Out Like A Lion

This has been a really hard winter. In fact, I think that if I were to compare my prairie life to the Little House books, this would definitely parallel "The Long Winter," including the death-defying runs for supplies in blinding snow. I first saw the possibility of a late snow in the long-range weather forecast last week and hoped it was just a mistake. We've had brilliantly sunny days in the 60s and low 70s for a week or two now, with the drama of winter melting into memory as plants grew and blossoms bloomed.

Too bad. Mother Nature decided to remind us who was boss. Throughout Thursday and Friday, the reports of what to expect kept getting progressively worse, with an eventual forecast of 5 inches of snow, 40 mph winds, and windchill temps in the teens. I decided to get up on Friday morning and run by a local hay producer that had been recommended to me so I could cover the garden with a thick layer of insulating hay.**

For all of the issues that Toyota has been facing in the last few months, I have to say that my Matrix ('07, no recalls) has been an INDISPENSABLE gardening tool, thanks to the fold-down flat seats with plastic covers. It turns from Momobile to truck nearly instantly.

**For those who know, HAY is not the product that I should have purchased. This was the first thing that went wrong on Friday. I described what I was using the hay for to the salespeople at the hay producer, and they told me to buy this product. But once I got home and started spreading it out, I instantly knew that this seed-laden stuff would eventually mean a ridiculous amount of weeding in my future. What I should have bought was STRAW. I really can't imagine why they sold me hay, other than they could tell I was a clueless Yankee suburbanite and they could make more on pricey hay than cheap straw.

Regardless, time was running out, so I had to spread the offending hay. I'm going to try to rake out as much as I can as soon as it warms up next week. We covered all of Quad 1 with a thick layer of hay and a huge plastic tarp to protect the peas, lettuce, spinach, and other goodies from the snow and hard freeze.

Of course, my beloved peach tree started blooming on Friday, just like it did last year before a late freeze. Last year all of the blooms were killed and we went a whole year without seeing if the tree would produce fruit. This year, I wanted to give the tree a fighting chance. But first, I made sure to take lots of blossom pictures just in case they were all destroyed again.

I grabbed some leftover garden fabric to wrap around the tree to try to give it some insulation from the frozen air. I think between the table of milk jugs, unfinished shed, and the wrapped up trees, my next-door neighbors probably shake their heads every day and mourn their property values.

If you don't think this is crazy enough, you know you can depend on me to over do it. I read online that stringing Christmas lights in a fruit tree might help protect it from a hard freeze. So I had to try it.

After 48 hours of hard winds, this garden fabric has lots of holes and I ran out every few hours to safety pin sections closed. I did see some freeze damage, but the buds closer to the trunk of the tree appear to still be in tact and unfrozen. We'll see tomorrow when I pull off the cover and take out the Christmas lights.

Of course, when something can go wrong, it always does. Just as I was finishing getting everything covered up, I saw that the wind had blown over 3 of my cauliflower seedlings from where they were enjoying the last warm afternoon in the sun for a few days. That meant I had no choice but to put them in the ground. I can't think of a worse time to plant tender seedlings than right before a blizzard, can you? I covered them with a cloche made from the tops of milk jugs, which worked really well...except 2 of them blew away yesterday. Don't get attached to anything in Oklahoma unless it's nailed down. I stuck 2 new cloches over the exposed seedlings this morning, but they looked pretty sad. I don't know if they'll make it.

Then, yesterday morning as I was sleeping in and pretending the blizzard wasn't happening, Joe took it upon himself to turn over the flats of herb seedlings and marigold sprouts on my kitchen table. Bill tried his best to get everything cleaned up before I woke up, but the marigolds were kaput.

Oof. I'm seriously ready for spring and a mild summer. Is that too much to ask?

It's About to Get Ugly

I'm in a HORRIBLE mood right now. Why? This:

It's currently a sunny 70 DEGREES RIGHT NOW, PEOPLE! All of my blooming plants that have been stretching out and getting pretty are going to FREAK OUT tonight and probably croak. To make matters worse, my backup plan of covering everything with straw has backfired BIG TIME and I have about 40 new transplants in the ground for a variety of plant-them-now-or-they-will-die reasons.

I'm running around now cloching what I can and taking pictures of the blossoms that will most certainly be dead and brown in the morning. Chance of me getting out of bed tomorrow? 20% or less.

Icethon 2010: The Casualties

So many things fell victim to our week-long power outage besides my sanity, personal hygiene, and ability to make money.

*Almost all of my kitchen herb pots are kaput thanks to no sun and indoor temps in the 30s. Thankfully, all of the winter sown plants survived despite the freezing temps.

*My carpets may not be saved with a professional cleaning. Three big dogs+nervous stomachs+being inside all day and night+short, but extremely muddy trips outside=brown, nasty carpets.

*The big beautiful freezer in the garage that was loaded with fruits and veggies became an indoor compost bin. This included several avocados that I bought on sale and froze the day before the storm, the last of my beloved peppers and cauliflower from our own garden, and months worth of saved frozen bananas for smoothies and bread. I managed to save most of the meat by throwing it outside locked in my pressure cooker. The stuff we lost literally filled a wagon:

*Nursing mamas will understand that even though I only lost 2 frozen pouches of breast milk, it is such a painful thing to throw that liquid gold away.

*Our bank account is seriously hurting. Three nights in a hotel and the cost of dining out for the better part of a week stings as it is, but the additional costs of a generator, a heater, and fuel just adds insult to injury. You better believe I'm saving all receipts, including the grocery bill to replace what was lost in the freezer, for my 2010 taxes. We are very fortunate. There are many families out there who weren't able to a) find a hotel with vacancies within driving distance, b) find a generator or means to heat their home (or single room in their homes) due to widespread shortages, or c) couldn't afford such luxuries even if they were available. My employers and clients were gracious and understanding enough to let me have extra time to complete my pending assignments, but there were many in our area whose places of employment were closed and they just didn't get paid. As I said, we were very fortunate.

Lesson learned:

*We will always have a propane heater, 10 1-lb bottles of propane, 2 full 20-lb bottles of propane for the grill, 2 5-gallon cans of gas for the generator, and a GENERATOR. We also splurged on some big flashlights and LED camping lamps, and I grabbed an entire sack full of Hot Hands hand and toe warmers in case our thermostat dips below 50 degrees again. (Bill wants me to add oil lamps to the list.)

*I probably should have baked 2 loaves of bread instead of one, and moved all of the freezer foods into one freezer before we lost power, or immediately after. I wouldn't have lost so much food if we'd been able to find a generator sooner (didn't get ours until Day 5), but in the future the freezer will be the priority for generator power. I also could have frozen jugs of water to keep in the fridge after we lost power, too.

*I was proud of myself that I'd managed to wash and dry a load of cloth diapers before the power went out, but in retrospect I should have added underwear and socks to the priority list, too. We ended up buying both during the week.

*Threats of water shortages came towards the end of the week-long saga, and the power came back on at the water company before it became a crisis. Regardless, it's probably not a bad idea to fill the tubs and all available pots, pitchers, and buckets not just for drinking water, but for flushing toilets and washing, too.

*Always have a favorite movie or tv show downloaded to a rechargeable device. In our case, I downloaded "Finding Nemo" to my laptop because Joe could watch that movie 24 hours a day. It was extremely necessary to keep him occupied and not interested in wandering around the house because of all the new dangers that had been introduced (full bathtubs, propane heaters, candles, sub-freezing bedrooms). I usually don't like for him to veg out in front of the TV too much, but this week was beyond an exception.

Mutt Monday: The Saga Continues

So, as many of you know, we sent BD home with a friend on the Wednesday night before the big ice storm. She lives about three miles from us and has another brown lab that she thought BD could be a companion to.

Well, on Thursday morning, as I was running around trying to do as much as possible before we lost power, this is what I saw as I passed by my back door:

 

Yes, this crazy dog walked 3 miles in an ice storm to come back to his lady love. Have I mentioned that all parties are fixed? 

Anyway, there wasn't much we could do since everyone was scrambling for heat and generators, so we let him hang out for an extra week. None of the dogs really knew what to do with the thick layer of ice that covered the ground, but once it started to snow, they got down to business.

 

The kung fu fighting made them thirsty.

The dogs then spent the better part of the entire week stuck inside in the living room, since it appears that there are neighbors who are not fans of BD traipsing up to them expecting to be pet. Apparently the local animal control has received complaints, so we're trying to keep him contained until we can get him adopted. 

In the meantime, more doggie goodness:

Iceathon 2010: The Storm

I've owed you this post for a few days now, but I've been running around enjoying hot water and lights that turn on at whim! Imagine!

The basic story is that last Thursday, our region of Oklahoma was the epicenter of an icestorm like this area has never seen before. We lost power almost immediately.

The views of the day made me feel like we'd landed on another planet.

This is not the rocky terrain of Pluto, it is our front lawn. Each blade was coated in an inch of ice. It made things really interesting for the dogs to try to do their doggie business.

 

The ice on the front of our house was so thick and heavy that our front walk is now littered with chips of stone that fell off as it melted. 

 

 

Those are some hardcore icicles. 

This is the new apple tree in the backyard. All of the trees were bowing low to the ground, and I spent the day running outside every  30 minutes or so trying to knock as much ice off of the tops of the trees as I could to keep them from snapping. I was not successful with the newest peach tree, which snapped with only 3 low-lying branches left on the trunk. 

My older peach tree, which I planted while pregnant in 2008, had me waging hand-to-hand war. 

As you can see in the pic, one branch on the right was already snapped and the branches on the left were dangerously close to breaking all day. I fought long and hard to save this tree. Everytime I started hacking at the ice, it was as if I was trying to free a flesh-and-blood friend. Something about the way I nursed this tree through it's first hot summer (all while swimming in ever-increasing pregnancy hormones) has me emotionally bonded to it forever. Happily, it did the best out of all of the trees.

After our first night in our literally freezing house, we spent a wonderfully warm day across the street with our neighbors at the One Acre Homestead, as I mentioned in the previous post. We trekked back and forth several times to stockpile our supplies. Here I am making a toilet paper run:

 

I'm planning a post about  how to prepare for such an event, having now lived through one, but in the meantime, here is some good advice. As I write this, many of my friends and family on the East Coast are snowed in with 2+feet of snow. While some are losing power, I'm fairly confident they won't have to go 7 days without it. Infrastructure for handling messy winter weather is something I sorely miss about the midatlantic region.

Life in Limbo

Hello friends! Those of you who have seen my Facebook statuses and Twitter updates know that we were hit with MAY-JAH weather last Thursday. I'm talking thick thick ice on every surface, which of course included power lines. We are STILL without power almost a week later. We spent the first 2 nights roughing it in our freezing house and visiting with our friends across the street at the One Acre Homestead. It was actually fun to pool our collective resources (gas fireplace, camp stove, toilet paper, thawing freezer foods, wine) and watch our kids playing. Unfortunately, eventually everyone had to shower, so we broke camp and headed for shelter in Texas for a few days. The news reported that  the hotels in nearby Wichita Falls, TX were occupied with about 80% Oklahoma residents, with no vacancies. All retail outlets reported shortages of generators, camping gear, and fuel. We finally found some for ourselves and are back at home (where I'm learning ALL KINDS of survival skills that I'll blog about in future posts).

We've taken many pictures of our adventures that I will be sure to share with you as soon as Bill is finished using our camera. He is helping to head up the clean up efforts at Ft. Sill. In the meantime, check out this post at One Acre Homestead for some amazing ice pictures from our neighborhood, and our now infamous candlelit spaghetti dinner. Cross your fingers that we get power back before Joe's first birthday!