The Groundhog Day Blizzard

February 1, 2011, a Tuesday night, proved to be a testament to the power of prayer and a mouth that should have been washed out with soap. We were expecting to get hit with what the meteorologists were calling blizzard conditions starting at around 3:00 p.m. CST. I put my feelers out to my husband (at the farm) and to my sister in Dodgeville that once they saw the snow start to come down, they should call or email me right away because at that point I would head for the hills. My sister Kristi emailed me around 3:30 to say it had just started snowing in Dodgeville. Bob waited until 3:45 to say it has started, so you better head home now. He said the snow wasn’t coming down that hard, it was just that the wind was picking up and getting stronger by the moment.

So by the time I finished up a few things at the office, I finally headed out the door about 4:30. Yep, should have probably gotten on the road a little sooner, but whether I am trying to get out the door in the morning to head to work, or get out the door at night from work to head home, I am always trying to get one more thing done. Hence, the case again. The winds almost seemed like they were whipping in from the East (I suppose more of a Northeasterly wind) because everything was drifting on the east side of the road. The whiteout conditions were the worst. I couldn’t see anything except for a few feet in front of me; okay, maybe more like yards, but seemed like feet! I had my headset on and, as usual, was talking to him all the way home. My end of the conversation was mostly limited to two or three word expletives like “Holy Sh_t” or “Oh My God” because each mile down the road seemed to bring a new adventure. These are the types of adventures I don’t really care for.

My 35-mile ride home seemed to take forever. What normally would have taken me 45 minutes turned into around two hours. Not your scenic Sunday drive, that’s for sure! In essence, if I really want to give myself a little credit, I would say that I did leave just in time. Some of the roads were starting to plug up from the drifts across the road. And since my trusty four-wheel drive Durango is no longer in service, my front-wheel drive Grand Prix had to learn to buck a few drifts she wished she hadn’t seen or will ever see again. My biggest fears along the way were meeting cars. Those that I would meet would be heading North, as I was heading South. Their lane was the one that was completely drifted in, heading into my lane. When the whiteout conditions were happening, the approaching car couldn’t see me and if they were trying to avoid the drifts in their lane and were driving in mine, it does not bode well for them or me. Luckily, once I got off the four-lane highway and was on the two-lane roads, I met very few cars; only two, in fact.

Once I got into town, I quickly ran into the store to pick up a few extra staples that I thought I might be running low on because we had already planned that I wouldn’t be at work the next day. I knew that the last four miles out to the farm might prove to be the worst, but heck at least I had milk with me! I can say for certainty, though, that once I got to my driveway – and even though Bob hadn’t plowed it for me yet – it was a sight I had been looking for in the past two hours and could have gotten out and kissed the ground underneath, except I would have had to dig down quite a bit to find it. The milk truck had just pulled in so I did have some tracks to follow. When I pulled up to the house, Bob was just getting ready to head down the driveway to plow for me, just a tad too late, but that’s okay as long as I had the milk truck tracks.

The name for our little snowfall – The Groundhog Day Blizzard. The snow continued into the night and got worse with high winds meddling a little, too. I haven’t seen snow and blizzards like this since I was a kid. At the farm we received about eight inches of snow Tuesday. Then Tuesday night into Wednesday, we got socked with 18 inches more. We now have mounds, or more appropriately, hills of snow piled higher than our tractor with the cab on it. Now these were the types of snow hills we liked to play on when we were kids. This snow has stuck with us for a couple weeks with below zero temps and below zero wind chills. (The picture above is of the farm after we started digging out on Groundhog Day).

It has definitely been a rough Winter, but the one good thing is that Jimmy The Groundhog didn’t see his shadow. Heck, for that matter, Jimmy probably couldn’t get out of his hole in the ground. This means, of course, that we will have an early Spring. Now I don’t care if Jimmy’s prediction percentage is good, bad or in between. When you have had a long, rough Winter, any little slip of hope that Spring will be just right around the corner is good enough for me. So if Jimmy wanted to come out of his hole, cross his fingers behind his back and tell me that Spring is on the doorstep, I’m a believer. Hope is one thing that no person (or animal) should take away from another. Just look what Jimmy has done for the economy – now that I think Spring is coming rapidly, I’ve been busy ordering plants. I’ve made new plans for what I am going to do outside in the yard. See, Jimmy has got the rhythm of what the country really needs. Hope!

Now here we are the day after Valentine’s Day, and I am happy as a lark. The weather is in the 40's (we even had highs in the 50's on Sunday), it is staying light longer at night (my car lights don’t even come on now until I am a couple miles from work) and the Winter Blues are starting to melt away. Speaking of melting away, even this huge dump of snow is melting away. The snow banks along the way home, where there was sometimes only one lane to drive in, are now to the point where you can actually meet a car and not have to worry about who is going to end up in the snowbank.

The birds are out and about, too; some never having left this Winter – which is a reminder that I need to get out to check my bird feeders. The birds have made quite an impact on what I had put out there so far this year, so I need to try to stay ahead of them. After all, if they wanted to suffer through Old Man Winter’s bad mood swings with me, I had better give them a good feast as a reward.

Yes, I’m looking forward to Spring, and it can’t come soon enough. And, if Mother Nature and Old Man Winter are still crotchety and want to throw one or two more snowfalls at me, I can suffer through it, too, just like the birds have. After all, hope has different names like the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus, and in the dead of Winter, hope is called Jimmy The Groundhog.

Work, Work, Work

Wow, Fall has simply dropped in fast. The leaves are turning and falling from the trees. A soft and then harder frost the last couple nights have taken my plants to the brink of no return. I didn’t cover them because they were due to be weeded out of my planters anyway. My roses, surprisingly, have still survived.

I have tons of Fall planting to do, but am waiting for my shipments to arrive. Some old beds are going to get some new looks come Spring, and hopefully, once all is planted, they will survive the Winter. That word - Winter - is like a bad four-letter word in my vocabulary. Ewwwwww! Yes, I like the looks of a new-fallen snow. There is nothing more pretty when the sun is glistening off of it. That is, if I don’t have to go out and drive in it. If I can stay inside where it is toasty, then it is okay (or semi-okay). I have gotten to dislike snow. The older I get, the more I hate it because I hate to the fight of driving in it. But, for now, let’s put thoughts of that on the back burner.

Some of the plants I’ve ordered this Fall were : Rembrandt Tulip Mix, “Apeldoorn Elite” Tulips, “Cote D’Azur” Asiatic Lilies, “Destined to See” Daylilies, “Blue Pearl” Dutch Irises, “Lingerie” Fringed Tulips, Oriental Lily Mix, “Ruffled Patty” Ruffled Poppies, “Meringue” and “Pink Double Delight” Echinacea (Coneflowers), “Magic Star” Double Oriental Lilies (not shipping til Spring), “First Cherry Blossom” Darwin Hybrid Tulips, “Survivor” Mayflowering Tulips, “Cappuccino” Tango Lilies, “Candy Apple Delight” Tulips, and “Purple Flag” Tulips. These were all originally supposed to be shipped after September 27. Now, my orders show that they will be shipped, some on or about October 27th and others on or about November 11th. Hmmmm...good chance the ground will be frozen by then or it will have a cover of snow. Well, I might as well plan out my planting guide now, till up the old beds, plant what bulbs and plants I have already, put a pot where the ones who haven’t arrived yet go, get my mulching done and then see what type of weather we have by the date they arrive. Understandably, though, that since I have to arrive over 150 bulbs and/or plants, I am sure that I will be a bit cranky when it comes time to plant them. Plus, they will need to be watered once planted, and who wants to water plants if it is cold outside. Not me. But for the love of my plants, I will dutifully do so. Geez....

My time for the Fall projects is closing in quickly. I’ve got many to do and have to carefully plan out my calendar in order to get them done. We have been frantically working on my Aunt’s (Auntie) house in order to get it ready for sale. The inside now looks great, but still have a little yard work to complete. So most of my weekends have been spent at her place with little time to do things at home.

I finished getting some of the furniture rearranged at home this past weekend, after spending Saturday at Auntie’s. Yesterday was spent doing that plus making a run to the pharmacy for some prescriptions I forgot to pick up Friday. Now I need to tackle the garage and my “back room.” My back room contains all my storage totes and I need to dig out my Fall floral arrangements, because now it is getting late and I will be needing to dig out the Christmas decorations soon. Speaking of that, I was in Kohl’s last week and low and behold, the Christmas decorations were out. Not quite in full force, but they were there. And my nose was right in the mix of things there, too. I spied some new Christmas Village buildings and accessories I would like and I also saw some Christmas ornaments I wanted to get my hands on. But I held back. Didn’t quite feel right to bring home Christmas decorations when I knew I still had to pick up pumpkins for decorating. Which, by the way, I did pick up yesterday on my way home from Madison. Got some large ones, some medium ones, some small ones and some table top miniature pumpkins, gourds and Indian corn. If I would have had more time after I got back yesterday, I would have tried to tackle the back room to get the Fall decorations out, but I needed to get the mowing done. Plus once that was done, I was P-O-O-P-E-D. But that didn’t stop me until about 8:30. Then it was time to eat, and sit down to watch Desperate Housewives and Brothers & Sisters. I really didn’t have much energy left at that point. Okay, well just enough to finish up and fold two loads of laundry.

Then it was time to go to bed. Bob had made it up there before I did, and as I was shutting off the TV and lights downstairs, it was only to hear “Do you want to make the bed so I can go to bed sometime tonight!” Ooopppps, I washed bedding and had taken it off the clothesline while I was mowing and forgot about it. It was still sitting in the basket waiting to go up and be put on the bed. Yuck! There is nothing I hate worse than having to make the bed right before I crawl in, because I am usually bushed and that is the last thing I want to do. And last night I was bushed, and cold, with temps outside dropping below freezing and we refusing to turn the furnace on yet, the house was a little on the cool side. Well, at least the sheets smelled fresh like the outdoors. The only thing better than that would have been if they were my flannel sheets instead.

Needless to say....I turned the furnace on for a few minutes this morning. I had run a couple loads out to the dumpster at about 5:30 and it was brisk outside. The cats were up and ready to be fed, but Pongo was having none of that. He wanted a quick jolt outside to do his duty and then back in to crawl under the covers. I had made some cinnamon rolls last night before going to bed and set them out to rise so when I got up around 4:30, I stuck them in the oven. The smell of them baking this morning and the warmth of the oven might have made others feel warm, but I was still chilled, so against my better judgment, I turned the furnace on for a couple hours...just enough to take the chill out of the house, make Pongo quit shivering and make me finally come to the conclusion that I did not really need to soak in a warm bath this morning. Crap...maybe I should have left the furnace off. I guess I really didn’t have much time before going to work anyway since I was puttering around doing this and that this morning, I wasted any hope of a soak in the tub anyway. A warm shower had to do instead.

Temperatures around here are supposed to be back up into the 70's this week so maybe I can still get the flower beds done on Friday, but I wanted that day to be mostly a “clean the garage out” day. That is always a day Bob and I put off until we really NEED to get it done, whether it be Spring or Fall, but I’ve been in such a “get-it-done-and-organized now” mood lately, that I will probably try to do both.

Yep, my “Do It” calendar is quickly filling up. I only wish it wasn’t dark by the time I get home from work now, because if I only had a few more daylight hours at night, I could still accomplish a lot outside. Oh, well, it will still be there waiting for me on the weekends.