Day 17 – Two Steps Back
This morning, I awoke to this.
And this.
There will be “after” shots tomorrow. If we get snow on the 23rd, we will have broken a record for the longest snow season. The fact that we have not already reached that milestone is a bit mind blowing.
Today, as the flakes fall in that way that five months ago would have seemed magical, I am trying to reach deep, deep into my psychological reserves and make the best of it with my pal Ray Charles.
Rainy and cool in the city, and for the sake of Alaskans’ sanity, I will not mention what’s growing.
Oookay…. Copper Mountain and Vail got 4″ of snow today. Just up the hill, in the Rockies.
….and down here on the plains we got asparagus,pounds and pounds of asparagus.Big,fat,juicy stalks of garden fresh asparagus and more in the road ditches.
I want a ditch full of asparagus! can it grow like rice? Our ditches are always full of water…
+1
Better harvest quickly, as IA is in severe storm warnings today… Mother Nature may be planning to make of a meal of your asparagus. 😉
Fortunately you can grow asparagus hydro,aero,and aquaponically. You can grow it in ditches and alongside railroad tracks(only veggie that grows in both places). You can grow it indoors and outdoors,but you can’t serve it in nunneries as it is thought to have aphrodisiac qualities.(it doesn’t,I know)
And up in the far North:
Climate change is a stark reality in America’s northernmost state. Nearly 90 percent of native Alaskan villages are on the coast, where dramatic erosion and floods have become a part of daily life.
Perched on the Ninglick River on the west coast of the state, the tiny town of Newtok may be the state’s most vulnerable village. About 350 people live there, nearly all of them Yupik Eskimos. But the Ninglick is rapidly rising due to ice melt, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers says the highest point in the town — a school — could be underwater by 2017.
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/features/npr.php?id=185068648
Meanwhile, instead of getting serious about climate change, the debate is about the president and umbrellas.
I really do feel doomed.
Gotta tell ya,Spring in iowa is sucking big time-at least for mikey. Wrecked drive belts on two tillers this week,my own and the one I just sold to a brother and rented back from. Garden still isn’t tilled completely and I have said &#%@ it for the year. Got the mower out and mowed about half the yard and got a small stick wedged under drive pulley and smoked Grasshopper drive belt. Got belt back on so I could finish mowing and we have severe weather possibility tonight and to-manana. Emmetsburg,a small town about 45 miles NE of here has had five inches of rain-two nights in a row and more expected in the next couple of days. I guess I will quit trying to plant anything else. Have enough spuds and onions to last until I run out. No sweetcorn and no tomatoes this year. iowa weather is great until it isn’t. At least we are done with snow,I hope. I am gonna win the lottery tonight and then I will buy you guys some better weather. Count on it.
Since Friday afternoon, 4.25 inches of fresh snow at slipstream’s house.
Sometimes ya gotta go with the flow. Late Friday evening I turned on my Christmas lights.
All the neighbors glowered at me.
*snicker* Sleigh bells ring… are you listening? La la la. 😉
If I were in my home town I would be cleaning up tornado debris.
This isn’t so bad….
Not to rub it in or anything, we down here in Santa Barbara don’t have this problem. This is precisely why I moved from Anchorage to Santa Barbara, California: The Weather. As beautiful as Alaska is, I could not deal with the cold weather anymore.
Same thing here in Santa Cruz mountains.. shorts and flipflops, mowing twice a week, ALL the tomato plants are LOADED .as are the plum and pear trees .. quite surprised at number of plums, even have some raspberries starting to ripen up… guess I better start shopping for an industrial dehydrater ! one winter in Chicago , where my moustache froze and broke off cured me of cold weather.. I’ll just look at Burl & Ivespostcards…
ben — stop, please just stop, for the love of all that is holy quit rubbing it in.
Burl and Ives postcards? Are they related to singer/actor Currier and Ives? BTW,if you ever get a chance to see the movie “The Big Country” with Gregory Peck,Currier and Ives,Jean Simmons Carol Baker,Cretin Heston,Chuck Connors,Charles Bickford,etc.by all means watch it. Very good,long western from around 1957? I think.
That’s it ! Currier and Ives.. man, I REALLY must have had heat stroke yesterday from all that sun !!! and that’s one of my favorite classics to watch ! ( so much better than John Wayne !) Sailor man knows where he’s at on prairie , and they can’t understand how he does it… hehhe!
Gotta admit Burl and Ives postcards is one of the funniest things I’ve heard in a long while.Made my day. Thanks.
“You want me,Pa?” “I did before you was born.” “But I wasn’t lost.” Much better than Marion Morrison westerns.
As jealous as I am of your garden, I am happy to be here in the Tongass along the Inside Passage.
Because there is something akin to fruit in every intersection of land, sea, and sky :
http://wildernesspeaks.photoshelter.com/gallery/Shoreline-and-Seascapes/G0000dDJUlJBAspg
Fresh snow to 1200 feet this morning, frost advisory for next 2 nights so no lil plants going outside for a few more days…
Waterfalls roaring, green flame starting to run up the hillsides even in the chill, birds everywhere…
Slow but steady, a couple steps back, a half dozen forward…
We’re getting there.
Like a gyroscope,you keep us on the true path while we sweat the small stuff.
Friends and family would characterize me as something along the order of a drunken sailor, careening to and fro, fro and to, betwixt and between optimism and pessimism
rather than a gyroscope
Personally, I’m taking partial credit for our partially clear blue sky here this morning. All those bad words I said yesterday when it was raining so hard it bounced back up a foot DID serve a purpose… 🙂