Friday, February 11, 2011

Spring?

Dare I say that word? It seems we will be stepping out of this freezer in a bit. Thanks for the sample, but I am not sure I want to buy this winter weather. I guess we aren't as tough as we thought. We have been pretty much dropped to our knees.

I don't think I really want to see what it left of our citrus crop. It has had a blanket and "heating pad" consisting of a string of Christmas tree lights. I really don't think the mini lights give off enough heat to keep the freezing temperatures away from those tropicals.

Our yard looks like wilted lettuce. The banana trees and the cannas are especially bad. The philodendrons that were five feet tall in the front are just frozen and littering the ground. Last year we only had three days that would qualify to compare to this winter, and we had only three days. This year we had five. I guess next year it will be seven!

I don't think I am going to replace things. The fern that I have in one of the front beds consists of brown stems sticking up. This fern got so thick three years ago that it stopped weeds from growing in that bed. They were wonderful. Last year, they froze to the ground. Just before this freeze, I noticed that they were almost back to being 85% full. Well ... you know the rest.

Two days ago, after the rolling black outs, the power to the neighborhood went out. (Yea for the generator) The guy from the utilities company was trying to make a simple repair. Well Murphy's Law got him. The entire thing went down for quite a while. The lights came back on for those of us on this part of the street, but the four houses to our east the power never came back on.

It wasn't too bad for a while, but darkness was coming. The head contractor was talking to G - who was out only to get the mail - told him what had happened. It was a major thing that was just waiting to happen. The lady from the corner pulled into out driveway. She asked how long the electricity would stay out. He told her an hour - told G more like two. Well it was more like six more.

So that's the latest from The Little City Outside Swampland proper. We see higher temperatures coming this weekend, and then perhaps spring. In four months, we may look back on this and wish for a little of it to have hung around. For me, I will just look at all the wilted lettuce that were once my plants!


5 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

I'm not sure what to expect here..all of our yards are dirt and mud..when they did the construction and remodeling all of our yards got tore up..they're supposed to have some people come in and 'landscape'..the boss lives in Michigan, knows jackshit about Texas so I expect to see plants and grass from Michigan and not from Texas..

Marti said...

My in-laws are in their 2nd winter here. We told them we seldom get snow and our winters are really mild. Last winter we told them the cold was a fluke and will probably never happen again. Now this.

Marti said...

You can delete this comment. I wanted to ask you a couple questions about teaching and can't find your email. If you had to go back to work, or just wanted to, would you go back into teaching or something else?

Does it bug you when you see or hear commercials that have the phrase "created equal" instead of "equally"?

Susan Adcox said...

I'll be very glad when this weather is over. It's not too bad for hubby and me, as we can usually hunker down at home. But I hate for my kids to be driving on icy roads, for my grandkids to be waiting for the bus in these temperatures and for my dad to be freezing in his drafty little house!

Grandma K said...

Granny - we may need those plants instead of ours if the weather makes this a habit. I don't think I am going to replace what froze this year.

Marti - your in-laws may find somewhere else to spend winter if we keep this up