PREPPING FOR THE FREEZE

Got to the farm Saturday.  It was clear and cold but really pretty.  The yard and pretty much everywhere was SOAKED.  We had another couple of inches of rain on top of the almost six inches we had last week. I was going to work in the garden but it was just so wet and still pretty cold. 

Found two shingles in the yard so we had some pretty strong winds out there.  Of course, we've lost a few others over the years.  The house is safe though, that old hard wood in the attic repels water.  Another reason we need to do something out there so we can make the house our permanent home.  However we don't want to sink money into a new roof for something that might be torn down or gutted and remodeled.  We'll just include the new roof with whatever we do.

Anyway...then we had to wait for this:

...yep, we might have sleet and/or snow! We know those of you that live with snow all Winter probably go, "um, no, not big snow fans here", ha. 

The temps will just touch freezing but not for long and not enough to worry about freezing roads (at least in the Houston area) but with wind chills currently at 29, we need to protect the plants at the farm so that was my goal on Saturday...

I put our old standby box around the banana trees that are on the porch...

I covered the pineapples (have had those things in the pots for over a year, not going to lose them now, ha)...

And lastly for the citrus, I did something a bit different than last time.  The last time I used larger freeze cloths  and there was too much extra fabric flowing around and it touched the trees.  So this time I put blankets around the base of the trees and up the trunks and then used these smaller freeze cloth bags.  I put the poles with the tennis balls around the base and the fabric was perfect not to touch the trees (don't have to worry about leaves, they have all fallen off, ha).  

It's only one day and one night of crazy weather then temps go back up.  2nd Family is going to to go uncover the stuff once the danger is passed.  

It's all we can do long distance.

2nd Man took the cold weather in stride and made a pot roast with vegetables with cornbread on the side.

OMG so good and so wonderful on a cold, yucky day!