Bogieblog

Bounce Back

A couple of weeks ago my poor fir shrub was flattened by a good amount of sleet and freezing rain.

After several smaller snow and sleet events, it finally got rid of the layers and bounced back and looks much better (pic taken 2/17/20).

Valentine's Day

Okay, that is just another day for me. But, My parents and sister conspired to make sure I got cards - and they arrived just on time. Can't help but smile when I see them displayed in the living room.

Snow for New Hampshire

Thursday, after 5" of fairly wet snow, the temps got up to mid 30's and the driveway started to get some meltage going under the 2" of ice cover. I snow blowed in the morning and then in the afternoon I spent 1.5 hours breaking up and moving that ice.

Snow pictures taken 6:30 in the morning - it was barely light, heavily overcast, and just a break in the snow. I took as much blue out as I could

Driveway picture taken 4:30 Thursday afternoon

Nothing earth shattering, just got nothing else to post :)

Icy Stretch

First it snowed about 5" Wednesday night thru Thursday, then it tuned to a mix of sleet and freezing rain that afternoon and all day Friday. The normally 6' tall evergreen shrub in the backyard is not amused. I think of that one branch still standing as a middle finger to Mother Nature :)

It will be fine one it is able to shed its layers of ice (actually, that picture was taken early afternoon, so it it collected more ice thru the next couple of hours.

I had gotten the driveway and paths snow blown during my lunch hour Thursday (I worked from home), but I didn't get the drive to the tent garage done. The snow was very wet as it was falling, and soaking up the sleet made it very difficult to snow blow. I figured the truck could handle the portion I left. The pictures below were taken at 2 pm Friday and show the tracks from the truck thru the 3/4" of sleet slush filled in with another inch+ of more icy precipitation. oh yeah, apparently I needn't have bothered sanding that morning since it was doing absolutely no good.

Friday was my off-Friday, so I was able to shovel the roof dumpage that occurred at 11 (nothing quite like the sound of all 4 sides of the roof dumping 5" of sleet laden snow in about 3 minutes). Late that afternoon, I was out clearing the gates from the couple of inches of ice accumulation, when the town plow finally came by for the first time since Thurday. At that point the skies were starting to clear, the wind was whipping up, and the temperature was dropping like a rock. I  knew I had to get the pile of icy slush up before it froze, so went out and shoveled. Sorry for the photo quality - I was in a hurry to get my gloves back on and start shoveling

 

Most of that I moved by dragging a shovel full to the side of the driveway, then picking up part of it to sling out of the way. It was super heavy! I definitely got a good arm, shoulder and leg workout between the roof dumpage earlier and then the raod berm.

I left the part that is past the paved part becasue I just didn't care enough to punish my muscles any more.

Saturday morning was in the low teens and never hit 20. Right now it is 2*. Snow is expect tonight so all that stuff will be hanging around for a while.

Who Knew?

When I moved to my current house, I brought along a potted rosemary plant that I had had for several years. It had always struggled thru winters because of the dry air from the wood stove, but it had always come back once the humidity started rising in the house.

However, the first winter here, it was doomed. Although pellet stoves (which I installed January 2014) don't dry out the air and I had humidifiers going, the house was so air porous that it was extremely dry in this house. The poor plant crisped up, dropped all its needle-type foliage, and never came back.

This past August or September, I stopped at the local Agway for some reason, and they had a couple of left-over seedling pots containing rosemary plants. Since all their plants were on sale, I decided to take one. I potted it up and left it out on the back porch until it got cold out, then placed it in the bathroom window. I had hopes that it would fare better than the last one because I've tightened up the house (less air leakage), it would be in a room that was humid at least once per day, and I had new windows installed the summer of 2014. What do new windows have to do with it? Well, the bathroom window is a "garden" window - which in effect is a tiny bay window. With a window covering in place that little area is a bit cooler and hopefully keeps a bit more humidity in that area.

Well, so far the plant seems to be happy and healthy. Although that window area is in the low 60's (I'm guessing - it is cooler than the bedroom, which stays between 65 and 67), the leaves have stayed green and wonder of wonders, it bloomed. I didn't even know rosemary had blooms as my other plant never did so. I couldn't get great pictures, but the blooms are tiny and by the time I saw them, they were past prime, with some dropped petals.

There was another stalk that had blooms that had already dropped all their petals too. Next winter, I have to remember to be on the look out for the full blooms.

EDIT: After taking the thermometer from the bedroom and placing it in the bathroom window for about 10 minutes (not enough time for it to truly stabilize), the temp is showing 59* - on a morning where it is 30* outside. I would imagine it gets colder as the outside temp drops.