Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group discussion
Let's compare weather!
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Weather - What's YOUR weather today? (Part ONE - Started Sat., March 14, 2009) (Let's keep this going.)
All the flowering trees are beginning to lose their blossoms and the Bradford Pears didn't last long this spring. I bought my first big geranium plant today. Can summer be far behind? Sunday we needed air on in the car. But then yesterday was cloudy and cool; that's spring where we live. nina
Ah, geraniums! I love geraniums!
We got a badly needed 1-1/4" of rain yesterday & the temp dropped to 50 with a chilly wind. I played hooky from work today. Didn't sleep well & still not feeling great, so I took it easy today. I did put up the 10 new bird houses & 100+ feet of tighter wire on the north field where the JRTs were getting out too easily, but otherwise laid around. I might finish up the hat I'm knitting tonight - just need to switch colors & then start decreasing. I also read a quick, old favorite book over the past couple of days, Doorways in the Sand. It's a fun SF mystery. If you read my review, you'll see it has an odd style. Add that to Zelazny's word play & it's a blast.
Not too bad, Jim, for someone who isn't feeling too well! :) I'll say it again. You are remarkable!I'll check out your review. Thanks.
Jim, if you can accomplish all that when you are sick, no wonder you are a whiz when you aren't. nina
You said it, Nina! lol
Well, thank you, but none of it was very hard nor took too long - an hour or so each. The wire is a bit fussy, but I've put up so much of it trying to keep the monsters contained that I have it down to a science. Besides, I hate just laying around for too long. That makes me achy. Going out & getting a bit accomplished makes me feel better.The hat didn't go so well. I changed colors & got it all the way done, then realized I'd dropped quite a few stitches somehow after I finished up. Aaarggh! I spent quite a while picking it back apart & putting the needles back on, finishing up just before bed time. Well, maybe tonight.
Jim, I can't believe your patience with that hat! (lol)I know what you mean about getting achy when laying/sitting around too long. Maybe I should follow your example and get moving. :)
I usually have a lot of patience with things, like crafts. Far less with people.
I know what you mean, Jim. :)
It's 50 here today & we reached the 1.5" of rain they said we'd get by the time I went to bed last night. We got an additional 2" last night & it's still raining. From what I saw on the news, there is a long front that is streaming to the northeast & I guess it moved a bit further east than they thought it would. We got quite a bit of wind, although nothing like Saturday's storm. Still, it managed to shake a bunch more limbs down on the roads. I had to dodge a lot more than I expected on my way in. Even the drive on the Interstate was pretty slow due to standing water.
I passed one person who obviously had their cruise control on. Dumb. They proved it a while later by skidding along a jersey wall. Doesn't everyone know you don't use cruise control if there's any danger of slippery conditions? How do they think it works? Do they bother to think it through? Probably not. Just glad I was ahead of them & pity the poor people behind.
I hate to see trees destroyed by wind. On the islands of Lake George huge trees are sometimes actually uprooted and fall over because of the wind.Good point to remember about cruise control, Jim.
I got home today & the rain gauge was almost full. We got 4-3/4" in just under 24 hours. Marg made her bus rounds this morning, but the first one took an extra 25 minutes since a tree was hung up on a bridge, so she had to turn around - in a small lane in the dark & rain - & then go around the long way.
April showers bring May flowers. :)
We're supposed to get more rain on Friday & Saturday. The flowers might need life preservers...;-)
Jim, we're getting the rain today. Why couldn't you keep it there in KY? :) Hope you don't float away. :)Current temp is 50 at 11:22 AM. The other day it went up to 70 degrees! It was so good to feel the warmth of the sun!
Well, our lovely day should get to you tomorrow, Joy. I just got in from trimming trees, weeding & other chores. We wound up trimming up the crab apples during their one pretty week of the year. Oh well. I had the clippers & chainsaw out & they've been making mowing miserable. I keep debating on pulling them out, anyway.
I'll bet the horses love the crab apples, no?We have our work ahead of us raking up the cones from the pine trees. They are messy!
Here's a weird happening: We went for a walk at a park along the lake near a wooded area. On the lawn there was the brown lower leg and hoof of a deer. Also a few pieces of white legbone next to the hoof piece. Can't imagine what happened to the deer or how he got there. Perhaps he was injured by a car on the nearby road. The leg did have a bruise on it. Maybe a fox dragged the carcass away. Or maybe someone cleared away the body and left the leg by mistake. Anyway, I feel sorry for the deer.
These are ornamental crab apples, Joy. They're about the size of a cocktail onion or pear from a Bradford Pear - tiny. Not even the birds seem to like them much. The trees still have a bunch hanging on from last year.It's supposed to be gorgeous today. When I checked the temperature at 4:44 this morning (4/14), it was 44 degrees! It's supposed to get up into the 70's today & is drier, so I drove the truck to work. I'll pick up a load of mulch on the way home.
The sun is shining here and the temp is 47.8 at 9:00 AM. Yes, looks like a nice day is brewing. But the newspaper says: "Early sunshine and afternoon clouds with a high about 60 degrees."
Funny happening: On our front lawn presently presides a pink crabapple in all it's glory. A visiting nun next door, I was informed by my neighbor, snuck outside and clipped a branch to bring inside, she was so enthralled by it. nina
I had 2 crab apples at my last house. The one on the north side of the house was gorgeous every year when it bloomed & pretty nice the whole time it had leaves on it. The one out front used to only bloom every other year & lost half its leaves in the summer. The 5 little ones I have now fall into the latter category. I think they get a fungus. I have some stuff to spray them with, but forgot last year until it was too late. Maybe this year.
Back to rain tomorrow, but it was gorgeous today. I probably should have mowed today, but wound up getting a pickup load of mulch & spreading it instead. I'm bushed now.
Thank goodness we don't have to start mowing yet. It's raking time. :)
I'll have to mow again tomorrow for the 3d or 4th time (I'm losing track). We got 2" of rain last night that came down hard & furious. I must have woken up a dozen times. We just got 4-3/4" a few days ago. I was worrying that we were a bit too dry. No longer!
:) Jim, I have to laugh at your . :)
We have over 2" of rain this morning in the rain gauge, Joy. That's just about 7" total for the week. Squish is what we do!;-)
Eddie says that normally we average about 3 inches of rain a month.So I can see how 7 inches in a week would make you squish.
I think we're 6" over the average rainfall for the month, it's only the middle of the month & more rain is coming this week.;-)
Seriously, it's been great for us. Everything is growing like crazy & it hasn't been so warm that anything is getting mold or mildew. Yesterday was plain raw & cold feeling. We hit 50 briefly but were mostly in the mid 40's with a very chill & heavy wind.
Today got to the mid 60's, still a cool breeze, but a very sunny & nice afternoon. I got the lawn mowed, thank goodness. The grass is practically growing fast enough to see it move. Don't bend over or it will poke you in the eye!
Jim, I guess you can say, "It never rains, yet it pours." I feel that way sometimes but when it gets very hot and dry here and the grass turns brown, oh how I wish for rain. nina
Come August, I'll likely be wishing we had some of this rain, Nina.
I like the words Jim used: "raw and cold feeling". Yes, "raw" is the kind of cold which goes right to the bone and stays there. Dampness will do that.
It was in the 60's today, but we've had thunderstorms since last night. We'll get brief, violent periods & plenty of rain - about 3.5" in the past 24 hours. Again - squish!
Jim, it was gloomy and wet here, but we're not squishing yet. I do have to wipe Romeo off with a towel when he comes in from the backyard. He likes it the towel treatment. :)
Our current temp here in Glens Falls is 80.4 F.What am I doing sitting inside the house ... with John Cheever? :)
Off I go...
We're down to 60 & squishy. Big surprise, we have MORE RAIN. It stopped long enough yesterday for me to mow some, but I drove through some puddles. Both stalls are too wet to bed down & now we have water rising in the center of the barn right up through the clay & stone dust. This is a 36' square barn, so in 3 directions, it has about 18' of dry area. Toward the stalls, about 6'. IOW, the water table is the same as ground level now. Not cool.
A couple of days ago, this month made the all time, top 10 wettest months in the history of the state & yesterday it was #8. This is going back to 1850 or something. We've had 2" more since then & it's supposed to keep going until tomorrow morning...
I HATE setting records or coming close to them. We've had close to or the worst/most: ice storm, tornadoes at one time, longest dry spell (2 months solid with no rain last year), drought (2 years before the longest dry spell), snow, & now rain - all in the 4 years we've been here. What's up with that?!!! Sheesh! I'm going to get a complex or something.
Maybe soon you will have set all the records and will give some other place a chance. nina
Jim, do you think all that wild weather has anything to do with global warming? I'm not up on the subject but I've heard different opinions on the matter. They say that global warming will bring extremes in the weather. I don't understand why, but that's what they say.
Joy, sorry, but you just pushed the "rant" button. The weather has been a bit weird, but it always has been. In the 70's, the creek at our place used to freeze over every other winter thick enough to skate down to the dam. In the 80's it never did. After the mid-90's, it started to again. People have short memories & seem to think the latest difficulty is the summit. The phrase 'global warming' has been so laden with crap that I can't answer that question. You do realize they handed out a Nobel Prize based on data that was never approved by a huge portion of the scientific community, right? They didn't include the mini ice age 1000 years ago & at least one study on glacial melting was peer reviewed & found to be a hoax made up due to political considerations. So, I consider it to be a political ploy pushed by a hypocrite whose house has a bigger carbon footprint than many small towns.
Is the planet getting warmer? Possibly, although in the 70's they were telling us we were going to cause an ice age with our pollution. They're called 'scientific theories' for a reason - they're unproven guesses based on available data, methods & often the scientists, who receive most of their funding through the government, have a politician pushing for specific answers. Then the media gets a hold of part of the story, fails to comprehend it, but boils it down into the most interesting form they can & serves it up to the public, who distill & twist it further from reality until there isn't a fact to be had.
Should we clean up our act? Undoubtedly, although the hype & misinformation about how we should do it is disgusting. So many of the efforts are so seriously flawed as to be worse than useless. Personally, I think our egos are running rampant. If the life of this planet were a day, the time our species spent on the planet could easily be measured in seconds.
Jim, thanks for the rant. I feel better already. I'll stop worrying about global warming. :)Speaking of how the media hypes things, I'll go off topic for a bit and mention my own pet peeve these days. The media loves to mention that Prince Harry looks like James Hewitt, Diana's former beau. They never mention that Harry also resembles Diana's brother. Why not mention it?
Just now, I did a search and found a perfect photo. It's at:
http://ll-media.tmz.com/2007/06/14/06...
I hope we'll see more of this photo in the news. Harry resembles his uncle, Diana's brother. But I guess that's not newsy enough.
How's that for a non-sequitur post? (g)
Well, we're closing in on another record. If we get more than 4" of rain this month, we'll break the 1997 all time wettest spring record which is March - May. We're at 22+ inches now. I think we have a shot at the title. We actually lucked out & only got 3.25" in the past 24 hours, 2" of it last night. Down in Frankfort, they got an additional inch, although it has been the other way around lately. Everything is laying wet as can be & they had a real time with school this morning. Marg had a parent check a bridge for her. The water was just up to the bridge, but not going over it. One school bus south of us got caught in a flash flood with a pre-schooler on board, but all was fine. The news made a big deal out of how the drivers aren't supposed to go through water over the road, but if they didn't, no one would have made it to school today. My poor wife & other drivers are caught in the middle. The administration tells them to drive & get there on time, but don't drive through standing water, which is impossible.
With the school bus situation, you're dammed if you do and dammed if you don't. I sympathize. nina
I've always thought of snow and ice as the big weather problem, but now I see that too much rain can be just as dangerous. Good luck to Marg driving the school bus.
No rain today, but now we have a frost warning. I put buckets over my tomato & pepper plants. Hopefully this is the only time I'll have to do it.
Tomato and pepper plants already! Jim, you are so ambitious! A fellow my husband used to teach with used to grow potatoes. He also used to start flower seedlings in his attic window, IIRC. He had a part time job at the local nursery. He loved gardening. He's turning 80 in July. We've been invited to his surprise party.Another teaching buddy once told me, in error, to feed my geraniums miracid (He meant Miracle-Gro.) The leaves all turned a dark color and then the plants died. Memories. :)
Marg bought the plants, Joy. I don't do much of a vegetable garden. We have those, asparagus & something else or two, but that's about it. This weekend is our frost free date - Derby Day. I'm wondering if the mulch I put around our dwarf lilac held too much water & drowned the poor thing. It was good sized - about 4' tall - when I transplanted it a few years ago. The previous owners had planted it against the porch & I moved it out into the yard. It was doing fine & had nice flowers on it, but suddenly it is dying. All the leaves are wilting. I looked around & can't see any bore holes, insect activity, mold or fungus. It's just dying.
It was 30 this morning - a hard frost on my windshield to scrape off. I hope the plants made it ok.
I just now found Jim's last two posts here. I didn't receive a GR email notification. I'll have to start checking the group instead of waiting for notifications.Jim, it's a shame that your lilac is dying. I love lilacs. We have a lilac tree but I haven't looked to see if it's bloomed yet. I have photos of it taken in different years. One pic shows blooms on May 8. Another shows blooms another year on May 16.
About frost, I remember someone telling me that around here we can get frost as late at May 31. Hope your plants made it through the frost OK, Jim.
I think the lilac is dead & I'm guessing it drowned. I read up on it a bit & they seem especially susceptible. Mom has a gardening expert coming tomorrow, so she'll ask about it. Possibly cutting it back would help.The frost didn't do the tomatoes any favors. They're looking kind of pitiful. I read something interesting about planting them in the KY Extension Office's mailer yesterday. Apparently you can plant them as deep as you want. While that will strangle most plants, they said any place a tomato stem hits the ground, it will root, so planting them deep actually helps. You're just supposed to pinch off any leaves to keep them from ground contact. I might dig one of mine in deeper & see what happens.
The bloody rabbits are nibbling at my peppers. I've been meaning to put some moth balls around them. Maybe tonight. I have to get James from his job - he suddenly flew down yesterday - & also stop at the vets' office for tape worm medicine.
Glens Falls (NY) Online Book Discussion Group
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So true, Werner.
It's raining here. 42.8 degrees. Gloomy. A good day to read.