Good Grief! Snow in May

Last night the weatherperson was having the equivalent of a weather orgasm all over the place.   We were setting records in the Ozarks, right and left.   Let’s see, we had the lowest high temperature ever.   I think we set a record for the lowest low temperature for that date.   It snowed in Arkansas, an event that has not happened in May for 194 years.   It snowed here too, something that last happened 106 years ago.

Last night as we were eating our dinner a little flurry set in.   I felt compelled to try to capture it, and I’m telling you that snowfall is hard to get on a still picture.   All those white streaks?   Snow.

This is how it looked this morning.

The reason the perspective is so odd on the last one is I was standing on the step ladder.   As you can see, pansies and the peas in the tubs below don’t give a rap that they were snowed on.

The cats know how to deal with snow.

This photo is remarkable for two reasons.   First, there is a fire going in the stove.   In May.  Unheard of.   Second, Impy is actually lying in front of it.  The first time he witnessed fire being made in the stove his reaction was terrorized disbelief, never having seen a fire or heard it snapping and popping.  He was sure there was some sort of cat-eating monster residing in the living room.  As you can see, Mallory has managed to educate him about the subject.

So, lest you should believe that this spring snow is some sort of horrible environmental disaster, let me reassure you on that point.   Sure, it is chilly, but the frozen precipitation that caused such ecstasy for the meteorologists came without a hard freeze.   So the garden goes on, almost without acknowledging that anything odd or record breaking has occurred.

It’s a good thing I got out there and got those pictures when I did.   In the time it took me to download them, edit them and get this far on my post, the snow on the wisteria has all melted.

I was concerned about the robins, whom I know for a fact have been very busy incubating eggs lately.   Jim showed me one out in one of the cedars a few days ago who was guarding new hatchlings.   So, the few days of cold and unseasonable snow made me worried for the little family.

I went out to see what I could see.  She was sitting tight.

She did not like me or the camera, and left the nest to yell at me from a convenient locust tree.   Her mate joined her in vociferous complaints.   Since the nest was open, I thought I’d grab a quick look.

Not wanting those naked babies to get cold, I left immediately.  I hadn’t gotten fifty feet away before Mama was back on the nest.   So that was all right.

The robin who has chosen to nest on the dragon head driftwood is hyper-vigilant.    You can’t walk into the back yard past the corner of that sauna without her jumping off the nest and flying over to the fig tree to tell you all about it.   This morning was no exception.

I had my doubts about the viability of her eggs given that pattern of behavior.  Apparently all that flying off didn’t keep the eggs from developing.

I guess that the cold weather this morning made it possible for her to ignore my presence over by the pond, because she got back on the nest while I was there, which is not her typical pattern.

She was able to stay on her babies while I walked back to the house.   Of course, the fact that I walked WAY over by the fence behind where the clothesline is may have had something to do with it.

Well, I”m not so overjoyed by this weather pattern as the weatherman, but it certainly has been interesting.

Read Full Post »

Spring is here again

After a lot of fitful starts and stops, it appears that spring has finally come to the Ozarks.   We had a lot of swings in temperature last month, one day it would be in the 60s and then the next it would be freezing and snowing.

Through it all the crocuses carried on bravely.   I had daffodils that got snowed on and showed no ill effects.

In the interim I have started going to water aerobics on a regular basis.   When I first started, there were things I really couldn’t do, and I certainly could not keep up with the instructor.   Now I can keep up with her and my core has gotten strong enough that I can do the things that were impossible before.   And my love handles have shrunk.

I started out a little too fast and intense, and wound up being very sore.   After a few weeks, my dear husband commented that perhaps I ought to give myself a chance to get in shape.   “After all, you aren’t twenty five any more, it takes longer for your body to recover.”

Of course, this elicited a bit of a grumble, but I had to acknowledge that I am staring sixty in the face, and June isn’t that far away.  So I cut back to three days a week, and I find that my body is much happier with me.  If things keep on this way, after next week I will start going four days a week and see how it goes.

I have been to Texas since we last were together here at The Havens.   I visited my older sister for a few days, took my quilt to her quilt guild to be admired (which it was).   I find I am quite the anachronism as pretty much everybody does their quilting by machine nowadays.   I chose to hand quilt the baby quilt so I could work powerful protective and loving energy into it.   I don’t think you get the same result with a machine.

While I was in San Antonio, I was escorted about to some of the numerous stores that sell quilt fabric there.  I felt much like a kid in a candy store with only five cents to spend, but I came home with a lot of beautiful stuff, including the rest of the fabrics I need for the next quilt I am going to make, which will be for Jesse and Lynette.   I have the strips cut out, but have not started sewing them together yet.   Soon.

Another thing that has happened is that young Mallory has gone blind.   Several trips to the vet and we discovered that the lesions she had were the symptom of a deterioration that appears to be congenital.   We believe she may be able to see large dark and light areas sketchily, although lately I doubt she even has that.    It hasn’t slowed her down much.   She still plays chase games with Impy and they wrestle.   He chirps at her so she can locate him, and he is very kind about now cheating in the games and sneaking away from where she last heard him.

Occasionally she gets confused as to where she is, but that is happening less and less.   She really gives us a dirty look if we leave the chairs out from the dining table and she runs into one.   Also, we have had to acquire a trash can with a lid for the kitchen as the heightened sensitivity of her sense of smell has led her astray in that direction.    She stole a chicken bone out of it the other day; I guess it just smelled too good to ignore.

So, the vegetable garden has seeds planted in it, but nothing is up yet.   No big surrprise there.   Soon.

So, I shall go off to give the latest massage and talk to you all later.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Mini ice storm

I’m so glad that the mini ice storm we had yesterday was just that, very mini.   It is so odd to go outside and hear the trees rattling in the breeze.  It all sounds so different, but NOTHING like the last time when we felt like we were listening to the war as the trees cracked and broke and smashed to the ground.

Instead, the string of LED lights we have on the back porch provided us with something stunning to look out in the early morning.

It’s really hard to photograph such bright lights in the dawn’s early light.   But you can see how the little icicles that formed on the string pick up the glow of light from the light they are hanging off.   So very very cool.   I think that this is the effect that the “icicle lights” would like to give and don’t.

By the way, I hasten to explain that these are not Christmas decorations in this application.   Many years ago we discovered that if we strung mini lights up around the back porch they were even more effective than a bug light as a porch light.   Each individual light is small enough that it doesn’t attract swarms of bugs.   They are all away from the door.   So when you go out at night, you get plenty of illumination and you don’t have 900,000 moths and mosquitoes following you in.

I have had a most amusing morning indeed.   My email contained numerous items that made me laugh heartily.   Laughter is always good.   Jim is watching the 49ers game, which he does not know how turns out (although I do)(Tee hee).   I am completing a couple of potholders I created a couple of days ago and then I will address myself to the little quilted piece I made yesterday in my quilting class.  It needs to be backed, quilted and bound.  Later on we will go visit some of our good friends and Jim will learn to smoke cheese and we and the group of people we are spending the afternoon with will have a very good time.

May all your ice storms be small and beautiful, and may your day be amusing and pleasant.

 

Read Full Post »

Wandering farther afield

I’m pretty sure that most of us are far too young to remember the Perils of Pauline, a movie serial circa 1933 that involved the adventures of an intrepid young lady named Pauline.  I don’t remember this, but my mother does, and she used to mention this series rather fondly.

Mother was not that old in 1933, but I imagine that the Perils of Pauline circulated around for several years after the first iteration.  It wasn’t like that had that many movies back then.  Anyway, apocryphal or not, my mother used to tell us that she would save the nickel that her mother gave her every day for the trolley fare to get to school by walking instead.   Then on Saturday she would have enough money to go to the movie theater and see the next episode of the Perils of Pauline.

Imagine.   There was a trolley that she could ride to school on, and it only cost a nickel.   There was no school bus to pick the kids up!  They were expected to walk, ride their bikes or take the public transit.    My, my, my!   How did they survive to adulthood and reproduce themselves?

We are planning on a vacation to California in the fairly near future; going to get our Pacific Ocean fix, finally.   One of my friends said she was willing to look after Ruby while we were gone, and in order for Ruby to have met this person’s dog and be familiar with her place before the actual babysitting, we thought we should get together a few times at her place.   So on Friday, after I had done my morning chores and practiced Qi Gong with my buddy, I loaded up Ruby and got on the Interstate to go see Rena.

We hadn’t gotten very far, only a few miles outside of town, when all of a sudden my truck began to act like a stubborn mule, jinking and pulling to the right, and thumping alarmingly, dragging its heels (so to speak).   “Oh hell,” I thought to myself.   “I have had a blowout.”   I applied my attention to getting the recalcitrant vehicle safely to the edge of the pavement and out of the way of traffic, and sat there for a moment, feeling the high winds of the passing semi trucks buffet my little pickup truck as I allowed my heart rate to slow a trifle.

I watched the traffic behind me through my rear view mirror, and when there was a break I descended from my steed and went back to assess the right rear tire.

I assessed the lug nuts, which were rusted in place, and looked at the spare tire, which was suspended under the truck by some arcane device whose operation I was not familiar with.  I realized that I was not going to be capable of just changing the tire myself, assuming that the spare tire had any air in it….  I kicked myself about a little, remembering my father’s dictum that one should be familiar with the boring details of the vehicle one is driving so one can deal with minor difficulties such as changing a tire.

After I beat myself up a bit, I assessed the rest of the situation.  No cell phone with me.  I had left it at home since it had no minutes left on it.   No water.   No hat.   No air conditioning in the vehicle.    I was about 4 miles from town, I judged, and from there it was another 3 miles of street to get home.   I figured I could walk 7 miles, no problem.

So I put the leash on Ruby, locked the truck, grabbed my purse and strode away from the freeway to the frontage road and proceeded to walk towards town.

Ruby thought this was the most stupid walk we had ever taken.    It wasn’t interesting at all, since she had to stay on the leash due to traffic considerations.    I wanted her to heel properly, but she insisted on walking almost directly behind me and to the right, basically walking the white line that delineates the shoulder.    It took me a while, but after observing her, I realized she was trying to walk in my shadow, to maximize the shade available.

This was pretty difficult to accomplish, since it was just after noon and my shadow was not very big.    It was hot, too, about 94º,  and the pavement was radiating at us.   After we had walked a couple of miles, there was a big farm pond down at the bottom of a hill to our left, so I took her down there and she had a nice cool off, swimming about in the clean water.   Afterwards, we continued our promenade.

I had already ascertained that no one was willing to pick up an older woman hitchhiking with a dog, and after the dog became wet they were even less inclined.    I have to admit I overestimated my stamina, and Ruby was certainly suffering from the heat.   We had covered about half the distance home, and  I knew it was going to be an ordeal to walk the whole way, so when we got to a local geothermal heating purveyor, I stopped in and asked to borrow their phone.   The lady looked askance, but charitably allowed my my one phone call.   I was able to get through to a friend, and she came and gave me a lift home.

When Jim got home, he immediately wanted to know where the truck was.    So I told him.   We unloaded the groceries, and were going to share a beer before going to deal with the situation, but I hadn’t even finished putting away the canned goods when he called around the corner,  ”We had better get out there and get that tire changed right now.   There’s a line of storms coming.”

We hastened to the location where the truck was still patiently waiting.   At this point I realized my decision to not to try to change the tire was the correct one.  He had to use considerable force to free the lug nuts, and once they were off it took a lot of beating and hammering and prying, none of which I would have known where or how to do, to convince the wheel to release its death grip on the axle.   Apparently driving on the rim, even for a short distance, does some things to the trim of the wheel that are not necessarily good for it.

At any rate, we got the tire changed, there was air in the spare (not much, but enough to take us the four short miles to the nearest gas station).  We proceeded on our merry way home, and we were almost there when the storm hit.  It had a monsoon like intensity, with winds gusting to 70 mph (according to the weather service).  No hail where we were, thank goodness.    We got home, went in the house and started thinking about dinner.

The tornado sirens went off.   We corralled the cats and put them into containers for taking them to the tornado shelter.   Impy got the actual cat carrier, and Mallory was none too pleased to be unceremoniously bundled into one of our canvas duffle bags for the transfer.   Ruby was happy to be on her leash, we grabbed my purse, the jewelry box, the best dragons and headed out to the storm shelter to wait out the situation.

The tornado did some damage west of town but petered out before it got to the city.   We went back in the house and threw together some Leftover Soup from the contents of the refrigerator.

As we were sitting down to eat, Jim commented, “This has been pretty much a ‘Perils of Pauline’ afternoon for you, hasn’t it?”

I ruefully concurred, adding that I didn’t need another day like that for a while.

****************************************

In other news, I harvested my sweet potatoes.  Not a bad haul for 7 plants.

I went and spent a small amount of money and repopulated the whiskey barrels.

The fall hostas have recovered from their July sunburn, and are blooming furiously.

So are the sedums.

The local library finally obtained a copy of Hilary Mantel’s “Bring up the Bodies”, which I read with great enjoyment.   Then I went and acquired the first novel, “Wolf Hall”, and enjoyed that too.  I am awaiting with interest the final book  of the trilogy.   Meanwhile, I have become rather fascinated with the Virgin Queen, and am racing through a comprehensive biography of Elizabeth I.

Now, I really must get on with my day.   It is far from perilous today, a nice crisp end of summer sort of day without a cloud in the sky, and I have green manure to plant in the vegetable garden and the salad garden bed to prepare.  I also think I shall do something about mulching the front, which I have been giving short shrift to the last couple of years in favor of the Stroll Garden.

The day lilies out there are performing the plant version of being tied to the railroad track with the train coming around the curve, and I think I should rescue them.

Read Full Post »

The Apple Mint Dance

I was supposed to be canning pickles (both dill and my sweet gherkins), plus I had apple sauce that was hot and waiting for the canner to heat up.  But before I got started packing the pint jars, I thought I would run out to the garden once more to look through the cucumber vines and see if I missed any.   I had.  So I picked them, and noticed that there were some tomatoes that also needed to be picked.   I needed a basket for that, so I started back to the house to get it.

As I scurried past the pond, I noticed that the apple mint was in full bloom.   It is taking full advantage of the lapse in memory I had a few weeks ago when I started the water running into the pond to fill it up, went inside and promptly forgot all about it.  In the morning as I was waiting for my teapot to fill so I could make coffee, I thought idly to myself,  ”Gosh, the water pressure sure doesn’t seem to be as high as usual … OH SHOOT (expurgated for the blog)!!!  Whereupon I crashed out of the house, scaring the dog away from her breakfast, ran out to the garden to turn the spigot off and observed that the pond was approximately 5 inches over flood stage.  Further investigation showed that the water had flowed all the way down to the Petite Prairie, watering the day lily bed quite throughly.  The drain pipe at the other side of the vineyard was also trying to deal with the overflow.   I still have a green circle down there, where everything else is sere and brown.

But I digress.   The apple mint was blooming furiously, having been so well watered previously.   I just deviated from my course a bit to see if perhaps my honey bees were availing themselves of the pollen source.  They were.

The honeybees had lots of company out there.    I forgot all about pickles and apple sauce and went to get my camera.  I spent quite a while out there, standing quietly just inside the border of the mint patch.  When I first arrived with my camera, everyone got very excited and nervous about the big thing that had just disturbed the feeding frenzy.   But as I stood quietly, things settled down.   Here is a group of four different sorts of wasps, all intent on their food source.

 

The variety of pollinators present was impressive.

There were yellow jackets, of course.

 

 

Several different types of wasps were in attendance.

 

That big black wasp was at the large end of the size spectrum.   But there were teensy wasps too.

 

Some of the wasps were overcome with optimism for the future by the large quantity of food available.   The sudden onset of a good energy source put them in the mood, I guess.

The female went about the business of flying and eating as if the male wasn’t even present.

There were also several female bumblebees at the buffet.

 

A tachnid fly — one of several different varieties flitting about.

 

Butterflies –a buckeye and a little blue.   The little blue has a mud dauber wasp sharing the frame with her.

 

I saw a beautiful bright green sweat bee, but it didn’t stick around long enough to get photographed.   You can see what it looked like here.

There was an interesting beetle.

I’m not positive, but that may be an assassin bug, which means it isn’t strictly a pollinator, but more a pollinator eater.   They wait in flowers for the pollinators to come along, grab them and then suck the juices out of them.

Here’s another predator.   Probably not big enough to be a danger to anyone other than that tiny wasp above, or possibly a gnat or aphid.

That’s my finger holding the flower apart because the little crab spider wasn’t anxious to be photographed and kept hiding from me.   No escape from the paparazzi, I’m afraid.

There were a couple of dragonflies around too.   This is a rather small red one.

Just a few feet away is the pond, and this big blue dragonfly was hovering around there.

It was heartening to see all that life burgeoning in the yard, since it has been scorchingly hot for three weeks.    I mean really hot, too.   The temperatures have been over 100°F every day for three weeks, only cooling off into the low 80s at night.   (That would be 38° C for all the rest of the world.)   This heat has been accompanied by a complete absence of rain of any measurable amount.   We had a respite today, a line of storms came across the plains.   We got about 1mm of moisture out of that, enough to settle the dust (barely) and raise the humidity to about 90%.   Ergh.

This is what the garden along the back of the house looks like.   All those burned hostas are not dead, they are just conserving their energy and protecting their roots.   Still, it is a little depressing.   The Hosta Dell exhibits similar damage.

Please notice the lawn to the right of the path.   Our whole place looks just like that except around the landscape shrubs and trees, which we have been pampering with regular water.   This also encourages the grass, which gives the rabbits something other to eat than the fruit tree bark.   The rabbits out browsing gives the owls something to eat.

There is a note of hope in the middle of all that devastation.    The naked ladies have made their appearance.   I just love them, their combination of hardiness and delicacy is inspirational.

The pickles have been put through the canner and are cooling on the counter.   They are accompanied by 6 pints of apple sauce.

Now I believe I’ll get that basket and go out and investigate the tomato situation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Read Full Post »