New York Renovator

Aww. I snapped this photo the other day.

It’s been a chilly week, as evidenced by the heater, blanket, and cuddly kitty. I hadn’t turned the heat on at all upstairs, and was surprised to see the thermometer read 49 degrees in one of the rooms! Weird thing is, the weather dudes are predicting we will experience a mini-heat wave (a real late autumn fat burner, I tell ye) with Tuesday perhaps getting up to 70!

I am happy to see the temps go up a little, still. I have to install exterior trim around the window, and would prefer to do it in above-freezing temperatures.

I have been as negligent of my gardens this year as I have been about blogging about them. Thank God, plants require very little care and attention. Unfortunately, the weeds also thrive on negligence. :-p But it looks like my vegetables are holding their own. The snow peas are on the brink of harvesting (I just love them raw); we also have cucumbers, which are not doing so well (never do, really); loads of kale, lettuce, spinach which is overwhelming in its production; the red cabbage is coming (yay!), yellow squash is starting to produce fruit… I love vegetable gardening! Talk about diet supplements that work!! There is nothing like fresh, clean food that you have grown yourself.

Here is my chorus of onions in the late afternoon sun:

The zucchini has a few babies!

The cantaloupe is doing poorly, due to a cold spell in April, a very dry May, and a totally soggy June. The apple tree is producing little– I only spotted THREE apples so far– but the grapes and berries are doing well.

The native, wild stuff seems to be doing very well in Upstate this year. Plants that I usually have to pamper, such as tomatoes, melons, and cukes, are doing very poorly. It does not fare well for our emphasis on the raw food diet, but I am grateful for the stuff that we are getting.

June is really a crucial month for us, and it was very disappointing this year. We got SEVEN inches of rain in June. Way, way too much. Everything is soggy, and the pests breed in the wet weather. So even my flower gardens are rather limpid this year.

Still, it is good to see my fruit plants producing, such as the berries and grapes. They get better every year.

*grooooooaaaaan*

It’s snowing. It’s snowing hard. Big, sticky, wet flakes that drench everything. *sigh* Oh well, better than ice, I guess.

Yesterday my garden looked like this…

Today it looks like this!

That’s Upstate New York for you. But darn it, I already packed the shovels and snow tires away, in preparation for the renovation. *chuckle* Gotta laugh!

It won’t be here for long, so say the weathermen. But then again, the weathermen said that it would snow in the “higher” elevations. I’m about as low as you can get! LOL

Well, anyway, it’ll probably be gone in no time. I’m reminded of this verse– it seems perfect for Mother’s Day today:

“Who can find a virtuous wife? For her worth is far above rubies. The heart of her husband safely trusts her, so he will have no lack of gain… She considers a field and buys it; from her profits she plants a vineyard. She girds herself with strength, and strengthens her arms… She is not afraid is snow for her household, for all her household is clothed with scarlet…

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many daughters have done well, but you have excelled them all. Charm is deceitful and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.”

Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her own works praise her in the gates.

Proverbs 31: 1-31

Happy Mother’s Day!

I was shocked to hear of a huge storm coming tomorrow. I guess I have been too busy to listen to the news and weather much. WHOA! It’s been a while. Now THIS is a storm– we’re expected to get clobbered with a foot or two of snow. It may disrupt things for half a day, lol. We live in Upstate New York, so snow is something we kind of expect for half the year, give or take a month. No need to frantically shop for groceries or life insurance rate– we’ll be OK.

Still… it’s February. I was so hoping for an early spring. It may come just yet… but we’re never sitting easy until late April. And I think it was last year that we got snow in May. :S

*****sighhhhh****

Pardon me as I recollect…

Can’t you just smell them?

I wonder how my new bed in my Secret Garden will turn out this year. I’m so desperate I don’t even care about how ugly that sump pump pipe looks.

Ah, to see green again….

It’s been so gloomy this winter. I haven’t had cabin fever like this in a long time. The skies are always overcast, always gray, we are pale and in desperate need of something to remove dark circles under eyes. How about Mr. Sun again? Hello? Still there?

How are you doing? have you got cabin fever, too? Only TWO more months!!!!

Brrrr. Got up at 6am to help the husband fix the car brakes. FUN. It was, what, 25 degrees outside!!

He’s a part-time rural carrier for the post office, and rural carriers use their own vehicles to deliver mail. I wonder if people have any idea the work that goes into such a job, especially if you have to deliver mail for 8-9 hours a day in your own family vehicle. It’s awfully tough on a car. We change the brakes almost every month. I don’t know why the postal service just doesn’t stop rural delivery– I mean, people have their OWN cars nowadays, right? They could come to the post office to pick up their mail on their way to the grocery store or work or something. Then again, that would require the post offices to hold and store a much greater volume of mail… I don’t know which choice is the most cost-effective…

Well, be kind to your rural carrier. He works hard. Especially in the winter! No cushy, warm offices for these guys like a Plano dentist…

Winter’s snows will soon be here…

The United States is in the midst of another hurricane season. New York State was completely drenched by Hurricane Bill (THREE inches of rain in two hours!) and my yard looked like a lake again…. I can’t complain, really- other areas suffered flash flooding and there were multiple car accidents from it. And my area is not anywhere slammed as hard as folks along the coastal areas…. yow. I don’t know HOW you guys in those areas deal with this, year after year, having to nail plywood to your windows, secure your POS systems, and batten down the hatches, only to see the ocean swirling in…. *shudder*

So it is with some fascination that I found this brief video by BBC, about how a hurricane forms. Very interesting…. so a hurricane is formed by a little African girl playing in the sand, eh? lol

:S

My Tabby-Point Siamese, Livvy, has been working overtime with the game she plays with us: Find the Kitty. Maybe it’s the heat? It’s been very humid this week (with no relief in the near future for us). :-p Who needs weight loss pills when you drop 10 pounds, sweating buckets?! Gah!

Well, whatever the reason, Livvy is finding all sorts of places to hide in! And she loves it when we go looking for her. I think she looks absolutely ADORABLE in these photos.

Here we are, folding very large drapes after ironing them. She decided to get in on the action, and “help” us. Find the Kitty!

Oh, it’s actually cozy in there!

Peeping out.

So…. did you find the kitty? Isn’t she such a CUTE little kitty?!?!

Here we are, one week from Memorial Day, and it is FREEZING this week. We’ve had a handful of frost warnings (and frosty nights)… at a time when my furnace is put to sleep for the season, it’s still chugging away. So where’s all this hot air that we usually experience a week before the month of June, our big month for picnics and engagement rings?!

Our weather here has been wacky lately. This week, we’ve had 4-5 frost warnings, two flood warnings, and a tornado warning! And a few tornadoes did touch down in Upstate NY– a few near Binghamton, NY, and two in Madison County next to my location. One guy was hurt.

New York State seems to go through bursts of wacky weather, anyway. By Wednesday/Thursday, we’ll be be near 90 degrees! No wonder New Yorkers are always so crotchety; just when we think we’ve had time to adjust to one thing, another thing hits us! lol.

Well, I’m grateful that these kind of occurrences are sporadic. And like I always say, New York is a fine state if you are looking for a milder climate, compared to other states that have frequent mudslides, hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, etc. Here in New York State, the only real natural catastrophe we have is the politicians.

“April Showers” is right. After a phenomenally warm start to the month, the past several days have been soggy and cold. We saw snow Saturday, and more is forecast for Wednesday this week. And in between, it rains. I had hopes of getting some of the spring yard work done this week, but forget it now. It’s no fun raking old leaves through the mud! Some of my bloggy friends in Texas are reporting an END to their spring and are now entering the SUMMER season. That just blows my mind! My tulips are slowly, slowly crawling out of the mud, upward.

The only thing with any buds right now is the lilac. I wanted to get a photo, but it turned out poorly.

I do like shade gardens, so the non-stop rain isn’t too disappointing. I like the way wet rocks look when they are nestled in ivy and moss.

The animals are restless, too. My cats pace at the door, longing to go out, but I won’t let them out in the rain and mud. The dog loves the mud and it is impossible to keep her out of it, so she needs constant bathing. Outdoors, the robins and bluejays are here. We have a feeder and they have been very happy dipping into the birdseed while we all wait for the sun to come back and dry things up.

I bought my vegetable seeds and am waiting until the ground warms (and dries up) to plug them into the soil. Everything is in a “wait” mode. It’s too cold and damp to actually DO anything; yet it’s too warm now to be patient while we wait. Such is spring in the Northeast!