Our Hazardous Weather for 5/18/2017
Okiedawn OK Zone 7
6 years ago
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Okiedawn OK Zone 7
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Comments (22)Hellooooooooooooooooooo~ Well, with the sale of the house came TONS of work! We signed the papers on Tuesday morning and have to be out by THIS Saturday night at 11pm! Just Baby V, my college DD, and I had the movers there on Wednesday - a WHOLE ENTIRE 18 wheeler FULL to the top! DD watched the baby and I packed the rest of the stuff. I slept on the floor of the house that night and baby slept in his port-a-crib. Up at 2am to get on the road to get in line for the first ferry to the rock. I dropped Baby off at daycare and headed to the "drop zone." Then a full day of unloading into the garage of our yet unfinished house. We got done at 4pm yesterday and I went to work till 5. I think I fell asleep BEFORE my head hit hit pillow! Today, it's work. Tomorrow, back to the house for a few runs to the dump and to recycle some of DH's old electronics in the city. Then, load up the remains of whatever's left in the house and wipe out drawers, cupboards, and then and back to the island. The cleaners are coming today to do a good clean beforethe new owners move in. I'm dreading holiday traffic on the way back, but hey!---can't complain---SOLD the house. Yes, at a 60% reduction and after over a year, but it's sold. Sigh. One question--SHould I dig up the St. Joseph or leave it there? lol. This Sunday, we are going to GO TO THE BEACH and have a weiner roast picnic with another family from school. YAY! A real day off!!!!!! *********Dee, Trekaren, I hope you feel better.********* Baby V is on a 20 day course of antibiotics since I took him to the allergist and they think he has had a year long sinus infection, which ALL the other docs I took him to missed dianosing. It appears they are correct, as his nose has cleared up but he is having the worst intestinal issues I've ever seen him have as a result of the antibiotics, but there is only about 5 days left so I will continue and see if the "cure" lasts. As for Monday, I think I will work on my garage and packing , as the move from our rental to the new house is about 3 weeks away. Ahhhhhhhhhh. Okay, I'm done. Everyone sounds like life is GOOD! Enjoy the weekend. This week, I have been internet impovrished and no internet when I'm away, so see you guys on Monday....See MoreSevere Weather for 3/28/2017: The Sequel
Comments (39)Jay, I'm so glad y'all are getting rain. The cold interfering in planting is unfortunate. Hopefully it will be the last really cold night. Bon, That's a lot of rain at once after y'all went without good rain for so long. I hope the ground doesn't stay too wet for too long. Ours is still just mud, mud, mud but I think that today's high temperature in the lower 80s with strong winds means we'll see some drying. They've dropped our chances of rain today and tonight down to 20% and I'm hoping the rain misses us so we can dry out a bit more. It is too bad we can't save this rain for June, July or August. Dawn...See MoreWeek 5, May 2017, General Garden Talk
Comments (111)Rebecca, Well, that is what caterpillar frass does look like, so I don't think it is eggs of any sort. However, having said that, life is full of wonderful and not-so-wonderful surprises so perhaps there is some sort of egg that looks like caterpillar frass, though I've never seen one. Usually frass of that size indicates a very large caterpillar, often a hornworm, so if I had big piles of frass like that on a plant, I'd search that plant carefully for a hornworm. Alexis, I only worry about you being out in the heat because I know how much you truly love gardening and might find it hard to stay indoors during the hotter weather. I'm relieved to hear you are in Mama Bear mode and taking care of yourself, Wren and your baby so that none of y'all get overheated this summer. Congratulations! You now have more tomato plants in the ground than I have, so I will pass the title of Crazy Queen of the Tomatoes to you. I am not sorry to relinquish it as I've been trying very, very hard the last few years to cut back, and not always successfully either. This year I was somewhat successful. I think my original main planting in March was 80 plants. Then, later in April, I put in 10 more plants. Then, in May, three more cherry tomato plants, so I have put at least 93 tomato plants in the ground that I know of. I'd like to cut back to about 50 plants but when it comes to seed-starting time, there's always so many varieties I want to grow that I never manage to cut back that much. I used to work like crazy to keep all the tomato plants producing as long as possible, but I am older and more tired every year than the year before, so nowadays as soon as I finish all the canning I want to do, I am yanking and tossing tomato plants right and left. Once two years worth of canned tomato products are done, there's no reason to try to keep up with a huge number of plants. We can only eat so many fresh tomatoes, so I keep enough for that and no more than that once I'm through canning. I have found it makes my life much easier in the summer to treat 90% of the tomato plants as canning/production plants that are expendable at a certain point. For me, that point often is late June since I plant early in order to harvest early and can early before the insane July heat sets in. Even with most of the plants gone by late June, we still get too many tomatoes at times and when that happens I just wash the harvested tomatoes, toss them in gallon-sized ziplock freezer bags and freeze them. They are great for cooking in winter when I want to make pasta sauce or some sort of soup from scratch with tomatoes instead of using jarred/canned tomatoes. Nancy, Just reading about all your rain turns me green with envy. At least we got some rain, but down here in summer it becomes increasingly rare and we never get enough, so it hurts that we are entering summer with only about 60% of our typical rainfall so far. Even if we'd had exactly average rainfall for the year-to-date, I'd be dreading the start of the summer dry spell. Well, we had plentiful summer rainfall in 2015, but that was the crazy exception to all of recorded history in our county. My Yankee husband actually was born in Virginia, so he is a southerner by birth, as he likes to point out to anyone who accuses him of being born a Yankee, but his family moved to Pennsylvania when he was about 18 months old, so he grew up near Pittsburgh. He moved to the DFW metro area after college to begin his career here as the Pennsylvania economy was in quite a severe slump back then. We lived in Texas until 1999 when we moved here to escape from the constantly expanding concrete jungle down in the DFW metropex. I love Texas, but you know, we are Oklahomans now and intend to live here for the rest of our lives. At least here you can still live out in the country without having to worry that a developer is going to buy the ranch across the road and turn it into a high-density housing development. I hope our area stays rural forever, and it wouldn't have if we'd stayed in north Texas, where rural areas continued to be gobbled up right and left by development. I'm not naive either, and do expect the continuing development in Texas will spill over into southern Oklahoma eventually, but we'll enjoy rural life for as long as it still can be considered rural here. There's tons and tons of people here just like us who were fleeing the concrete jungle and seeking a quiet rural lifestyle but who still commute to the DFW metro area to work just like Tim does. I'm actually amazed at how many folks there are making that long drive, and our son and some of his friends are among them. My garden is in full riotous bloom. There's almost nothing left that hasn't bloomed already, but of course, we've already hit 100 degrees here, so even the true heat lovers were kicked into high gear by that and burst into bloom. Last night as I stood in my kitchen and looked at 5 large bowls filled with tomatoes, my heart kinda sank. Not, of course, because I am unhappy to have a kitchen full of tomatoes. Not...exactly. I have just what I want, and what I plan for, and in fact, what I plant for..... But, the day arrives every year, where I look at the ever increasing piles of summer squash, cucumbers, onions, potatoes, peppers and tomatoes and ask myself "How did this happen?" as if it all is somehow a mystery to me. It can feel overwhelming to have so much food coming into the house from the garden at once. I have to kick the food preservation work into high gear this week and it will keep me busy for a good month or two, almost insanely busy, but then we'll have the canning jars all filled, the three deep freezers filled, and the walk-in pantry full of onions and potatoes by the beginning of July and I'll be able to kinda, sorta coast a little bit after that. In the case of both onions and potatoes we have so many that I'll need to preserve quite a lot of them as well because there's so many we'll never be able to eat them all fresh before they start sprouting. I am not complaining, not exactly. It is more just a sense of awe that when the garden is producing well, it can produce this well. And part of it is almost a sense of panic, like I'll never ever be able to get all this food processed in a timely manner. That's garbage, by the way. I always manage. It is just a matter of having the will power (and using it) to stay indoors and process food when I'd rather be outside in the garden. As hard as I try to spread out the harvest (for example, I deliberately planted most of my cucumbers and all of my beans late this year so I wouldn't have them at the same time as the aforementioned main early harvest), somehow there's still always too much food at once. In the midst of harvesting/preserving mania, I always promise myself that I'll plant less next year, a promise that I fail to keep. Even if I cut back on one thing, like tomato plants, I just plant more of something else, like squash. So, having said that, it is time for me to head out to the garden and work in the cool morning air for an hour or two before I then spend the rest of the day in the kitchen. Y'all have a great day and now I'm headed over to start this week's thread. Dawn...See MoreOctober 2017 Week 2 Gardening, Weather and Life
Comments (47)Amy, I guess I was in Texas shopping, but we had a long list of things to do at home, so we only went as far south as Denton in order to go to Sam's Club, and I guess we'll hit CostCo next weekend or the one after since it it a much greater distance to drive. We wanted to hurry back home to work on projects and to watch the OU-UT game. It was hot, hot, hot here yesterday so we were just barely hanging on and hoping for cooler weather, which finally rolled in sometime in the pre-dawn hours this morning....and not too long before our fire pagers went off (while it was still dark) for a multi-vehicle accident on the Red River bridge (because we never get to sleep in on weekends----it is like it is against the rules or something). Today was pretty mild, but tonight is supposed to be cold. We're looking forward to seeing what temperatures in the low to mid-40s feels like. It's been a long time since it has been so cool here. Tomorrow morning will finally be long-sleeve weather for sure. Amy, Pets in cones are the cutest and sometimes the funniest things. I bet that cats do smirk. I'm sorry about your mom. She's at such a sensitive age in terms of medical complications and it always seems like surgery sets off something or another in people who've reached a certain age. I hope she's better soon. Jennifer, Your chickens likely will eat the peppers and probably poop out seeds later that might (or might not) germinate. Pepper volunteers aren't a big problem. They're easy to pluck out if they do germinate. In a working (hot) compost pile, the seeds likely would be rendered sterile by the heat. If your compost pile stays cold and never achieves that sort of heat, then the seeds might remain viable. Nancy, It is my understanding that dogs should not be fed hot peppers because their stomachs cannot digest them well, and we've never tried feeding them to our dogs for that reason. I love cats and could have a billion of them were it not for the litter box issue. I remember about 20 years ago, I saw a house featured in BH&G magazine, and it was designed by the architect for himself/his family. It was in Florida and was very well-designed and with very practical features. I was entranced with one specific room he had added off another room (might have been the laundry room). It was a 7' x 7' cat room, and that was where they had the cat's bed, food and water dishes, litter boxes, toys, etc. It seemed like the cat could come and go through the rest of the house if if wanted, but all of its 'stuff' was in that room. I loved that idea of having a room just for the cat....though we have no such luxury as that here. When company was coming, or whatever, they just put the cat in its own room and closed the door and no one had to see it or smell the litter box or have a cat sitting in a guest's lap, shedding hair. It was such a practical solution that it made me wonder why every house doesn't come with a cat (or dog) room like that. I've been on quite a break from gardening for a while, except for occasionally harvesting, and I haven't regretted the break. I think the extra-long gardening season and all the heat/dryness got to me this year and just wore me out. We aren't expected to get cold enough for freeze/frost damage this week, so I should be able to coast along, just harvesting, for a while yet. I was looking at the surrounding countryside the last couple of days and noticing how much the pastures are drying out. That's not a good thing, but with low rainfall, low dewpoints and lots of wind, it is expected that the vegetation really dries out in autumn even before freezing weather arrives. Kim, I'm sorry dealing with your mom is so stressful. There was a period in time when my mom was like that (most of my life), and finally I just laid down the law and said she needed to change or we'd cut off all contact with her.---and I made it clear that I meant it and was not making an empty threat. She completely changed her way of interacting with us once she understood that being able to see her only (at that time) grandchild was at stake. I'd had enough of her crap, by then, and absolutely would have packed up and moved across town (as I threatened to do) and had nothing to do with her ever again if she hadn't straightened out. She was only in her 50s then, and it was such a relief to stand up to her and make it stick. I realize that technique wouldn't work with everyone, but in our case, it save my sanity and saved our mother-daughter relationship. Jennifer, It is hard to see our parents age and become less sharp than they once were, but that's part of the price we pay for having them around for so long in the first place. I remember when my mom was only in her 50s, I was sure she was losing her mind. My sister and brothers and I would laugh about it, but it wasn't really funny to see her mental sharpness decline. We always thought if Daddy went first (as he did, and as expected since he was 10 years older than she), she would lose what was left of her mind and health and would go quickly after him. We. were. wrong. He's been gone for 14 years now and she is still here....and still driving her children and grandchildren a little crazy at times. Luckily, her great-grandkids don't seem to notice how peculiar her behavior is at times. I think they are too young to notice. She's 88 now and I am just in awe of the fact that she has lived so long, because she never really has made any effort to live a healthy lifestyle. She lives on thanks to modern medicine, though. Good heavens. I wonder if Chris thinks I'm loopy now the way I thought my mom was when she was the age I am now. Hmmm. That is food for thought. (grin) I don't think he does, but maybe he really thinks I am a nut or half-senile and he's just too polite to say so. Now I'm laughing at myself. Bermuda grass just does that--and it is just one of the reasons we hate it so. My brother tried to smother it out by covering it with thick (6 mm) black plastic. He cut holes in the plastic, planted a few perennials in the holes, heaped up 2" of white marble rock on top of the plastic and 'gardened' that way. Eventually, after he'd had back surgeries and was not in good shape, I removed all the white marble rocks (it took forever) and lifted the black plastic for him, intending to add organic matter and give him more great soil to grow more plants, instead of plastic/rocks. Well, underneath that black plastic was long, white (from lack of sunlight) runners of bermuda grass running everywhere on the soil surface, somehow surviving beneath that thick plastic and 2" of rocks for over five years. Five years! I'm not sure anything on this earth ever has truly killed bermuda. Oh, I think it lets us think we've won the battle sometimes, but it always is lurking there, waiting to come back. Bermuda grass is evil. It reminds me of the running forms of bamboo. We had some neighbors when I was a kid who tried and tried to get rid of bamboo. After they thought they had gotten rid of it, they poured a concrete foundation and built a garage. Guess what? After a couple of years the bamboo came out from underneath the concrete, and surrounded their garage on 3 sides (not on the side where the concrete driveway was poured). That was in the 1960s. Finally, in the early 1990s, a guy who bought their house hired a guy with a backhoe to dig out all the bamboo but I think some still comes back sporadically. I have been able to get rid of bermuda grass by shading it out, but that only lasts as long as the heavy, dense shade lasts. If a tree or shrub dies and you lose the shade, the bermuda grass magically re-appears in the sunny spot---like it has been lurking there for years just waiting for sunshine. Okay, having more or less caught up on this one, I'm off to start the new page for Week 3. Dawn...See MoreOkiedawn OK Zone 7
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