Tomato Sanctuary

40* last night, maybe 38* tonight. Happy Mother's Day!!

Spring Planting

I have this habit of taking pictures of every new veggie sprout and every planting of every veggie....every year. Matt has been making fun of me for this. This year I found myself standing in front of the newly sprouted asparagus bed with my camera in my hand and I had the following conversation with myself in my head:

Repeat after me: you don't need to take pictures of the first asparagus every year.

I don't need to take pictures of the first asparagus every year.

People by now know what they look like. Every year.

People by now know what they look like. Every year.

These aren't the droids you're looking for.

These aren't the droids we're looking for.

Move along.

Move along....Move along!!!

So. Now that I have that out of the way, I can tell you that this weekend I planted kohlrabi (for the first time, too), broccoli plants, and leeks. I also rehabbed two tomato beds that I didn't get to last fall, and I tried to fix the pea beds. Too wet, a lot of them became slug food/homes and some others rotted. I have enough seed to reseed if necessary. Oh, and the asparagus is coming up.

Tomorrow I plan on planting some flowers and such in the new flower bed. I hope to get the potatoes in this week as well as the carrots/radishes.

Matt finished up the rafters in the garage on Sunday, I will have pictures of that soon.

And...it is supposed to be 90* tomorrow. Ick.

Spring???

Last weekend it was 75* and beautiful.

Last night, it was 25*. We had a pretty decent frost this morning.

WTF???

I Spoke Too Soon!!!

Rain! Lots of rain! Water pouring off the hill. Water in the basement. Sump pump set up. Water mitigated.

*sigh*

The float came off the damned sump pump in the middle of the night. Could have been a LOT worse, only 3" of water. So. We have two rugs to take outside to dry out, but it won't be until at LEAST tomorrow because, you guessed it, it is raining AGAIN today. Most everything else is fine.

In other news, I have a post up on my other blog about a woman who takes motorcycle trips through the dead zone around Chernobyl. And I think *I* have problems??

Suddenly Spring!

After the Great Whumping that was this winter, especially February with 40+ inches of snow, March has not only been calm but warm. It appears that for at least a week it will remain that way, too. It's been in the 50s for the past 4 days and it appears that it will remain around there for the rest of the week!

The daffodils are coming up.

The iris reticulatas are coming up.

The rose is showing new growth.

It is really early. Keeping in mind that in the past 15 years we’ve had not one but 2 major blizzards the middle of March, I’m hoping that this trend is not a fluke. As much as I like winter, this spring is a wonderful breath of fresh air.

Tomato seedlings are up, the artichokes are up, the peppers are just starting to peep out. I have cabbages and lettuce to start, and some flowers, too.

More More More! How do you like it?

The pictures I took while stuck at work I wound up listing on a Flickr page, so you can see them here. I especially like the picture of the building I work in at night.

This picture shows the left turn out of my facility completely blocked by snow drifts on Thursday afternoon. They eventually did come and open it up, we think it was the National Guard. This is the main avenue from town to access the interstate. There was a lot of traffic coming from town, making it as far as the gates, turning around, and then getting stuck there because there was more traffic coming along behind them. It was a nightmare.

I didn't take too many pictures at home. Here is the obligatory Max picture (taller than three yorkies at this point):
The herb bed. I took a pic of the herb bed the last huge storm we got, too. Keep in mind this is after drifting. I really don't know how much snow we got from this storm, but I'm guessing somewhere between 18-25".

The garage. Note the blue tent thing collapsed on the second floor. If the snow load didn't do it the winds did:
Interestingly, in the picture above the drifts closest to me are about 4' while the snow has completely blown off the part of the sidewalk closest to the garage. It made shoveling.....interesting at best. The drifts are pretty, with sharp cuts going from here to there. If you framed a picture just right you would believe it was taken in the Alaska or Antarctica landscape.

We finally got completely dug out on Thursday afternoon (or was it Friday? Things really are running together about last week). We're 3/4 of the way digging up to the burning barrel. We dug out the trash cans, too.

Here is really hoping that we don't have a sudden warm spell or 2" of rain all at once. I'm beginning to have a real appreciation for those of you who live like this every winter.

January 25 Flood Pictures

There's just SOOOOO much exciting weather going on here, Idon't know what to do! These pictures are from 1/25/2010, before either of the big snows we got. And thank god for that, can you imagine what would have happend if we'd gotten 4" of rain on top of 50+ inches of snow?

Anyway all of these were taken with a crappy disposable camera that I bought in the campus shop, so forgive the quality. I'll put the captions above the pictures. If you want access to a campus map, click here. Most of these were taken near the burn buildings, which are located at the top right of the map.

A shot from the point of view of the burn buildings. This is usually a field. Tom's Creek runs on the left. A road parallels it, you can make out the street lights:
From the hill, looking down, again usually field:
More formally field shots:

During the flooding, a stream grew here:
And it was gone the next day (this is the digital camera picture):
Conveniently, they were setting fires at the burn buildings this day:
Another shot, can you see the bridge beside the brick building? Almost under water:
Another shot of the bridge:
There is a low head dam past the trees in the above picture. You can't really see it, but the sound was incredible.

So, flooding. It was gone by 5pm here. In fact, when I took the above pictures the waters were already receeding.

Stay tuned for blizzard pictures tomorrow!!!

Snowpocalypse Update

Hi everyone!! I'm still stuck on campus! That makes two nights for me. It hasn't been bad, actually, I kind of like the quiet time by myself. I have an awful lot of pictures to post, so many that I may just put them up on Flickr. I'll let you know.

Campus is still snowed in, the maintenance staff is working a lot of overtime, but to be honest the wind is causing so many walks to fill in just after they'd been plowed open that they just stopped for several hours yesterday because there was no point. They did a little bit again last night, then as far as I know nothing until about 5 this morning. There are Icicles of Death all over the place, some of them easily 6 feet long.

Winds have been upwards of 30-40mph with gusts easily around 50mph. I slipped and fell once, didn't hurt myself, but there is a lot of ice on the walks that the snow is covering. Very dangerous. We have sun today and even though it is so cold I'm hoping that the walks melt a bit.

In other weather-related news, I saw a picture of the storm this morning on the national radar. It was as big as a hurricane, it was rotating like a hurricane, and it had an eye like a hurricane. Very interesting.

Most of Maryland is still in a state of emergency. Hospitals are requesting 4W drivers to help with their transportation and probably to get doctors/nurses in and out. If you're stuck working at a hospital through something like this burnout must be an incredible problem. They need replacement staff badly.

This morning, I was in the lobby of the dorm where the main office is for Guest Services, and they got a call from security. It seems a truck had been stuck on the main road down about a half mile from campus. We had all heard that, it had been there for hours. Apparently it still had people in it including a child. Why on earth they stayed in the vehicle when there is a camps RIGHT HERE is beyond me. The mainenance staff had been working on clearing roads with the backhoes and dump trucks (because the plows weren't big enough to handle it all), and when I looked out the door towards the South Gate (closest to the stuck vehicle) I could see a caravan of the equipment headed there to open the access road. They were going to get the people out to bring them to a dorm. So, yay us! Cause, yah know, when disaster strikes FEMA is here!

On the home front, Matt is currently trying to figure out how to get all the snow moved. He is expected to be in today, which I just don't see happening. He called me last night at 10:30. Apparently the quarry (grit mill) on the hill above the house had a transformer fire earlier. Then it stopped. And then there were some strange electrical things going on around the house, like flickering, lowered lights and a humming sound. Well, the humming was coming from the mill. Matt said that the Aircraft Rescue fire apparatus from our local SECRET NUCLEAR BUNKER went up the road. He looked at the mill and they were having a huge electrical fire, flames 40' high and he said it looked like someone set off a truck of fireworks. He said the backyard looked like daylight, it was so bright. I wish I'd been there to see it.

So, I'm working today 10:30 to 2:30, then....I hope I can get home. If not, I'll be here....again....for a third night. Everyone is wonderful, there is a nice sense of amusement over the whole thing, even though we all have work to do. But.....I only brought one change of clothes. I'm wearing a pajama top today. It is a nice pajama top, and if I dont' tell anyone no one will be the wiser. But I wanna go home.

Winter Storm Pics, Vol. 2

I downloaded the rest of the pictures this morning and these are the better ones.

Here's Max. Poor thing. He loves the snow, but...if the one in December was a taller-than-a-Yorkie-snow at 19", this one is a taller-than-TWO-Yorkies-snow.
The grill looking like some kind of mushroom:
The sun came out at one point, how weird does this look?
The car, I think. It looks like a marshmallow with side mirrors:
The calvalry. Matt on Kubby (the Kubota) and his dad Ray on the John Deere:
And, finally, our house, garage, and greenhouse as seen from the road.

Winter Storm Pics, Vol. 1

The first of two posts about the snow. The first picture is Friday around 5pm at work. That's my car, I'm sure they were waiting for me to leave so they could plow the main entrance.
This is of my herb bed:
This is the fencing around the blueberry bush:

For scale purposes, this is what it would normally look like. Well, without the stream running through it, of course. Consider this a teaser of the flood pictures I still have to post:Matt, shoveling a path for Max and looking shocked:
He's 6'3", remember.

Blog Post Wish List

Here is my wishlist for blog posts to finish this week, if I get time:

1) Harvest in January!
2) Flooding in January! Maybe even with pictures!!!
3) Garage work from January!

I know! Three (3) blog posts! When will I ever find the time? How will I ever get home tonight after the 4 inches of rain have closed all the roads!?!?!? Will the house be there or will it have washed away? Exciting? Maybe. I hope not, though. I don't really need any more excitement today.

The Perfect Storm

We had a wonderful snow storm on Saturday. When I got up at 5am to let Max outside I think we already had 2-3 inches. By 8:30 it was 6 or so. By 10am the car looked like this:
Matt was on-call (and was a bear about it). He did get 5 calls. Four of them he actually was able to troubleshoot via phonecall and talk the people through lighting their own pilot flame, checking to see if the vents were covered with snow, etc, and even did a more complicated call with a guy who was far more mechanically inclined than most and could handle it. Matt did have to run out once.

For the most part, though, we mostly stayed inside and watched birdies:

We went out once to shovel off the 2nd floor of the garage:
By 4pm the car looked like this:

We went out to shovel a few places for Max to do his thing because by 8pm we had a taller-than-a-yorkie snow. By 8:15, Max looked like this:
Sunday, we had some wind and the blowing snow with the sun behind it was gorgeous:All told, just shy of 19" here. A big snow for us. I think they're calling for another this week. I *really* hope we don't have a sudden warm spell, can you imagine the flooding??

Be Careful What You Complain About...

It goes like this:

"Boy it's dry!"

"Why won't it rain?"

"It takes me an hour to water the garden."

*complain, bitch, moan*

"We haven't had any rain in over 2 weeks!"

*rumble*

"Was that a truck?"

*rumble* *boom* *FLASH*

*BLOOOOSH!!!!*

"Look at it rain out there!"

*BLOOOOSH!!!!!* *FLASH* *BOOM*

"It's raining again!"

*BLOOOOSH!!!!!!!!*

"It's raining AGAIN!!"

*BLOOOOSH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!* *FLASH* *BOOOOOOM!!!!*

"Good lord, it's raining AGAIN!!!"

*BLOOOOSH!!!!!!!!*