast was for 55 degrees last night (and I checked it right before I went to sleep to see if it had changed, and it had not) and this morning our low is 45 degrees. This is a trend I'm not liking at all. We've had an ocasional night go much colder than forecast in the past, but not night after night after night.