Come Hail Or High Water

It's not often that I get to blog about our weather. It's either hot, dry, or both. Not much else for 350 days out of the year. The one exception is March. No matter how blah our winter season is for rain, something interesting almost always happens in March. Apparently this year was no exception, nevermind that it has rained only twice so far this year, and for barely a quarter of an inch.

Below is a progression of the storm that hit the house on Sunday afternoon.

Here are the clouds rolling in from the west.

The rain came, and quickly turned over to hail, and more hail, and well, here's what the yard looked like when it was over with.

And as quickly as it came, the sun was out minutes afterwards. This is the same view to the west. If you look closely, you can see water running in the street. In the end this storm produced over an inch of rain/hail.

Mega Yard Update

Regardless of the lack of rain, the yard is perking up quite a bit with our mild temps.

This blog will be a mile long if I don't keep me comments at a minimum for each of the following pictures, so here we go.

These are zinnias and marigolds that came up in our AeroGarden, thanks to a nice Christmas gift from the parents. I'm glad I took this picture, however, because the plants went into decline as soon as I transplanted them into this pot. I have yet to master that part of the process, moving the plants out of the pod into the yard.

And I think this picture is sideways. Oops.

The two old fashioned rose seeds that sprouted a month ago are still slooowly growing. But still alive. And I've had another one come up in the last few days, looks like a different type.

The globe mallow, which barely bloomed last year because of a late freeze, is covered in these red blooms now. It's my favorite plant in the yard.

Beside it, an Indian mallow is also starting to bloom.

The nasturtium are still growing like crazy, now hanging out of this planter.

Our Indian mustard greens have bolted.



I picked up this neat plant recently, it's an Arabian Lilac, grows to about eight feet. The undersides of the leaves are purple, and it puts out stalks of purple blooms in the spring.

Here is a closer look at the leaves. You can't really see the purple in this picture, but I promise you it's there.

The quinoa is still doing well.

The valentine emu bush is hanging over, it has so many blooms on it right now.

One of the rose bushes blooming.

Here's another one.

I think both of those rose pictures are sideways, also, oh well, I'm short on time.

Here's a close up of one of the quinoa plants. Very colorful.

Here's a closeup of the pomegrantes leafing out.

Whew, I think that's it for now.

Nasturtiums

Thank God for spell checker on the name of these flowers. I have three different colors of them in my wine barrel at this point, a crinkly looking red one, some orange ones, and one neat looking yellow one.

The last picture is the obligatory shot of the lilac vine, which is in full bloom from late January until early to mid-March.

Poor Neglected Hoes

It's been months now since I've tended to my Hoes. Had I taken the time, I'm sure there were some interesting things going on in the yard worth posting, but at least I'm back at it now.

Our weather has been mild most of this winter, with little bits of rain here and there. Matter of fact, it's supposed to rain later today. We'll see. We had nearly two inches back in December, which provided me a month's worth of rain water, so that was nice.

So let's get on with it.

My basil, which is supposed to be an annual, is entering it's third year, and still doing well. I love the smell of this plant.



I have six or seven pepper plants I've started in pots. Here is one of them. Once I'm finished with my shelter expansion on the north side of the house, these plants will take up residence in the shade during the hotter part of the year.



We have more collards and mustard greens than we know what to do with. The lettuce in the middle is starting to fill in, as well.



The nasturtum, after covering them through the few light freezes we had in December, are growing like crazy. I've never had any grow this tall. If you look carefully, you can see one blooming from the inside of all of these leaves.



The quinoa is doing well, despite being in the shade too much during the day. All of these will be dead by June once the heat builds, but hopefully we'll have some nice blooms and seed at the end of the season.



The Valentine Emu bush is starting to bloom right on queue.



Two of my five roses have been blooming, here is one of them.



And speaking of roses, a few of my rose hips that I, ahem, borrowed from the Arboretum in Superior, are actually coming up after weeks of watering. I'll post updated pictures of these, if they continue to survive.

A Warm Day At The Arboretum

The hoes never get the attention they deserve, so I'm posting our latest trip to the arboretum here instead of on our main family page. So, there.

We saw many an assorted thing of interest this go around, despite the borderline disgusting heat. Because I'm short on time, I'm going to milk this subject for all it's worth and post some additional pictures at a later time.

For now, I present to you:

- A butterly on a sunflower, one of many flowers giving Mother Nature the finger

- A blue dragonfly perched over a man-made watering hole

- An orange dragonfly perched over the same watering hole

- The wife and small child amongst the trees

Stay tuned, more to come as time permits later this week.

Two Shots Is All I've Got

The weather has been brutal most of August, two light rains and a lot of heat. The birds have been boring holes in everything they can find that they think might have water in them, including my watermelons and pomegranates.

We did manage to get an okra off this plant, shown blooming here. Emily had an ingenious idea to back the okra into some cornbread, which ended up tasting fanastic. Depsite the heat, as long as I water the dog out of these plants, they seem to be doing well.




Here is a picture of the one surviving watermelon that I picked after I discovered a small hole in it. Hopefully as the weather cools off these vines will start producing more fruit than the birds can destroy.

No Rain, But A Rainbow

This monsoon season has been underwhelming, at best. Granted, it's rained five times now since the beginning of July (whoopee), but they've all been paltry little showers that didn't amount to much but work for me emptying the puddles from my rain barrels before the mosquitoes can breed (run-on sentence of the day, thank you much).

A few afternoons ago, after Emily's parents called to tell us it was raining across the street from our house, I took this picture of the rainbow it left behind.