Why Do We Have The Strangest Weather In The World?
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
7 years ago
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Turbo Cat (7a)
7 years agoRelated Discussions
The World's 18 Strangest Gardens
Comments (9)Thanks Sprout. Yep, before I got too sleepy last night I looked up The Lost Gardens of Heligan, the one with the mud maid in England. Luna I think had posted a pic of the mud guy head a long time ago but I never could track down where he was located. Lots more pics of that one on google and they have a website, too. If I had the energy, and the extra dirt, I'd like to try doing one of them, got me looking at my yard in a whole different way. I've seen some really pretty looking soft grasses and I have some crocosmia that would make some great hair, lol) I think it's just wonderful what people are doing in cities with the green roofs. Love the 'Garden of Cosmic Speculation"! Donna...See Morewhy do we like what we like...and will we always?
Comments (13)Hi Elmire, I've thought about this some too, and as I've looked through various pictures I've tried to define what I do and don't like. I tend to like flowers, period. What I like best probably depends on the distance I'm looking at the plant from. Up close, a frilly picotee edge is the greatest thing... but from a distance, a simple single flower probably has the greatest impact. I like big yellow centers and no visible centers, both. I like both singles and doubles, but overall I'd rather have more semi-doubles than anything else, and I like them even better if their petals have some waviness to them. A rose with a subtle color blend to a darker or lighter color on the edge appeals to me hugely... though if the entire yard were composed of those kinds of flowers, there would be too much competition between them. So just a few Mrs. Dudley Cross roses (or roses of those types), sitting perhaps right next to Duchesse De Brabant to help point out the sublime in Mrs. Dudley Cross. I have always liked roses, but less so the hybrid tea forms than their smell. The brief amount of time I had Belinda's Dream with the same form, though, I liked it plenty. It looks especially nice with roses of other forms in a vase. I liked the effects of the tiny Rose Rosette to add variety to a vase of flowers, too. Overall, if I had to name just one favorite flower form, I'd probably go with a rhododendron, especially those with a bit of a frilly and/or picotee edging to the individual flowers within the truss. I love rhododendrons, huge trusses and small ones both. Rhododendrons don't withstand drought well, however, so I wouldn't suggest getting started with them if you can't give them plenty of water during a drought. Oh, no, maybe I should have said the one favorite was a camellia, all kinds of camellias... And daffodils! The Ice Follies variety is pretty much a perfect flower. But peonies (of all kinds) can't be bested by any other flower! Oh, I forgot to say how wonderful the tiny-leaved karume azaleas look when they are covered in a blanket of tiny flowers. They make for spectacular arrangements in a vase too. I like flowers, period. In a mood to really look and appreciate, I can get excited with just a single bloom from a native woods violet. And at that moment, it seems that nothing could best the simple woods violet. I guess the real luxury is in having a good variety of flowering forms, and especially in having them at various times of the year, which roses and camellias are both good at. Though I do have one rhododendron that blooms a bit every fall. I can't think of any flowers I actually don't like, though irises are probably fairly low on the list. I have stronger opinions on garden design than on the flowers themselves. (I'm not into geometrical/formal gardens so much as very informal ones.) Mary...See MoreA little OT: Our wonderful world of whacky weather!
Comments (4)Hi Laurelin and All! I didn't think when I originally posted this thread that we'd be back in a couple of weeks talking about another onslaught of bad weather. The rain of yesterday afternoon here in the Syracuse area was somewhat reminiscent of the straight line winds we had during the Labor Day storm of a few years ago when we lost over 33,000 trees just in Syracuse alone and we were without power for almost a full week. Back then the winds with the moving storm were estimated at 115 mph. They said yesterday's winds were clocked at 75 mph hour at the Carrier Dome in Syracuse and with the same fast movement of the storm they must have been close to 90mph. It's only the second time I've seen horizontal rain like that, and my initial thoughts were here we go again, and thanks be to God all of the leaves on the trees have fallen. Laurelin I'm originally from Binghamton and was heart sickened to see the devastation you all had in the summer and with it being so widespread. My wife and I have family in Conklin, Kirkwood, as well as in Great Bend where my wife and I had to pick up and bring back her mother to stay with us after the Rt 81 off and on ramps at GB were re-opened on July 3rd, as everyone else who could have helped was stranded. After her mothers return to GB two weeks later my brother in Conklin took my wife and I on a full scale sad and sometimes teary eyeopening tour. It was close to sickening to see the damage even in little places like Stillwater where my sister lived back in the '70's and I had so many fond memories. To see that virtually ever home, cottage or trailer at Stillwater had to be condemned was mind boggling. I couldn't fathom the power of water that could turn once quite Brooks where I fished for Brook Trout into raging torrents that now left them wider than most two lane roadways. Just unbelievable. When I heard esterda on the 06:00PM news that the Port Crane area was hard hit, plus the high water in Binghamton I easily envisioned Port Crane as I hitchhiked (almost walking all the way on man of those occasions) to Lily Lake in the summer as a kid. The traffic flow then wasn't bumper to bumper as can be today at times, and rides to the Lake were far from in between. All of us kids back then were also far from overweight, and I don't have to wonder why? In fact during yesterdas storm my wife was talking to her sister in Kirkwood when you all were getting pelted in the Broome area. Yes Laurelin! I fully agree, I too am ready for a drought. Maybe if we get to use the hoses more often next year we'll be able to bring down the water table of 2006 a little. Hope things get back to more normal soon! Jim...See MoreWhy do we set artificial deadlines... And should we?
Comments (11)I think deadlines (at least deadlines we BELIEVE in) help us to focus on completing a task. With no deadlines, it is easy to postpone work on that task and spend our time on other things that seem more urgent or more immediately interesting. As a deadline approaches however, most of us experience an adrenalin rush that not only makes us more alert and able to focus on the job at hand but gives us the energy to keep working at it even if we have to forego sleep... just to meet the deadline. The biggest problem in your situation is that the deadlines you're talking about are YOUR deadlines but apparently not your builder's! And, since you're not in control of meeting the deadlines, all they are doing is increasing your level of stress with no payoff. All you get is a sense of disappointment when your builder fails to meet the deadlines. I think you need to find a way of making your builder internalize a deadline to finish your house so that HE feels the adrenalin. I did a search on your name to find your previous posts and get a sense of why it might be taking so long for your home to be finished. The first post I found from you was in September 2010 where you mentioned that the foundation had been poured in December 2009! Wow! I thought, that is TWO FULL YEARS. At that point, I was tempted to chime in to agree wholeheartedly with Worthy and even to suggest that it was long post time for you to get a new builder. But then, looking at some more of your posts, I realized that you are building at a fairly high elevation where winter sets in early and lingers late and you probably have a rather limited number of daylight hours in the winter plus days when roads are closed due to ice and snow. ( You mentioned in your Sept 2010 post that you'd already had a couple of snowfalls in August of that year. BRRRR! But your views are delicious!) Obviously, cold snowy or cold rainy weather is going to slow things down until a house is fully dried in. And, if roads are impassible to large trucks for much of the year, that could slow your build considerably even after you're dried in and most of the remaining work is "inside". I'm a southerner so see very little snow but I can imagine that small vehicles might be able to get up mountain roads that have only had narrow lanes plowed while larger trucks can't get up. So, if the truck delivering your cabinets can't get up the mountain, then your cabinets can't be installed. Since you mentioned "Christmas eve in the new house" tho, I'm assuming you're not building at such a high elevation that they close the roads for months at a time. But, just looking at your portapotty picture tells me that there are no doubt days when roads are totally impassible. When workmen can't make the trip nothing gets done even if all materials are on site. So, it seems like weather in your area may account for SOME of the slow-going that you've experienced so I won't go so far as to say that your builder is totally taking advantage of your relationship and is "blowing you off." And, he does seem to be doing some beautiful work. But, I do think you need to somehow get HIM to internalize some deadlines with regard to finishing your home. Now that it looks like the only things left to be done on your home are all "interior work," work ought to be going forward EVERY single day until the job is completely done unless the road are closed to all traffic so that workmen can't get there. If roads regularly become impassible to large trucks in the winter, that just means that your builder should plan ahead and get all materials on-site when the weather is good and roads are clear even if that means having them delivered to a storage facility at a lower altitude and them putting everything on a truck and moving it all up the mountain the next very time that roads are clear for a large truck. It looks like your garage is "finished" and there is no reason why various materials can't be stored in the garage until he's ready to install them. Not sure what all still needs to be done on the interior of your home but even buckets of paint can be kept on-site as long as you have heat so that it doesn't freeze. Wood flooring should also be stored in the house with the HVAC on so that it can acclimatize before installation. But, pretty much everything else (tile, cabinets, trim, electrical and plumbing fixtures won't be harmed at all by spending time in an unheated garage even in below freezing weather. I will tell you that I fired my GC when our home was at the dried-in stage. I took over as GC and it took me 11 months to finish it so we could move in. The house is 3200 sq ft heated/cooled plus a 900 sq ft semi-attached garage. It is a neo-Victorian with 3 full baths and two half baths, hardwood and tile floors throughout and lots of wood trim. About 3 months of the 11 was spent fighting with my banker to get him to agree to let us take down the rest of our approved loan without having to hire another builder so that we could get started so you can't really count that. So, 7 months to go from dried-in to move-in which is no land speed record but, having never built a home, I had to figure out what needed to be done and in what order various jobs should be done, then find and vet subcontractors to do each task and learn enough about each job to make sure it was done right before I paid for it. Plus, in order to save money, DH and I did many of the smaller tasks ourselves (i.e., painting walls, staining woodwork, hanging interior doors, installing mirrors and towel racks and cabinets knobs, plus all the CLEANING).... all the while continuing to work full-time at our real jobs. Based on the photos you posted in October, I would have estimated that you were less than month out from being finished, so Christmas should certainly have been especially if you had a builder that was really trying to meet that deadlines and making your home a priority. That you're STILL not ready to move in tells me that your builder isn't making finishing your home a top priority. So, while I can understand that you don't want to ruin the good relationship you have with your builder, it might be time for you to throw just a little bit of a hissy-fit. Just enough to let your builder know that underneath that nice, laid-back exterior you've shown thus far, there lurks a monster that he would really rather NOT have to deal with. Then, calm down and talk about setting some REAL DEADLINES. But keep your voice just strained enough that he realizes you've been pushed as far as you will go and that you're holding yourself back from ripping into him. And, once he gives you a new deadline, insist that he break it down into smaller steps for you with individual deadlines to prove that the overall deadline is realistic. And, once you have those, insist that he call or email you every single evening (Mon-Fri) with a quick update on exactly what got done that day so that you can see he is staying on track. You don't have to be harsh and totally unyielding but it is time to be a little bit less laid back! Or, maybe you and your spouse could pull a variation of the good cop/bad cop routine. Stage a "major fight" between the two of you that you allow your builder to overhear wherein spouse screams hysterically at you that she (he?) is sick and tired of this long drawn-out building crap and that if this house is NOT finished so that you can move in by such-and-such a date, she is "out of here" and you're going to have hell-to-pay getting the loan to close (or whatever) so that builder can be paid IF she walks out and files for divorce. If your builder is a half-way decent guy, he is not going to want to be responsible for causing a divorce. And he is not going to like the idea that your spouse filing for a divorce could cause a delay in him getting his final payments once he does finish the house. Maybe the combination will cause him to give finishing your home a higher priority. Good luck and I definitely don't want to see that decorated porta-potty again NEXT year....See MoreOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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