‘Dig’ The Earth

Google Search results: midwest storm on Tuesday (My story starts below)

Huge storm trundles across Midwest, South – MSNBC

Oct 27, 2010 … As it howled across the Midwest and South on Tuesday, the storm packed wind gusts of up to 81 mph Tuesday, snapping trees and power lines, …

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Savage storm blasts Midwest – USATODAY.com

Oct 26, 2010 … A fierce storm rocked the Midwest with screaming winds, … Only minor injuries were linked to the storm by late Tuesday but it caused …

www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/2010-10-26-midwest-storm_N.htm

Another very windy day today across the Midwest brings back memories of the ugly storms that slammed our region yesterday. Monday night to Tuesday morning was unseasonably warm. It made it hard to sleep. Early in the day despite the wind the girls and I wanted to go out and play. By the time we got ready to step outside it had started raining. It was only light rain so we decided to go out for a few minutes. We barely got up to the swingset when the raindrops started to sting. The wind picked up and so did anything that wasn’t nailed down. It was time to go inside.

No sooner did we get in the door that my phone started ringing. It was DH telling us we should get ready to take cover. The radar images showed that a nasty storm was headed right for us and there were at least four unconfirmed sightings of tornadoes to our west. Right away I asked Yeyda to get her’s and her sister’s pillows, some blankets, and books and take them to our little bathroom. It is the most interior room of the house and the only one without windows. That is our storm shelter since we do not have a basement .

This was taken after the storms had passed. The girls decided to play in here, thus the mess .

I ran around getting flashlights, water bottles and snacks as well as jackets and ID to take in the bathroom with us just in case. Bonbon was very frightened because the winds had seriously picked up and the rain was falling so hard and fast you couldn’t see anything out the window. She kept saying, “Mommy, ouside, ouside Mommy,” in a very worried tone. I just kept asking her to go back to the bathroom with her sister and sit and wait for a few minutes. I opened a west window to see if I could hear the tornado sirens of the nearby town, but I couldn’t hear anything with all the wind and rain. DH had said the sirens had already gone off in the town where he works and they were 20 miles to the east – the storm hadn’t reached them yet. The storm roared through and shook the house and by 11:30 the Tornado Warning was lifted. DH called and left a message that a guy that works for him got a message from his brother that a tornado had touched down just 20 miles west of us. I thought this was odd since most of the storm had past us according to the radar images.

Needless to say this ruined our outside playtime for the rest of the day. I need to cut down the rest of my plants and harvest what hasn’t yet been ruined by frost. Hopefully, I find some more that is still OK. The other day I picked up a few tomatoes that apparently had rotted on the vine. They looked OK but tasted terrible so I had to pitch them.

Winter blues seem to be setting in early with me this year. I don’t know why. Going from being outdoors everyday to almost nothing at all is hard to get used to. I need to be less of a chicken and go out even on cold days.

Does winter mean we have to forgo the pleasure of eating fresh vegetables? If you live in the Midwest US like I do getting those fresh veggies from your garden ended a couple of months ago (unless you have shelter for your plants). It’s only 10 degrees F outside, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have some delicious fresh vegetables that are in season right now.

With the advent of transportation and improvements in refrigeration over the last century many of us can and do enjoy vegetation in our diets year round. During these colder months we can look forward to finding fresh versions of these veggies in our grocers produce section:

* Broccoli
* Brussels Sprouts
* Collard Greens
* Fennel
* Leeks
* Pumpkins
* Sweet Potato
* Turnips
* Winter Squash

You can make delicious sautes, sauces, soups, salads, and slaws out of these bountiful veggies. If you’ve ever seen Good Eats with Alton Brown on Food Network you know there are endless ways to prepare these winter vegetables in tasty and interesting ways.

Our first snow of the season and it has to be a yucky one. Monday morning it started snowing and it left about an inch on the roads. Tuesday it was more of the same until about 6 PM.

Wet, heavy, slippery snow started to fall in blankets across the landscape. Great for plants, bad for driving. I called my mom who’d come to visit us earlier in the day with dad and they were on their way home at about 8:30 PM. They’d been trying to get a hold of my brother because he had stayed to work late with DH. Dad wanted me to convey the message that if he could stay where he was to do so. The roads were treacherous and the visibility low.

By the time I called DH to let him know they had already left the office. The next 45 minutes was tough. This will be 4 years since our bad accident that left my husband broken and my car in pieces. The last thing anyone wanted was for that to happen again. I had a knot in my stomach and I thought for sure I was going to lose my supper. Finally at :15 after 9 DH walked in the door and I could relax. Then my thoughts went to my brother. He lives with my parents an hour north and therefore in the middle of the heavier snowfall.

Thankfully he was also OK. I called him an hour after my DH got home just to make sure he’d made it home OK. He said you couldn’t even see the main roads and that the country road they live on was like a washboard with drifts of snow 5″ deep. Yikes.

Today we are in for lots of wind, rain and snow. There is actually a wind warning in our area. You can hear the wind howling or “talking” as my daughter calls it outside the house. It’s a little unnerving. Hopefully we didn’t leave anything in the yard that will get blown away by the 70 MPH gusts.

Last week I noticed as I looked out the window that my tulips are peaking out of the ground as are my daylilies, wormwood and phlox.  It won’t be long and we will have a lush display of many shades of green with different textures and shapes of leaves.  It made me itch to do some gardening.

My “winter” sowing has become a moot project.  Since it is officially spring I’m going to try the same technique but without the benefit of snow cover or so I thought. Last night in an effort to keep my little 3 year old entertained I asked her to help me go through my seed collection and remove seed pods from some dried out sedum flowers.  She thought that was great.  Later I checked the weather report since it had been raining most of the day and it mentioned something about snow on Monday.

Today so far has been a soggy, messy, rain/snow mix.  Not enough to look pretty or stick, just enough to make you feel blah.  My only consolation is that my flowers and plants that are in the ground are getting plenty of water right now.

I’ve picked out the seeds that I want to start indoors today.  Tomatoes, basil, and easter egg plant are among the candidates.  I also have several varieties of peppers that I want to get going before it gets to late.  When you think about 90 days to mature that means I’ll need to have plants ready by the first part of June if I want fruits before the first frost.   Any later than the mid part of June and I’m asking for a very short window to harvest any fruits off my warmer weather plants.  I’ll keep you posted how things go.

Last weekend and the beginning of this weeks were horrible days of scary weather. We had tornado warnings, continuous rain and massive flooding. Everywhere you looked in NW Ohio there were rivers and creeks overflowing their banks and low lying areas in farmer’s fields that were flooded. Roads were impassible and even sections of area cities were inundated to the extent they had to evacuate.

One sad revelation of this recent flooding is that a close friend of mine discovered all the fish in their pond had died. Apparently the ice cover on the pond got too thick and it was too cold for the fish to survive. When their pond flooded the property they found large bass, catfish, amors and bluegill floating all over their yard. The last time they had such a catastrophic loss of fish was the drought of ’88 that caused a turnover in their pond water. It was the first time I’d heard of such a thing. The water on the surface heats up to such temperatures that somehow it forces the cold water from the depths to rise to the surface and the hot water that sinks cooks the poor fish seeking shelter on the bottom.

You can thus imagine how large some of those fish they lost were since they were from the restocking of the pond 21 years ago. I guess they’ll just have to start anew. My suggestion to them since they were planning on having a larger garden this year is to bury the dead fish underneath since it would give their plants some very rich food. If I recall that is how the American Indians taught the Pilgrims to farm.

With several inches of snow on the ground, below freezing temperatures and days that the roads are so icy I won’t venture out even to get the mail – I really miss being outside.  My three year old wants to play in the snow so badly, but when temps are subzero and I have an infant to care for it isn’t wise to go outside.

I tried before I gave birth to rearrange things so that we could do some winter sowing, but it didn’t work out in time.  I was suffering from some pretty serious edema and it took all I had just to get things ready to make room for the baby.  So, I’ve still got messes of items I had to move around and put away.  If only I could get my 8 foot table cleaned off I’d have a place to sow some seeds (we had to clean out some shelves and the stuff ended up on the table).  There are more pressing matters on my mind though – making sure the kiddies are fed and warm, the house is clean (as well as I can do it right now) and that I don’t lose it in the process.

I sure do miss gardening though.  In my quiet times when I’m nursing the baby I think about how I can take her outside with me in the spring and keep the bugs off her.  Sun protection is a no brainer, but I’m still trying to think of a non chemical way to keep the flies and skeeters away from her.  I guess I could drape mosquito netting over her pack n’ play.  By the time I’ll be ready to spend more time outside she’ll be close to crawling age so I’ll have to set up a nice clean play area for her.  My three year old is my little helper.  She loves to play in the dirt and is learning already how to identify the flowers and herbs I plant.  Hopefully this year we can have a productive garden that we can all enjoy.

With below zero temperatures, several inches of snow on the ground and a newborn to take care of that keeps me inside all the time – I am seriously missing playing in the dirt.  Now that my pregnancy is over and my body is feeling more normal than it has in 9 months I want to get back to gardening.  There is a lot of catching up for me to do as far as cleaning and rearranging in the house before I can set up any place to do my winter sowing.  I better do it quick though or before I know it it will be March and time for me to start my seedlings indoors!

In the past few weeks we have had incredible ups and downs in temperature.  Since about the 8th of November it’s been mostly down, way down.   The week before it was in the 60s and 70s and then January came out of nowhere.  Nights have been down in the 20s and our heating system in the house has been running overtime.

Even with these extremes in weather I’ve witnessed something amazing happen.  The iris corms that I planted earlier in the fall actually started to sprout.  They’ve been rained on, snowed on, frozen and thawed and they are still green and growing.  For instance on Tuesday it snowed, then it warmed up and the little green leaves were still as bright and perky as can be.

The other plant that has me completely flabbergasted is the Nippon Montauk Daisy that is planted in a container on my back patio. My tremendous pregnant belly has precluded me from bringing in all my potted plants by myself so this plant and others have braved the cold, snow and freezing. Every time it warms up even a little – like into the upper 30s – the leaves bounce back and it doesn’t look wilty anymore.

I’ve only got a few more weeks before the baby comes. With what little energy I have left I’ve been trying without much success to get my winter sowing started. Last year I think I started too late and left too few “breathing” holes in the containers to be successful. Just seeing how resilient these plants have been makes me want to try again.

The weather has turned colder.  It’s as if the calendar told the weather, “Hey, it’s October.  It’s time to get cold.”  And it certainly did.  We went from a balmy 80 the week before to mid 50s and low 60s all last week.  There is hope for 70 degree weather this week which would be nice, but I’m not holding my breath.

There are still some fall cleanup and and preparation tasks that need to be undertaken in my garden and yard.  Weeding, soil amending, sowing cover crops, planting spring blooming bulbs and mulching are all on my list.  I actually considered starting my winter sowing project a little early this year.  Most of the seeds that should grow after being in a period of cold/freezing weather are from plants that self seed.  Setting them in the mini-greenhouses merely gives them protection from the animals and elements for the season until the spring.  For being almost 7 months pregnant this seems like a long, almost impossible list.  Today my gardening has been reduced to indoor herb gardening since I can’t get outside in the cold rainy weather.

About a month ago I spent the day with my mom and I found a cute glass jar with growing medium and basil seeds.  I love basil and gardening so I thought I’d give it a try.  Unfortunately, it did not dawn on me to take a picture of the soil pellet before I added water so you could see just how much it fluffed up.

What gardening tasks are you still undertaking?

Most of the month of August and the first half of September were unbearably hot and dry during the days.  As September approached you could feel the air cool nicely in the evenings which made it comfortable to sit outside by a fire.  Talk about good camping weather.

Over Labor Day weekend we spent some time with my brother and parents and he made a bonfire.  OH, what a bonfire it was!  The flames shot what looked like 50 feet in the air and made baked apples of the apples still hanging on the trees nearby.   The leaves and branches that faced the fire were completely scorched.  We’ll have to see in the spring if the little guys make it.  We were afraid that we’d have to call the fire department.  Gladly, the fire was far enough away from anything large and flamable, aka, house, car, field full of dry crops.  Also, surprisingly there was enough moisture in the surrounding trees to keep them from catching fire.

My brother had no idea that the pile of brush would catch so readily.  It had been sitting there for at least a year and my parents had bugged him to just burn it.  He wanted to have a party though and so he invited us and my husband’s niece with her husband to join us.   There weren’t a lot of people but it was a nice excuse to relax, roast marshmallows (and apple trees) and camp out.  At six months pregnant – and never having “camped” before – the experience was a bit awkward.  But it was fun.

About a week and a half ago it rained before Ike hit the coast full force.  It only gave our region of the Midwest about 1/10″ of rain.  The ground was so incredibly dry that after a few hours you couldn’t even notice that it had rained.  There was not a trace of mud and the soil was still hard as a rock.  Needless to say our plants have suffered the worst.  Many if not all have died back to the ground already.  I’ve not had the energy or strength to go out and water them by hand.  Though I have babied the plants that are in containers near the house, like my tomatoes, basil and few annual plants.

Finally, this week we got some much needed rain – about 2″.  Sadly, this comes at the expense of our neighbors along the Gulf Coast.  They get too much water just so we can get a little.