How hot is in here your ask. Well its now 11:15 pm and its 86 degrees with a heat index of 90. Our high today was 98. Welcome to Austin hot!
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I know its been a while. Got back from my trip last week and promptly got sick. I’m getting better thank you.
Well talk about Texas rain. Last night, around 12:45 AM we got rain. We got 1-1/4 inches of rain in a bit over an hour, maybe an hour and a half. At least we’ve had rain, and we still need it.
This is Memorial Weekend, and its raining in Austin, Texas. We had about 1.25 inches yesterday here at the house, and its raining again today. I don’t know how much rain we will get. It is very much needed, no question there. But it is still strange. If it were any cooler I would think I was back in Washington state. As is, we are in the 70’s, ranging from the low to high.
But I’m sure all the plants will be happy for the rain. This time of year I don’t think they expect much rain. But its here. With the drought, plants and the reservoirs will be happy to get the much needed moisture. And it hasn’t all been those heavy downpours either. Yesterday we got about the first inch of rain in one hour. Then it was just kind of slow and drizzly. It didn’t rain overnight. But this morning it started up again and its been slow and steady. Just the kind of rain I would see in Washington. But at least it should soak in well. The rain won’t run off too much.
That’s not to say some areas aren’t getting flash floods. There are flash flood warnings in Austin and San Antonio areas. Some sections of San Antonio, near the airport, apparently got 8 inches of rain yesterday. And its still raining there. I’m sure some areas of Austin are also looking at flash flooding. But up here, its not likely – mud slides maybe, flash floods not so much.
Thursday my neighbor Mrs. L came over and we planted my roses into large containers. I’m glad we got that done. And now with this rain, they are getting a good watering. Hopefully more things will continue growing now that we have this rain.
On the other hand, the deer have been dropping fawns. We have seen a few wobbly legged fawns about. When we saw the first one we put up some additional wire netting around the back yard. These fawns are so young they could have fit between the fencing bars. But at least with the wire netting, they can’t fit between the bars.
I have to admit, our neighbors who had put in grass throughout their yard are making the deer very happy. There are time I see lots of deer just standing out there eating the grass. Happy deer! With this rain, I’m betting lots of the fawns will survive. There will be lots for them to eat for a while.
This weather is making no sense. We had rain last week, then dry. Then this past weekend it began clouding over. Right now it is cloudy, kind of misty, but 68 with 91% humidity. At least the good thing is its nice weather for gardening. Not too cold, but not too hot either.
I went over to my neighbor last week to see her iris’ in bloom. She had given me some rhizomes last fall which I attempted to plant. Attempted since the deer insisted on pulling some of them put. Well, it appears they are growing. This one is blooming in my garden. Some of the others have buds, but have not quite bloomed yet. We can hope.
The roses I had purchased online are also blooming. Here’s three of them. Right now they are in pots, that’s the best I can do. But they seem happy. Hopefully soon they will get a better planting.
The greenhouse has been well worth the time and trouble.
I’m not sure what kind of peppers these are. They are actually a plant I bought last year, wrong time of year. But I put it in the greenhouse and it has survived. And now I have peppers.
The bird feeder we put up recently, well, the birds love it.
It tends to look like its alive. And the area under it, where the birds throw seed is just as alive. It appears we are now on the birds radar as a place for food. They are happy birds, and since they also have the water fountain behind it, and trees, they now have food, water and shelter. What more can they ask for.
We did put a small bird house up also. Its attached to the back of the house. It took all of 1 day for it to be occupied. I guess that’s good. And I’d say we have a thriving bird ecosystem – we had a hawk flying by last week. It landed on one of the branches while we were outside working. I guess that’s good.
We had help this past weekend. Pat came over and we got a lot of yard things done. I now have a small – 3′ x 3′ raised planter. I moved some of the tomato plants into it, along with a pepper plant, watermelon, and bean plant. We’ll see how they do. I still have the netted cover I can use if birds began eating any of the veggies. We’ll see how the plants grow first. This is barely spring. Come summer not much grows due to the heat. But hopefully we’ll have time to get some of these things growing and producing before then.
The weather must be changing, even if it doesn’t seem like it sometimes. Last night we saw our first scorpion in the house. We don’t get a lot of them, but because of where we are we do get scorpions. We do have a pest control system built into the house walls so that keeps most of the bugs away. But last night I saw the first scorpion of the season in the house. Bill stepped on it since I was barefoot – no more worry about that one. But we must be changing seasons for them to show up.
The weather has been strange. The past couple of days have been overcast but warm, in the 70’s. Last night only got down to 62, so that is a change in temp. Especially since earlier this week we had night time temps down in the low 30’s. They keep saying we may get rain, 40% chance for tomorrow, Easter. We even have a 50% chance on Wednesday. I’m not holding my breath on it, we’ll see if we actually get any. But it is overcast with big billowy clouds.
Now that we have the fence in we’re starting to look at planting some more things. Its nice having a lot of room to work in but its going to take a lot of work. We’re already looking at putting in some sort of retaining walls and filling them with dirt so we can plant shrub/trees. We get such wind we do need some sort of wind break. When we got those 40-50 mph winds our back patio got covered in dirt and leaves. And a neighbor from across the street came over when we were just breezy up here. She was amazed. She said it was calm at her house. But at least now she realizes our problems.
I had talked with my neighbor a couple of weeks ago and mentioned that we get windy. She understood windy, but she said that they don’t get much wind at all. So she was a bit skeptical about what I was saying. Her house seems to be in a low calm spot, relatively speaking. She said they rarely get much wind at all. But next door to her is essentially a greenbelt and that might break the wind for her. But now that she’s been to our house, she understands what I mean when I say that we do get wind.
When we got that windy spell all the dirt I have moved got blown away. The problem is that I need to have dirt in order to get something to grow, and I need something to grow there in order to hold the dirt. We’ll figure something out.
Go figure. Yesterday (Friday) they said today’s (Saturday) forecast was a high of 86. That has now changed to a high of 70. It’s already noon and we are not even up to 60. Hopefully we’ll get to 70, but we’ll see.
The deer are not happy with the fence. They keep coming up to it and looking in, like kids staring at a candy store they can’t go into. I figure they’ll get over it. But we did get a bird feeder up. And the birds have already found it and are coming. We did find some old niger/nyjer seed. The birds won’t eat it but we put some outside the fence, just trying to get rid of it. Well the deer like the niger/nyjer seed.
The greenhouse is doing great. The squash plants have blossoms so hopefully we will get squashes soon. The herbs are doing very well. Even the berry bushes are putting out new leaves and growth.
I have had one unusual problem. I set some seeds out on a tray, it came with those compressed round soil pods. You just add water and the pods expand. Well, not a single seed has sprouted in that. I don’t know why. I find it odd. I don’t think the soil would be the problem, but I don’t know. I may add some more seeds to them and see what the problem is. Since everything else in the greenhouse is doing fine I don’t know why these are not sprouting. It may take some investigating. I don’t think its too warm in the greenhouse since everything else is happy. I’m not sure why they haven’t sprouted and its been over a week. I put geranium and impatient seeds in the the tray and I would think they would have sprouted by now. Something I have to look into.
Go figure. I planted how many daffodils and only one came up.
I know, be thankful I got one. Maybe the others will bloom. But its mid March and that’s the only one so I’m not real hopeful. Maybe we just didn’t get enough cold. I don’t know.
But the fence has come along nicely. Its 6 feet tall and will hopefully keep the deer out. That remains to be seen, but we can hope.
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| supplies |
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| construction |
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| lots of fence |
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| portion of front fence |
I’m rather excited about the fence. I’ll be able to actually put plants out in the yard. I’ll be able to plant the new roses. I’ll be able to get some stuff out of the greenhouse! Now if the deer will just cooperate and stay out.
The fence is coming along well. Most of the columns are done and almost all the posts are in. Next week they should put up the fence sections. Then we’ll actually have a fence and be able to keep the deer out.
But weird weather – this morning we woke up to fog, cool weather (we made it to 64) and heavy mist with light rain later in the day. We need the wet weather and I’m sure the plants are thrilled to get the moisture. Tomorrow should be similar weather. Next week we’re supposed to get into the 80’s. Summer is on its way.
Okay we have a problem after that wind. My bougainvillea is naked – it has lost every single leaf. It was a new plant and looked nice. But its only naked, not dead so I’m sure it will come back to life. I may need to find a new place for it. Right now it is sitting on the stairs so it is out getting the full force of the wind. I may have to move it someplace where it still gets sun but maybe a bit less wind.
The real problem is in the back. All that dirt I moved in the back then seeded with buffalo grass seed, well the wind moved it. Don’t know exactly where it got moved to, but I’ve got some definite bare areas again. Of course, that is exactly why I’m trying to get grass to grow there. The back patio is also full of dirt, weeds, twigs, and leaves from the wind. We’ll have to use either a blower to move that dirt out of the patio or we will have to sweep it off, but somehow we will need to clean that back patio off. But the amount of dirt on the patio is much less then the 3 or 4 wheelbarrows of dirt I put on the ground. So I’m sure the rest of that dirt is off some place else. I’ll have to do this all over again – move dirt and throw seed. Sure glad I still have some seed left over.
Oh my goodness. Yesterday was windy. We hit gusts of 51mph here at the house. It appears some areas even had power outages due to the wind. It blew hard enough to tear one of the vents off the greenhouse. Bill was able to retrieve the wayward vent so we’ll try to repair it and re-install it. But it meant that plants inside the greenhouse had to be covered last night. And they will have to be covered the next few nights – we’re due for night temperatures near freezing, below 40 for the next week or so. And I still have those little seedlings growing and they will not survive those cold nights. Hopefully we won’t be getting wind like that for a while again. The center of the country has been in a cold spell with snow and such. Us, we just got the wind. Not even any rain from it. Oh well.