Its been a while

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while. Its been an interesting time. For starters, I’ve been “sick” with allergies. Like really bad allergies. Bad enough I’ve been on antibiotics and steroids, plus inhalers. Its been bad. Even some street corners look like someone poured yellow paint on them. This has been pollen time in this area of Texas. And me, I got hit bad.

But help is on the way. The weather is changing, and with it hopefully all the various pollens will settle down. Or at least hopefully it will settle down enough for people to breathe easily again.

Or at least for me to breathe easier.

As for how does that affect my garden? Well I haven’t been able to spend much time out in the yard. I did get a few things done. On one day we went out and redid the drip water system, added some new lines, added a second timer, and I was even able to get some seed in. The grapes are actually growing, and were able put out small grapes. I will need to cover them to keep the birds from them.

The blackberries are coming back, and even the roses have been blooming. The trees have gone through flowers and are getting leaves, though the apples are not getting apples this year. But I didn’t expect them to.

Where the garden is not where I hoped it would be, allergies have put me behind the curve a bit, but I think we’ll still get something. I’ve been harvesting lettuce, even some arugula, and even the peas are still producing. So all is not lost yet. But the weather is still up and down. One day was a high of 64, and the next in the 80’s so this is Austin, TX spring weather.

The day after

Last night, or rather early this morning, at 1AM I got up. Last night was our coldest night expected. And at 1AM it was 19 degrees outside. How much lower did it actually get, I’m not sure. Considering the forecast for this area was 18 I’m betting we dropped below that.

Yesterday, during the day time, I had a small space heater blowing near where my water softener attaches to the house water. Last year that was where it froze and I wanted to make sure that didn’t happen again. I wanted to make sure water was running, so when I turned the heater off, it was to run a tap in one of the spare bathrooms. They said to run it farthest from where water comes in. I didn’t choose that faucet since that was attached to the room I was sleeping in and I didn’t want to listen to dripping water all night. But I did pick the next best. The good news is that running the space heater had heated the area near the water softener to 50 degrees, I had a thermometer near it. Even with out it running all night that area was about 45 this morning. And the water was running okay too.

As for today it is now 2:30 PM and here at my house we have made it up to 40 degrees. Ice is melting, and has been sliding off the roof top. Most of it slid off this morning, and I could hear it, especially when I walked outside, or opened the door. Most of it is now gone, other than those areas that don’t get much sun light.

With this temperature most of the glass areas are now wet, but no longer frozen. Some area, those that have had all day sun, those areas are actually dry. Most of the roads area dry too.

It was dry enough I was actually able to walk Linus, my dog. One thing I notice out on my walk was flying icicles. This morning we had some wind, I noted 8mph on my weather station. Consequently, it was shaking trees. That shaking, at least I’m guessing here, was able to dislodge ice from the trees and send it flying. I even have ice pieces in the middle of my driveway. I’m guessing this is a result of the flying ice, since there is no other easy explanation – no tree limbs over my driveway.

As for the yard, the ice yesterday left one of my apple trees bent over. As of right now its still bent over, but it has not broken. So I’m guessing it has survived so far. It doesn’t look like any limbs broke on any of my trees. I consider that a good thing. I shouldn’t lose any trees from this storm.

It was nice getting out for the walk, but it was cold. I was glad to get back into the house. I will say the birds ate all the birdseed I had out. I mean all the bird seed. It was empty, not much stuck to the bottom even. I did refill it today. I’m sure the brds will be happy for that.