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Row, Row, Row your boat

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Sat Dec 30, 2006 1:20 am

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gently thru my yard. The rain started a little before noon and has stopped a few times but never for more than 20 minutes at a time. Most of the time the rain is nice, gentle rain then there are the waves of bucketsfull hitting the roof. Those waves usually last about 15 minutes. If we were getting constant waves like that it would be really bad around here. With mostly gentle rainfall the really large rain gauge out back only shows just under 2 inches.

The path from the backdoor to about 15 feet into the yard is under roughly 3 inches of water, I have not been able to get out into the rest of the yard to check things out but I am sure the gnomes are building rafts for thier escape. I guess if we had crawdads here there would be some of those crawdad chimneys out there too.

There was a tornado on the ground about 3 hours south of me and we are under tornado watches until after 8.
Two tornado warnings about an hour south of us.
There was a tornado warning that caused some stress out at DFW Internation Airport.
A tornado watch means that weather conditions are ripe for the formation of a funnel cloud.
A tornado warning means one has been spotted either in the clouds or on the ground.

This is weather we should have been getting in the spring not in December. But since we do not get much real winter, we have had tornadoes year round...there really is no tornado season down here.

The rain had let up here for about 10 minutes then just now the lightening got really bright and the rain is back. Supposed to last all night with some of the heaviest rain coming overnight.


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Bees and Buds and Blooms...Oh, My

Category: FRED - the garden | Posted: Thu Dec 28, 2006 6:33 pm

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Just checking the garden yesterday and found not only new life but some perennials still hanging on and one in bloom again.

The Iris bulbs I moved a couple of months ago have stayed strong and even the baby bulbs have pushed green leaves above ground now.

The Snapdragons are not only doing great after the freezes we have had but are putting out new growth.
The Yarrow, Lavender and Fall Asters are still green and growing. The Mealy Sage died back with the first few nights of freezing temps but they have started putting out new growth at ground level, same thing with the Lemon Balm. The Lipstick Autumn Sage never went dormant, neither did the White Autumn Sage.

Several of the Hollyhock plants are still green and hardy. There are two small Black Eyed Susan plants just laying around waiting for more sunshine.

The Fig tree is setting leaf buds too.
The mini-yellow Rose is still green and strong.
The Hyacinths started pushing up in November and are getting pretty tall. The Daffodils are starting to push up too. The Snowdrops are coming up.

The Rue and Fennel I potted up in October are still alive and the Rue is actually growing.

The really huge Tuscan Blue Rosemary is blooming again. Several stems almost covered in small blue flowers. That has brought the bees out of hiding too.

There isn't much in the way of spring type colors but there is still a lot of green around.

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Christmas Eve for my family, 2006

Category: Puttering Around The House | Posted: Mon Dec 25, 2006 5:54 am

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We slept in this morning, the weather was very overcast and pretty chilly. Since the shopping and wrapping was done, the baking was complete and all I needed to make was the fudge that Lisa and Amanda like, we were able to just take it easy. One of the traditions we started a very few years ago, this day is for resting up from the preparations and getting ourselves ready for the fun and mayhem of Christmas morning with the grandsons.

The forecast had been for possible sprinkles off and on during the day but about 11 a.m. a slow and steady rain began. It is now almost midnight and the rain is still falling at the same slow, steady pace. Really a nice cold soaker. In fact the rain fall has been so slow that in the last 12 hours there is only 1/2" of rain in the really large rain gauge out back.

We left a little after 1 this afternoon for lunch at Luby's Cafeteria. Surprisingly it wasn't very crowded in the dining room but the take-out section was pretty busy, lots of women decided that Christmas dinner should come from there instead of their own oven....smart women I say.

After lunch we headed for Dunn Brother's coffee shop for a relaxing couple of hours. Randy had his laptop, Amanda had art supplies and I had some knitting.

A little before 5p.m. we left there for the movie theater. Saw Night at the Museum at the IMAX theater, really cute movie and even tho seeing it in that format is not a requirement for enjoying the movie, there were parts when the almost 3-D effects were really something. It is a cute movie and I highly recommend it if you get the chance.

The movie was over about 7 and we headed home. I got the fudge made and dishwashing caught up. We let Amanda open one of her gifts on Christmas eve and after that we watched some of the older childrens holiday specials that we have on tape and DVD.

The opening of one gift on Christmas eve started when
my brother and I were little. My parents eloped on christmas eve 1944 and when they could afford to give each other anniversary gifts they started letting my brother and I open one small gift too so we wouldn't feel left out. One set of grandparents (our Daddy's Dad and step Mom) never bothered to keep track of how old we were or what we were interested in so their presents were usually things like new wallets or fingernail clipper sets or boxes of handkerchiefs and when you are between the ages of 6-14, those are not exciting gifts ....soooooo those were the gifts we chose to open on Christmas eve. The tradition continued for both my girls and Lisa has continued it with her boys, but the gifts have gotten better. My girls got new nightgowns that night, Lisa's boys get new pjs and a book.

I do miss the excitement of Santa and waiting for sleep to overtake the super anxious child so Santa could get busy setting things out. But at the same time we have a new tradition and at our age this one suits us to a "T"

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