Category Archives: garden

blogger, garden, weather

I’m Back …

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Or at least trying to be.

Blogger has made it darn hard to get back. Somehow they broke their interface when using Chrome and LastPass. The little light bulb above my pointy head finally turned on and I fired up another browser to login and do this post. It doesn’t seem to have been a good month for Blogger. This has been the worst period for outages and odd errors since I started writing this blog. I sure hope it is not a harbinger of the future!

So just to get everyone up to date, this has been a month of getting some gardening stuff done (and the onions all planted) and the arrival of spring weather. Out here in the semi-desert the coming of spring means thunderstorms and sometimes even rain. This month has been a wet one compared to most years – one of the continuing changes due to climate change. The winters have been geting dryer and the springs wetter and more stormy. So now we are waiting for it to dry out enought to get the rest of the garden planted. And of course once it is planted, that will be the last moisture we will see for the rest of the growing season. {*grin*}

Time to get back to work preparing for an upcoming Humane Society event. Now that I have a way around the Blogger idiosyncrasies, I hope to post regularly again.

I’ll leave you with one of the better editorial comments on the recent Blogger shenanigans from The Odd Blog:

Caption: Ann Althouse, relaxing at an undisclosed location following the attempt on her life by Blogger.

garden, lawn, pollen, weather

Spring Has Sprung

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It’s that time of year here on the high plains – spring. The time of pollen, warmth, and wind. What more could one ask for?

Pollen levels are already high enough to qualify for health alerts, temperatures are in the 70s and 80s, and winds are predicted to be in the 50 mph range tomorrow. I always love the warnings and forecasts about the pollen this time of year:

Concentration of pollen grains in the air for Tuesday will be greater than today’s levels and extend even further into the extremely high range. This forecast of higher pollen concentration is based on strong winds and decreasing humidity.

Makes me really happy I don’t suffer from hay fever or other pollen allergies.

This post brought to you by the 24 loads of lawn detritus, 8 loads of tree limbs, and the complete coverage of the lawn with weed and feed Saturday followed by the early phases of getting the garden ready on Sunday.

garden, oddness, weeds

Weeds, Weeds, Weeds Everywhere

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Today after therapy for XXX, I went over to chop, pull, hoe, stare at, rant at, and finally come to an uneasy coexistence with all the weeds in the garden. Parts of the garden were still too wet from Sunday’s downpour to even attempt to enter. But the other side was dry enough so I spent about 6 hours weeding. I think I need a motto like the U.S. Postal Service: neither heat nor weeds above my head will keep me from my appointed hoeing. What do you think?

Leaving the weeds behind, a couple of odd things.

Do you ever look in your spam folder to see what is being sent to you? I do from time to time because I run my own mail servers and filter spam rather aggressively, so it behooves me to make sure I’m not throwing away “real” mail. Spam in general is not overly interesting, but I find the types of spam being sent seems to cycle from time to time.

Today when I looked on the server at the collected spam of the last week, I was astonished to note that there wasn’t a single sexually oriented message. No penis extender ads, no ads for fake Viagra, no young nubile girls desiring me to call them for cybersex. None. Nada. it must really be a bad economy when the sex related spammers slack off.

On the other hand, the number of ads for ersatz debit cards that work just like a credit card seem to be rising fast. So too are the work at home scams.  And the refinance shills are working the internet mails as well.

One surprising spam was one I haven’t seem before. It was offering home cleaning services. I have to wonder how many people would invite unknown people to their abode to clean on the basis of a spam email. I have my doubts that there is any cleaning service behind the email – I suspect it is simply a way to collect valid email addresses cross matched with a physical address. Perhaps a targeted list of home owners by region?

Second odd thing.

Tonight three different people called and left messages about mayor business after 7pm. They all three obviously didn’t expect to talk to me (they assumed I’d be in the normal Tueday night council meeting, but there wasn’t one this week) and in that they were not disappointed since I was fixing supper when they called. But the odd part is that all three said they had a meeting and would be tied up until 9:30pm and for me to give them a call after 9:30. It is going to be interesting to see what meeting they were at and why it couldn’t wait until tomorrow. Hope it is interesting.

Time to go get cleaned up so I can mosey down to the radio station in the morning. After that, I have a speaking engagement for lunch with the Rotary club. Since they are changing officers and holding the meeting as a pool party, I’m wearing swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt. That way if there is any truth to the rumor of plans to throw the mayor in the pool, I’ll be prepared. {*grin*}

Fourth of July, garden, weather

The Partially Eventful Weekend

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The Fourth of July was a generally good weekend here. It kicked off on Friday with the reception opening the Heritage Festival and beginning the celebration of the 125th anniversary of the city. I was fortunate enough to limit my official engagements this weekend to just a quickie at the reception. We handed out a neat covered wagon doodad to those who attended the reception:

 
  
 (Of course we also gave the attendees a wooden nickel.)
After the reception, L and I headed on over to our friends for a BBQ. Brats, burgers, red hots, and sausage off the grill plus shrimp and fresh fruit and chips of many kinds plus dips and vegetables – then topped off by pie and pistachio cake. Luckily we were seated in the garage, since the skies dumped yet another unseasonable rain shower during the evening. It was a great time sitting around and eating, talking to friends, and generally just relaxing. It is especially poignant because the male half of the couple is going to be having some pretty serious spinal surgery later in the month and it isn’t clear when he’ll up and about following the surgery. (We’ve known each other since grade school – so I know he doesn’t handle being on bed rest well. This will be interesting, to say the least.) At the close of the evening, L and I walked home and sat back to let all the food settle.
The 4th itself was pretty much a day to ourselves except for XXX’s therapy. So we mowed the lawn and trimmed the bushes and (of course!) pulled the weeds. Got cleaned up early in the evening and journeyed over to Mom’s where the MIL, L and I had a nice 4th of July supper. L and her mother went to watch the city fireworks display while Mom and I visited and I got ready to bring the leftovers home. On the way home, I saw some of the municpal fireworks display just as yet another unusal rain shower set in. Got home in time to see the Rockies blow it from the bull pen once again. That has to hurt to be a starting pitcher and see the bull pen come in and lose it time after time.
Today we had XXX’s therapy, I put in a new dryer vent for the MIL and then we ate lunch at the MIL’s. Then in the afternoon, I picked up Mom and we went over to the home of one of my childhood friends (the hosue is now occupied by his brother) and cut a bunch of rhubarb – probably a couple of gallons worth anyway. Then we came back to Mom’s and pulled radishes and turnips from the garden, then sat on the front porch topping and chopping before we took it all in to wash. Along the way I got to take Mom’s vacuum apart and replace a belt. During this time L was back at our house cleaning. So when I got home she wanted to head out for the Rockies Tacos (although they lost, they did score the requisite 7 runs for Taco Bell and Rockies Tacos). As we came home, the sky was starting to look a bit vicious, but it looked like it was north of us and weather here generally moves to the north.
Needless to say, the vicious weather didn’t move north. First the wind came up, then the tornado warning sirens fired up, followed by the police and fire trucks running up and down the streets, running their bullhorns telling people that there was a warning and to take cover, followed by the skies opening up and water coming down in sheets. For almost an hour, the sirens fired anew with each new warning. (Not all tornado warnings!) The warning I thought most unique was “Urban Flash Flood Warning” about midway through the whole process. It was raining so hard and fast that the streets and yards were literally flooding since the water arriving was more than could be drained.
After all the excitement settled down (No known tornado touchdown, only some wind and water damage.) life returned to normal about 25 degrees cooler. Some trees lost limbs in the area, but our major damage was simply the blown over basketball hoop. An hour or two after the all clear, it looked like this:

I set it back up and then looked up to see one of the biggest rainbows I’ve ever seen around here. Pardon my spectacularly poor photography, but hopefully you can see what I’m talking about.

garden, thunder, weather

Another Hot One

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This afternoon it was sitting at 101 degrees at about 3pm when the thunderheads started rolling in. Within moments the temperature dropped ten degrees to a balmy 91 and the breeze made it feel pretty good. So it was over to Mom’s to continue planting the garden. Today was more beans, rutabagas, radishes, kohlrabi, winter squash, some of the summer squash, cucumbers and some other plants. So hopefully tomorrow we will get the rest of the drip system hooked up and continue on with the planting of various squash.

We had to stop removing weeds from the one squash bed today because we had too many weeds pulled to fit in the garbage until after tomorrow’s pickup. This was the second dumpster load of weeds pulled from the non-rototilled parts of the garden. I figure we have about one more dumpster load of weeds to pull in the garden area (and probably half again as many to remove form the flowers). mom finds out tomorrow if she can get rid of the boot and start getting out and about a bit. She can use the walker part time now so she at least escapes the wheel chair a bit now and then. On the other hand, she can’t manuver in the soft soil area yet, so i suspect it will be an ongoing project for me to keep the weeds down and do the needed thinning. Oh well, at least some of the crops will begin yielding before too long.

Remember up at the top where I mentioned the thunderheads? That is pretty typical weather out here on the plains. Heat building all day until mid to late afternoon, then all the thermal energy starts fueling thunderheads. They rise quickly to amazing heights, 10-20,000 feet. That brings on the thunder and lightning but rarely any precipitation. Later on in the year,  we may get hail storms, but generally not a lot of rain. But when the thunder clouds pass by, the shading and subsequent drop in air temperature causes gusty wind that I have loved all my life. The wind causes screens to sing in the breeze, a sound that is the harbinger to cooling and pleasant memories in my mind. I’ve talked before (here, for example) about how I loved that sound when out on the farm. Tonight was the first such occurance of the year here. I loved it!

Well, time to get cleaned up so I can mosey down to the radio station in the morning. At least the weather critters are predicting a bit cooler day tomorrow.