We love the snow.
Our backyard is pretty well winterized—haven’t turned off the faucets yet, but will. Need to prune a few bushes and the apple tree. But the koi put in one appearance yesterday when it started to rain — they heard something hitting the water and thought ‘food,’ I think, — then went back to their little bottom heater. There are two heaters—the floating one to keep a hole open for co2 to get out; and the sinking one to sit down with the fish. It by no means heats the pond: just provides a little slight warmth, and it sits on a bed of pebbles, so as they stay warmer, the fish have a nice comfy spot that’s just a little nicer.
Got to get some bird food. And we’re good to go. We have our snow-blowers, and we’ll get our winterizing finished at the first thaw (we’re sure this won’t last long) and get the hoses in, the faucets winterized and that’s about what there is to do.
Are you getting as much snow as we did last week when we caught the front edge of Sandy here in West Central Ohio? Jane said it was just dandruff and I didn’t need a snow thrower. Just my luck, I buy an expensive piece of equipment to save me from a heart attack, and it doesn’t snow…….
BTW, CJ, finished “Yvgenie”, passed along some minor typo’s to Jane last night.
Just wait. I’m sure Ohio will see snow soon.
Sent you a picture via PM on your Facebook page. Couldn’t get the URL here for some reason.
We woke up to two inches of snow on the ground, thanks to the nor’easter. It was gone by noon. We had mostly rain with a lot of wind….lots more snow in other areas. It’s all very difficult for those who are still without power due to Sandy.
I was hearing from my agent, that he found a working gas station—and it had a hundred cars lined up: somebody’s really apt to run out of gas in a line like that; but he drove on and found a gas station in, I think, New Jersey, with a ten minute wait. Think of New Yorkers, shall we who are not having troubles, when we whisk right into a store or gas station…
Whereas here north of Dallas, we have had a very early frost, but now it’s back up to the low eighties. Supposed to be 28 next Monday night (the evening that I am scheduled to go to the Arboretum to see the Chihuly glass, B-r-r-r-r! http://www.dallasarboretum.org/chihuly/ChihulyNights.html) Then back up in a couple more days. You can’t just button things up for the season here, ’cause it’s just a continuous roller coaster.
We are right in the middle of a Named Winter Storm, Brutus. (It makes us feel so special!) So far it is pretty much like our normal unNamed storms: persistent snow, so we have around 6 inches of it (but we need the moisture)and enough wind to stir it up on the highway through the flat prairies. Not what we call a blizzard. People are going to work, carrying on with normal routines. The schools are closed, to which the kids are not objecting. It’s not very cold, although below-zero temperatures are predicted. We ran errands and stocked up on groceries yesterday, getting home exactly ten minutes before the snow started. So now I can sit back and read Netwalkers: Partners. I am in the middle of it and so much enjoying it!
We went from a few glorious days of almost 80 here early this week to darn near 40 for a low last night. That’s LOW for this area, and 80 is HIGH, I know its nothing to the rest of the world but for this wedge of VERY marine influenced beach just this side of the ocean, its a HUGE fluctuation.
I’m freezing! Winter is definitely here.
Brutus? But it’s not even the Ides of March.
@ dhawktx — Oops, I just found I’d missed two crafty emails. Many apologies!
Our weather here is still low 80’s highs, low 60’s or high 50’s for lows. When Dallas gets any cold weather, Houston should get something.
I’m about to update Audacity so I can check up on recording.
I convinced my recalcitrant iPad this week that yes, it really did need to sync to my laptop and update itself. Some oddball screwup that I finally got it to resolve by a reinstall and restore. I found today I need to reload some audiobooks and ebooks that I missed in that, but otherwise, I’m good to go. I don’t know what the problem was, but the fix was easy, only time-consuming.
Home news: My (clothes) washer just tried to spin into that other dimension where errant socks go, a bad imbalance of the load. That washer is at least 20 or 25 years old. If it does give up the ghost, I’ll have to buy a new washer/dryer. At least this was fair warning. I tend to think something’s wrong, because it didn’t feel like the load was that imbalanced, when I paused it to solve that. Not even a bedspread or pillow or such, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard and seen that much clatter and wobble. — The cats were not amused, but far less unsettled than I would’ve thought. But then, I remember a certain short story, wherein cats deal with the denizens of the lost sock dryer dimension. So perhaps this explains it…. 😉
Athena is pounding on the east coast. Here in the west — et tu Brute?
It was a bit chilly here today (50 degrees F or so) and no gas lines. My heart goes out to those in the greater NY area. I hope things return to normal soon.
My, 75 degrees here today, but as the day went on the wind really picked up. Projections are the snow won’t get any closer to KC than Nebraska, though we may get badly needed rain Sunday. I haven’t unpacked the winter sweaters, there’s confused clematis blooming, and I may work on my tan tomorrow while pulling up tomato and pepper plants. Bird seed and thick socks are on the shopping list though — we surely can’t have a second mild winter.
The cold weather gets to us in the TX panhandle on Sunday — temps dip down from the low 80s to the low 50’s for a high, and from the mid 40’s to the low 30’s for a low, with Sunday’s low of 29. The front is supposed to start blowing through tomorrow. There probably won’t be any snow left by the time it gets to us, and doubt we’ll get any rain either.
Anybody remember those house shoes that are essentially a sock with a sole sewed to it? We always called them “sock feet” — I made me a pair in 2011, using leather for soles. Just knitted a regular sock, but with thick yarn, cut a sole out of a piece of leather, punched small holes around the edges so I could sew it to the bottom of the sock. They are really nice and warm and the soles can be recycled to a new pair when the old socks wear out. I suppose you could use something like a thick Naugahyde or some other such if you didn’t want to use leather. Good quick project for the knitters in the crowd. (There’s a how-to video on the web for knitting both socks at once on the same needle you can google for it.)
We had a mild winter here last year too, but the spring was a b*tch — January and February had weeks of hard cold down into the teens and some snow — Yeah, I know — but hey, my town is at the same latitude as Casablanca, Morocco!
I hate the snow. We don’t get enough of it in the UK to learn how to deal with it so it just causes chaos and hassle. I’ve already told work that at the first sign of a snow flake I’m working from home. In my experience the best thing you can do in the UK when it snows is stay off the roads.
I’m hoping this winter will be more like what I consider normal – a couple of evening showers that thaw over the following day then nothing else. The last couple of winters have had several week long snow sessions and that was a pain in the buttock.
I’m hiding from the beginning of UK dark afternoons and bad weather here in Extremadura, though at the moment it’s quite grey and chilly. however I have to go back at the end of November and am crossing my fingers there’s no snow on the way then! picking olives for curing and sticks off the finca for starting the woodburner … haven’t heard the eagle owls yet, but there’s a hoopoe that flutters away near my gate ….
Two pretty kittehs, a marmelade and a snowshoe Siamese, visited the pond this morning to have a drink, and quite disgustedly had to cope with a thin film of ice. They’re nice fellows, never bother the fish, avoid our presence. We have a second pair about at times who are the mirror image of Shu and Seishi—they get up at our big windows and visit. Oddly enough our own guys are quite placid and curious about them.
The koi didn’t appear yesterday: they’re down with their sinking heater, under the winter cover, so that’s good.
On October 30, we got about an inch or so of very wet heavy snow. Today, November 10 (my younger brother Sam’s 49th birthday), it’s 62 degrees outside. You don’t like the weather in West Central Ohio? Stick around for 5 minutes, it’ll change.
I wonder what the new kittens will think when they see the snow outside the window (if it ever does snow here again). They were born last spring, and spent most of the summer either in the vet’s clinic or at the shelter. Winter should be a new experience for them. I’m going to hang a thistle seed feeder out front so they can watch the birds. I call it “kitty TV”.
My boss’ gardener informed me that he has two pairs Cardinals in his yard. He lives near Seattle. For anyone from this area knows… this is not normal. Cardinals are not a Washington bird. For this ex-pat Wisconsinite, however, I can’t wait to see them. I miss them!
Sable: Hadn’t caught that detail about you before, greetings from a current Wisconsinite (MKE).