The seasons, such as they are, have ceased to exist. When I was younger it used to get cold sometime near the end of the year, there was an occasional January thaw but barely worth speaking of by present standards, and then it got damn cold. Until such time as it got warm, and that was spring. At which point, with less than once in a blue moon exceptions, it stayed warm until it got cold near the end of the year. Now not so much.
The old overused cliche was, "If you don't like the weather in Maine, "Wait ten minutes and it'll change," and that could be a fairly good, if over generalized, description of the weather. Now it seems a similar thing could be said of seasons. Don't like the season? Wait till tomorrow. Odds are good it'll be a different one.
I remember when we put a new roof on the garage. As I recall the job took five days. In the first four we had what would be considered, weatherwise, one typical day for each season. Don't remember what happened on the fifth. I do remember that the summer like day was hot as Hell, and the winter like day was cold as Hell. If you're wondering how one can say, "Hot as Hell," for extremely hot and, "Cold as Hell," for extremely cold, read some Dante the "Hot as" refers to the hottest portions (which are damned, literally and otherwise, hot), the "Cold as" refers to the coldest ones (which are damned, again literally and otherwise, cold), and the existence of the two leads me to speculate that there must be a temperate zone somewhere in between where Hell actually has a relatively nice climate.
Anyway, this is our second blizzard of the winter, and the first one that's more of a BLIZZARD! than a blizzard, and like the first it just happens to fall on a day when I have to walk between towns to get to an appointment The good news is that this time I have a way to contact the person to see if it is cancelled and thus, if it is, will not have to walk in and wait around in the cold for a while to see if the other person will show.
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And as a side note, the six inches of snow falling right now is not a part of the blizzard, it's from a different storm that wasn't expected to hit here.
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These are the views out my two living-room windows of the, "This is the snow that was so insignificant we never mentioned it until it started falling, the blizzard comes later."
(As always getting close to the screen makes for interesting patterns.
(Next one taken from greater distance utilizing zoom.)
I hope your appointment can be (or has been) rescheduled. Stay safe!
ReplyDeleteI called up to see if it is still on, answer: Yes, if I want it to be.
DeleteSo I could have canceled with none of the usual "You didn't give us enough warning," problems. But I didn't.
I was going to walk in but I decided to call family first. So it looks like I'll be getting a ride.
It presumably could be rescheduled but one of the things is that if I miss it I'll run out of medication, (need new prescriptions and such) so it's really better if I can make it.
If you're wondering how one can say, "Hot as Hell," for extremely hot and, "Cold as Hell," for extremely cold, read some Dante
ReplyDeleteThere's also the general phrase "[adjective] as [swearword]", which may or may not have come about from overgeneralising "hot as hell".
Our dog refused to go out for a morning walk today on the basis that the snow was roughly as tall as he is, perhaps a little more. (Which isn't that tall*, but still.) First time the snow's gotten that high this winter.
You still have a zillion hydroponic houseplants, I see.
*Note: not actually our dog. (He could never pull off a showcut.)
You still have a zillion hydroponic houseplants, I see.
ReplyDeleteRather more than before. Part of it is that after the living room plant came crashing down I ended up having to tie it back up with rope, the practical result of which was that it couldn't be rotated without a great degree of difficulty.
Now I've never been all that big on rotating plants in general, as evidenced by the fact that the hanging plant in my room has all of it's life on one side. But the living room plant did get rotated (180 degrees for there was no other option) at least on occasion.
The crashing down itself produced a bunch of new plants in need of water, but the staying one side to the light one side to the inside also had the effect of making a lot of the light deprived mini-plants on the not-light side less than viable.
I've seen similar things happen when a plant sends a shoot beyond the realm of light, but not when the thing at the end is a fully developed plant.
Anyway, when I realized that the main plant had written them off and they were slowly dying of dehydration because the shoots to them had dried up and died, I plucked them and put them in water. (And I went through the difficulty of rotating the plant in hopes of preserving what was still viable on that side.)
Of course some have fared better than others and there have been unfortunate losses.
Not the least of which being the root system that, against all possible odds, went on living and living without any leaves to feed it. Every so often it would put out the beginnings of leaves only to decide against it and let them die off before anything came of them. I'm not entirely sure how such a life was possible as, so far as I know, the roots do not photosynthesize.
Until midway through describing it, it was literally lost. Where other things were content to die off, it had disappeared entirely.
I have since found what I think is it, fallen into another plant's... um, I'm going to say ferret water bowl but I really have no idea.
I had expected to find it dry and shriveled up, instead I found it over-saturated. I think I'm going to have to let it dry out for a bit before I give it any water of its own. Pretty sure it's dead though.
That said, if I've learned nothing else, it's that you should not write off a plant until it's been given a chance. Things that look like dead lumps of matter will sprout impressive leaves. On the other hand things you were sure would survive will die off no matter how hard you try to tend them.
It's unpredictable, it is.
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Also the pineapple (didn't have that last time) seems to be doing fine, though I somehow doubt it'll grow another fruit unless I take it out of the applesauce jar full of water and put it in some actual dirt.