I just got back from my errands. First off I went to vote. Now the polling place at the local Elementary School is only around the corner and two blocks up from me and since I have my power I figgured all around the neighborhood here did also. Not true. The school did not have power so they are on a generator so they could have voting. Then I went to the supermarket because all traffic lights that I saw in town worked so I figgured the section with the stores had power. I asked a store employee and she said they got back power sunday night so about the same time as I did. Still, there were lots of empty cases. No milk or milk products or cheeeze. No frozen products. Limited fresh meat selection. Limited deli. They did have bread so at least I bought that and they had eggs so I got some. Got a tote thing of apples as I ate up the ones I had before and I got clementines. Both of those things will not got bad if we loose power again. And a cake. I eat up the cake before it goes stale. I did not buy any meat to restock the freezer as I am going to wait just in case more power problems. I heard a guy talking to another customer and they said they had to throw out all those sorts of stuff. Me I bought mayonase and tarter sauce as I had to thow mine (opened) away. Stuff like that. Lots of bread. I could always make toast the old fashioned way. Talked to two ladies that were customers about local outtages. One lady told me she couldn't believe what the town of OLD BROOKLVILLLE looked like, it is very closeby. No power expected to come back there for ten days and yet parts of Glen Head, right next door, never lost power. Going out today really showed me things are not soon going back to normal, even in my immediate area.

Jay, I always worry about that kind of weather-induced bolting and some years it is inevitable because onions are biennials. I am particularly worried about it this year, just because we've had such abnormally cool weather much of this winter. For anyone reading this who is new or fairly new to growing onions, the key is that onions which are less than the diameter of a No. 2 pencil (approx. 1/4") generally will not bolt even if exposed to temperatures below 45 degrees Fahrenheit for a prolonged period of time. Once the onions have reached 1/4" in diameter, prolonged or repeated exposure to temps below 45 degrees push them into dormancy, and they 'think' that dormancy signals the end of their first year of growing. Then, when they warm up and start growing again, it is the second year and they do what biennials do in their second year.....they send up a flower stalk to set seed. I don't know any way to prevent that sort of bolting because it is a natural process. The best chance of preventing it likely would be to grow them under a low tunnel and hope the low tunnel keeps them warm enough during cold spells that they aren't pushed into dormancy. It might work even better with a frost blanket added inside the low tunnel Eliot Coleman-style during colder spells. I guess you could keep the low tunnel warmer by painting milk jugs or 2-liter or 3-liter bottles black, filling them with water and using them as solar collectors. With low tunnels, I'd be worried about excess humidity on sunny humid days though. (sigh) Jeff, I think we only have two kinds of growing seasons here....those that are too wet and those that are too dry. I am not sure which is worse. As much as I hate drought, I almost think I'd rather have drought than a rainy year. At least in a rainy year, you can irrigate, at least for as long as you can afford the water bill and as long as you are not under mandatory water rationing. In a wet, year, though, we can't vacuum up the excess moisture out of the ground. I've had the idea in my head for months that this would be "the year of the bean" because my beans didn't produce well last year, and of course, it is always the year of the tomato at our house. However, I'm starting to fear it will be "the year of mud and floods". Dawn

Living in western PA my whole life, the worst weather that I had to deal with was a bad thunderstorm or a lot of snow. When I moved out here to Philadelphia 4 years ago I never thought in a million years I would be sitting smack dab in the middle of a hurricane. When I left work on Friday Oct 26th we had an email to all employees that due to the coming storm we might have to close on Monday Oct 29th. Well sure enough on Sunday night they updated the email and advised that the stock market will be closed. So Monday I sat at home all day watching what would be the worst storm I have ever seen in my life. I am only 27 years old, so I have not seen a lot of what life can offer yet, but I will tell you this storm is something I never want to have to live through again. It was horrifying to listen to 80+ mile an hour winds smack against the house. Everything outside was blowing around like we were in the chamber of a vacuum cleaner. BF and I live in a heavily suburban area elven miles north of the city proper. It is a lovely place with old architecture and lots of trees. But those trees ended up being our downfall. Our bedroom is on the third floor so I was almost in the canopy watching the tops bend almost in half to then stand straight back up and be blown the other direction. It truly is amazing how strong trees are and how much they can take before they give out. But sure enough we did have one give out. A piece of the neighbor's spruce tree snapped in half and fell flat in our front yard taking with it the power and cable lines. By the grace of God it missed the house. Amazingly we had enough slack (according to BF) so that the power wasn't knocked out. But now we had a downed tree with live wires under it to contend with when we went outside the next day. Scary stuff :( Now we are almost a week past the storm and the streets around here are still a mess. A lot of roads are blocked off due to either power lines being down or just whole trees lying in the middle of the street. Some people are just now getting their electricity back after almost a full week. We were fortunate enough not to loose power but I was without internet for almost the whole week. Thank you everyone for your thoughts and prayers. We are safe and slowly coming “back to life”. This truly was one for the history books and something I sure as hell never want to have to deal with again. Here are some of the pics I took for home owner's insurance. Not as pretty as a hosta but testament that mother nature is not to be trifled with. Thank you again everyone, your thoughts and prayers made the difference. Ludi Elegans did sustain some “smashing” damage but she was on her way to sleep for the winter so I'm pretty sure she didn't mind :p

Has anyone had any experience with using Storm Doors as a windows alternative for 3 season porch? This is what I'm building on top of my existing deck: http://imgur.com/a/OzyJU What's I'm planing to do is to get a dozen of EMCO 200 Series triple track storm doors, take out the windows, ganging them together by two with a simple frame, which will roughly give me 4x4' coverage (my plans say 3.5x5' but that can be adjusted). I could technically install the doors w/out taking them apart but that will create an ugly mix of white aluminum and wood (going for the wood look on the inside) plus the gap between windows in each section will be to big; ganging them together with a piece of 1x2 in-between will look much better.