We've had increasing wind since Saturday, but I think it's settling down now, and it switched to the north overnight. North is better - the yard is set up so we've got a fair bit of protection from the north/northwest. I spent more time than I wanted to yesterday trying to wet down my straw mulch. I ended up taking the little wire fences I use to keep the cats out of the flower pots and using them to pin down the straw on the leading edge. At least it's not Pincher Creek - 100 km winds are common there. My sister's new chicken coop (and she's in a coulee) got picked up and moved 6 feet north - chickens and all - last week. I have to e-mail her and see if it's moved all the way to the creek yet. Connie

Rockman, you are correct. And, for the record, weather in New England does not change any quicker than in other parts of the country either. During winter, in Denver, for example...it's normal to have 70 degrees on Tuesday & 20 degrees on Wednesday. And...in Denver, people would say, "Well, just hang around...if you don't like the weather...here in Denver, it will change quickly...that's the Rockies, ya know!" The only place I've ever lived where folks did NOT use that expression (or some version of it) was CA where they do indeed get LONG stretches of beautiful weather. I've lived in many parts of our country. My experience has been that New England gets a lot of weather (that's sounds odd but you know what I mean). But, we don't get the extremes of weather as other areas I've lived in. We seem to get frequent, mild to moderate weather events. Even this year's flooding was mild compared to other areas of the country. Our daughter was vising last week from Houston. She left home in a severe drought and returned home to a flood caused from 10-15" of rainfall in 36 hours. Houston experiences flooding on a scale worse than what New England experienced this spring on a fairly regular basis. But, I would also have to say that we also do not receive long periods of beautiful weather either...in fact, I don't think we get much of that at all! Of course, that's a personal preference as to what one would consider "beautiful" weather. I'm a CA native so my guage of weather will differ considerably from someone from Minnesota or Texas. What we don't get much of, in New England, are those 70-75 degree days with bright sunshine and very low humidity levels. In fact, I could count those on one hand this spring here in Mystic. When it warms up...up goes the humidity as well and it's miserable outside, IMO. Our summer weather is rarely severe (certainly not severe my mid-Western standards..or even places like Kentucky, Tennessee, etc.). But, again...this spring, we've not gone a week without rain in quite some time...at least not where I live. My soil's saturated and my plants are rotting from lack of sunlight more than too much rain. For the time period of December '05 to present, Mystic is still running a deficit from "average" precipitation amounts. (I realize that's not true for many parts of New England that experienced the flooding a month ago.) This year, we've had weather events every 3-5 days and cool, cloudy weather in between rainfalls so that the ground hasn't had an opportunity to dry before it rains again. New England varies and away from the coast...maybe, the soil has dried but mine has not. The intent of my original "Here we go again!" post though was to note another weekend weather event. Besides being a gardener, DH & I are also boaters. The last weekend we've had without rain was the weekend of May 6/7. We're getting mighty tired of being rained out of the marina. Also, Mystic is a summer tourist community & local business is down this year because of the weekend rains. Our season is short. The lost revenues can not be made up between now & Labor Day....even if it stops raining on Sat./Sun. So, for my neighbor who owns/operates a local retail establishment...it matters not what happens on Tuesday or Thursday. Typically, our weather turns around July 4 to the hot/humid stuff and we'll, probably, be wishing for the cool, cloudy, damp days of this spring. But, for right now...we sure would have enjoyed a cruise to Newport this weekend on our new boat in bright, sunny weather. As you probably know from my posts, I follow the weather closely as a hobby. Spring '06's weather is not unusual...it's just not pleasant. And, I would love to focus on a string of beautiful days...give me a holler when we have 2-3 in a row so I don't miss it!!!!

Good gravy, I'm so glad I don't often watch the news, and wasn't reading all of this. The wind was awful here, but as everything was still in pots waiting to be planted, I just snuggled everything up against the west-facing side of the house, and let 'em fend for themselves. Several pots got blown over, but nothing too tragic--they have all gotten to be VERY good friends, as they're all mashed up next to each other so that they can't blow around/down too much. I finally was able to get some peppers planted out yesterday--got about 40 into their containers, and staked every dang one of them except for that beauty that I got from Greg at the swap; it's back up against a wall, though... Freeze? Good thing it didn't--I was completely unprepared for it. I figured: if it freezes this late in the game, then we're all in trouble! Still, if it's cold enough to "frost" but the breeze is blowing, the moisture can't settle on the plants... at least, judging by if I have to scrape my windshield in the morning!

Wishing everyone in the path or the storm safety. We have had strong winds since last night in the Windsor-Detroit area and they are expected to get worse in the next few days as Hurricane Sandy and the winter storm meet clash. Our utility company has been trimming trees in the area away from power lines in the last few weeks and mine were done a few days ago so I am confident our power will stay on, well at least I hope so. I am happy the weather report just reported we won't be getting the heavy rains that they were expecting so that makes me happy because my basement floods when we get heavy rains. Anne Here is a link that might be useful: Weather