Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label weather. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Mountain lions, mold, and snow storms

At last, an update. It's been far too long, I know, but this summer's monsoon and plague of mold on our tomatoes, potatoes and eggplants - along with everything else - was just too discouraging. Then, I had a lengthy business trip that took me out of state during a critical period at the garden when I would otherwise have tried planting for an optimistic fall crop. Such is life.

I'm working on setting up some window boxes for a potential winter crop, using the little white fairy lights - if, that is, my feline buddy allows it. As always - we'll see. Speaking of whom, we had an adventure last week that thoroughly messed up my holiday-card writing, among other things. As my cousin put it, it was a mountain lion attack. Sort of.

the story...
Yes, that's him. Drugged to the gills in that photo, by the way. But I'm getting ahead of myself. See the windowsill behind him? He was up there, with a (now moved to the floor) strawberry pot. He got into a hissing, poofy-tailed snit about a neighbor cat wandering by outdoors, and did the usual feline flip-out. I ignored him. A few minutes pass while I'm still sitting below the window, reading & knitting. Given that I had my back against that wall there, I didn't see what set off the next chain of events, but I think he was still hopping around, hissing at the leaves twitching in the gusty wind.

Normally, I ignore him when he gets twitchy.

He must have bumped into that clay pot, thought it was something attacking him, and whipped around to "attack" it - at any rate both of them tumbled out of the window, and onto me. In the process, he sunk his teeth & claws into my right hand & arm, probably trying to stop his fall, but clearly he had no idea what he was doing. He then retreated under the computer desk, hissing and yowling as if I had bitten him. In the mean time, I had to head to the ER: the punctures from his teeth were pretty deep (they hit tendons). Happily, I am fine, and after a week of antibiotics and a splint on my arm to protect further injury to my tendons/give them a chance to rest, I am newly appreciative of being able to use both hands. I don't do well as an obligate lefty, or so I learned.

George, on the other hand, is still healing from his part of the adventure: apparently he managed to break/twist one of his claws and part of another on the way down. At first, I thought the blood was mine, and he wouldn't let me near him for the rest of the day, and I was in no position to argue. Later, it was clear that it wasn't only my blood on his paw. To the vet we went, and what a pair we were. It shows how injured he was that he was even willing to walk into his pet-carrier without a fight. Surgery and drugs for him, a splint for me. Good times! We're both on the mend now, and I'm looking forward to planting and digging in the spring. I hope everyone's having a wonderful holiday season, and staying warm in spite of the snow. Just remember, the old farmer's almanack always used to call snow "poor man's fertilizer" - so hopefully our gardens will be a little less stressed out this spring. Expect some photo-posts once I get the little seedlings started in my windowboxes.

Now, I'm going to go listen to some carols ~

Sunday, February 22, 2009

You know you have spring fever when...

...when garden and seed catalogs and planning out your plot aren't enough to distract you. You swing by the garden plot and traipse through the pock-marked and ice-ridden paths all the way to the back of the community gardens JUST TO LOOK at your own plot. Not, mind you, to accomplish any purpose; nor even to photograph it to document the change of seasons. Nope, just to look. Little wooden work-table, check. Miscellanea safely ensconced, check. Random scraps of wood and the spare wooden chairs that the Duchess salvaged last season, check. Raspberry canes need further trimming in spite of my late season pruning, check. Then, I turned around and...returned to my car.

Yeah, it's bad. And for the record, I'm a native of this region, and never required a groundhog to tell me "whether or not" on February 2nd we'd have 8 more weeks of winter. There is no doubt. We WILL have 8+ more weeks of winter, and possibly a surprise snowstorm in May, thank you very much, just enough to keep you on your toes.

*sigh*

Where are my easter eggs?

Tuesday, April 29, 2008

rain gauge


rain gauge, originally uploaded by Margo and George.

Made a brief visit after work today - arrived 7ish, close to 7:30, but there was still a little light and it had stopped raining long enough for me to trek out to the plot. Perfect time to install a rain gauge, right? AFTER the rain stops? Yeah, well I missed it this time. I'll check the NOAA page to see approximately how many inches we got this time. Lessee here... according to NOAA/NWS archive, over the past two days we got 1.97 inches
Okay, I can live with that. So about two inches of rain.