WARMER NOW BACK TO PROJECTS WEEKEND UPDATE

This weekend was good.  I got several projects done and/or started.

First I know many of you are wondering about the house and the pipes.  We were too.  I turned on the water valve at the house and nothing came out.  Then I remembered that since we share the well with 2nd Family, they have a cutoff on their end and they had turned that off for us.  I went down to the house to turn it on and realized "R" still has it completely sealed up for freezing.  We're talking insulation, wrapped pipes, duct tape, towels, cardboard, etc.  Sometimes the person who put it all together is the best person to undo it because they know what order to undo it in.  So I went back up to our house and got three watering containers and used the faucet by the well to fill them.  I used that to water the stuff on the porch.  Mission accomplished. 

No need to worry about the pipes until next weekend. 

On to the next thing...   

Last week, they picked up the Zen Machine so we could have its annual maintenance done.  They brought it back Friday.  On top of annual maintenance items, they always wash it.  I even reminded them and asked them to wash it and clean it.  In year's past it has come back looking almost new...

Does this look clean?  I mean, they didn't even clean the tires.  I think one year they put tire dressing on and it looked so good.  Just a tad bit disappointed.  It kind of makes us wonder "how do we know they even DID anything" under the hood.  I checked the oil and it seems clean but who knows.  Oh well.  Just like gardening we have to have faith in the outcome, ha!

Once the water is back on, I'll spend some time washing it and getting it ready for its closeup.

On to the next thing...

On the way to the farm I stopped and picked up some bags of soil and compost so I could work on the garden beds.  Well, the ones we're going to use.

They look good after they are all "stirred up".  I break up the soil and mix it around and then add the new soil, compost etc and rake it all level.  Should be ready for planting in a couple of weeks.

I left these two covered...

This is a photo from 2019 when we really had it cleaned up and nice.  It's close but not quite as good as this now, ha.  Anyway, I used this photo to put the numbers of what beds we'll be using this year.  We'll use five of the seven; the front two, the long bed and two of the ones in the back.  

We're still planning but tomatoes for sure (gotta keep trying), a few herbs (gotta have our basil), jalapeños,  eggplant (maybe) and since we had SUCH good luck with them a few years back, we think we'll try the pickling cucumbers again.  2nd Man said he'd like me to try my hand at canning pickles again.  

Side note, anyone have any suggestions on how to clean up these weeds in an area like this?  I can't spray anything that will possibly get pulled up into the soil of the raised bed since the veggies will be there.  Vinegar?  Boiling water?  Anything else?  They are really annoying and keep everything looking crappy.

I did a couple of other projects and then the rain started.  I'll have more on that in an upcoming post.

Hope you had a good weekend!

WHAT A DIFFERENCE A FEW DAYS MAKES

We know we posted one of these pictures last week but thought it would be fun to see the before and after...or maybe the after and then the before, ha.

Here is the view from the porch (yucky drizzly day but I digress).  Anyway, above is yesterday...

And here is the same view during the Winter storm.  Oh and it was 29 degrees then and close to 79 yesterday.

Sadly we think we lost the citrus...

This is the orange that we thought had much more green on it but over the last week, it's slowly started turning brown.  The trunk may have survived which means it most likely will come back but if it's stunted or reduced, it might take much longer to come back.

This is the lemon tree that last week we still had hope for.  We're pretty sure that it's not going to make it.  We knew it was too good to be true.  We'll give them time to come back of course but it doesn't look promising.

In good news, I got some other much needed stuff done at the farm to prepare for Spring so more on that in upcoming posts and a regular update tomorrow with the rest of the stuff done.

Here's an obligatory Hobart picture:

He's still sticking with the fluffy blanket that we used as a Christmas tree skirt.  Wherever we put it, he ends up in it.  It's soft and warm and he loves it.  And we love him.  So...the tree skirt is his.

Hope you are having a good weekend.

COVID LOSS

Recently we posted about COVID hitting close to home.  Most of those we mentioned have recovered, though some with lingering issues.  However I found out a few days ago that I lost one of them; the wife of my previous boss, whom I worked with side by side daily for the better part of fifteen years.  She successfully battled breast cancer more than ten years ago...

...and she fought hard with this too but in the end, she just could not come back from the virus.

She loved roses, these yellow roses are for her...

Then a dear coworker lost her Uncle to the virus (only 61, no underlying health issues).  As I was reading his obituary, I read a few lines in it that made me smile and I thought I'd share them with you:

"Later, he continued his passion of nurturing plants and trees and purchased a property...where he poured his soul into improving and perfecting the land.  He always had a garden much too large, but he insisted it was for anyone who needed it; it was for everyone."

You can probably guess why that struck a chord with us.  I can only hope that someday someone will say that about me and our garden and property.

This garden bounty is for him...

I remember early on in the pandemic a doctor or scientist said that by the time this is all said and done, almost everyone will know someone who has died of the virus.  We have lost a few customers at our office but losing her brings it close to home and just as my coworkers loss has come close to her.  COVID is so insidious in who it hurts and who it doesn't.

That's why it makes 2nd Man and I so hyper-vigilant to stay as safe as we can. 

Please, stay safe people...this isn't over...

SNOW AT THE FARM

See yesterday's post for an update about the farm itself 'after' the freeze and I added an update to yesterday's post about the boil water notice.

These are 'during' the snow.  2nd Family was kind enough to send photos after we said they could send any pictures they wanted to venture out and take.

So here are a few they sent us to share:

This is the back for one of their outbuildings, icicles all along the top edge...

Footprints in the snow! They were walking down toward our part of the driveway...

This picture shows how deep it was.  Again, for people up North and East, don't laugh at us but this is definitely a HUGE event for us...

This is their front yard...

And this is our driveway...

And this is our front yard.

This is the angle we usually post from the front porch.  This was taken by the trail cam (not sure what triggered it, we think a bird).  While we're glad we were safe and warm here in town (well, to a point, ha) looking at this makes us sorry we missed seeing it in person as this might just be a once in a lifetime moment.  Setting aside the terrible outcome that all of this weather brought to the area and to the state, there is something so beautiful about a pure white fresh snowfall.  Peaceful and neat, almost like a clean slate.

We'll take Spring though.  Ready for it.  Not ready for our Summers but at least we're prepared for that.  We heard a guy on TV whose house had collapsed ceilings from broken pipes say something that kind of sums up what happened here:

"Our homes are built for Houston Summers, not Michigan Winters"...

FREEZE AT THE FARM SURPRISE

 Saturday was the day to check the farm after the historic Winter storm.

There was still ice on the steps.

And on the North side of the house, in the shade, there was still some melting snow.  The ground was also super saturated everywhere from the melting snow and runoff.  The house was fine, thankfully.  

The water heater stayed unfrozen, we had rigged up some lights on old school hooded reflectors.  They hang with a clamp and as fate would have it the doorknobs in the bathroom (where the water heater is) were shaped to have a foolproof way to mount it with zero danger of falling off.  This angle looks like it's close to the door but it wasn't.  There wasn't anything flammable nearby.  Even with the rolling blackouts on the grid, it was on long enough to keep the area warm and above freezing in the house (small bathroom with both doors closed).  

The water was turned on to see if any obvious leaks.  We didn't see any but we decided to turn it back off until we could take a closer look by crawling under the house next weekend and inspect the pipes for small leaks that are not so obvious.  The p-traps in the the sinks were fine with the RV antifreeze inside.  

Looks like the house dodged the freezing problems.  2nd Family had one burst pipe under their house.  When we're not in the house, it's easy to drain, flush and shut off water.  When you live there, even with heat on, you have to have water and then you battle the temps but the pipes can still freeze.

It was time to uncover the citrus trees to see how dead they were (ice still around the outside of them).

This is the lime tree.  Dead.  Dead dead.  I bent a couple of branches and they snapped right off.  I figured that was going to be repeated two more times. 

This is the orange tree.

If I didn't see it with my own eyes I wouldn't have believed it.  It's still green!  The branches don't have any visible freeze damage.  I could be wrong, maybe it will never leaf out again or next weekend it will melt into a puddle, ha, but we were still cautiously surprised.  We have NO idea how this survived single digit temps.  I never put the Christmas lights on the timer under the cloth because we figured even if they were 10 degrees warmer with those turned on, it wouldn't help with a low of 8 or 9.  Somehow it looks like it survived.

And here is the lemon tree.

It's ALSO green.  Well, kind of.  There seem to be a few brown ends but for the most part it is green.  Again, we have no idea how it survived.  It could still die and we're planning for that occurrence.  But maybe we'll be pleasantly surprised?  Heck, one out of three would be great.  Two out of three would be amazing!

We're rethinking the citrus though.  We'll see what survives.  They are still so small and frail and haven't grown much since we put them in the raised beds.  They do well and then are set back by a freeze.  These are 2 years old.  If the orange makes it, since it's in the middle, we'll leave it and do something different with the lemon and lime.

Stay tuned.

Remember the beautiful peach tree blossoms from a couple of weeks ago?

Yeah, not so pretty now.  We had read that they were hardy to about -25 degrees so we didn't bother to cover it for this freeze.  Not sure if we made a mistake there. I guess we'll see what happens in a couple of months.

Come back tomorrow for some fun pictures of the snow at the farm.  2nd Family took some for us and then the trail cam captured a beautiful one of the front yard.

MONDAY UPDATE:

They citywide boil water notice was lifted!

We've followed the instructions and things are back to normal...though we did think twice about the first few times of using it but they say it has passed all the tests.  

WATER IS BACK

We woke up Saturday morning to the water back on and it was at full pressure for most everyone...

After almost four days of little to no water, I think that was the best shower I have ever taken.  I could have stayed in there for an hour...

And the toilet flushes again without buckets of pool water needed to make that happen...

They are still having to give water to those who need it as the entire city of Houston/Harris County (millions of people) are on a boil water notice so we're not out of the woods yet.  The lines were over a mile long again and we just heard tonight that it might be Tuesday before the boil water notice is lifted...

ANOTHER FREEZE UPDATE

We know everyone is wondering how things are going.  On the good news side, 98% of all people in our area have electricity.  There wasn't much problem with downed lines it was just the facilities that control the power grid failed because of the freezing.  They did not prep for weather like this (after being told 10 years ago at the last big freeze that they should, but we digress).  

So we have power.  Most everyone does.  Once those places on the grid got their capacity back up, the power came on.  That's the good news.

The bad news is the boil water notice will now extend through at least Monday.  And in more bad news, after having water pressure back somewhat today, it's now back to nothing.  Open the taps and nothing comes out.  Not even a trickle.  There are now lines over a mile long of cars waiting to get water.  People are taking buckets to a spigot in a park where water still comes out.  We're still good for drinking because of our two 5 gallon bottles, we have about a dozen small bottles, and a dozen or so cans of sparkling water.  Plus some soft drinks.  Oh and wine.  We can always have wine, ha!

We are back to getting pool water for the toilet.  We know some of you suggested filling the tub with the pool water to save the back and forth and we may do that if it lasts longer.  For now though it's not that bad, an elevator ride down, a few feet to the pool, a quick dunk of the bucket and back up.  If nothing else, it gets us out of the apartment a few times a day.

In parts of Texas where the temperatures have not gotten above freezing, even with power back on, many heating systems are not working and people are cutting up furniture to burn just to stay warm.

It boggles our mind that here we are, in the year 2021, we just landed a robot on Mars, and yet our way of life is just a freeze, storm, or pandemic away from complete collapse.  There will be more pandemics, more storms, and more epic winters.  It has really made us think about the farm, what we want out there and how best to prepare for the unexpected in the future.

Speaking of the farm, it's back out this weekend for the first time since all this happened a month week ago to see how things fared out there. 

Stay tuned!

FREEZE UPDATE AND HOBART PIC

We know how you all enjoy a Hobart picture so there's one at the end of this post. 

With water shut off for almost 3,000,000 people, we had to improvise for water usage.  Thankfully we were prepared for drinking water, we had two 5 gallon bottles, a couple dozen small water bottles and an assortment of the canned flavored sparkling water.  Drinking water we would be OK.

But because we weren't told ahead of time that water would just be shut off (perhaps lack of preparedness on our part as well) we weren't able to fill up the tub for flushing the toilet.  One of our blog friends mentioned using melted snow for toilet flushing.  The snow is long gone here but that made us think...our apartment building has a pool...we pay rent...the pool is part of what we pay for...so I grabbed a bucket...

...went down to the pool level and filled a large bucket, carried it back up (in the elevator, ha) and filled the tank in the toilet.  It worked perfectly.  I've gone down three times so far.  The first time I was the only one.  The last time there were four other people with buckets and another person on the elevator said "wow that's a great idea!"  Later in the day the building sent an email and said it was OK just be careful as the pool area is wet from rain and it's going to freeze again tonight.

Thinking outside the box!

As for work, many of you know I work in the insurance business.  Our office here has no power so we are trying to work from home like we did for so long during the pandemic but the connection has been sporadic.  Turns out our company has a server hub in North Texas.  They prepared for tornadoes and hail and even wildfires.  They also prepared for "normal" Winter weather.  Turns out they didn't prepare for THIS kind of cold and so the servers went down and now none of our laptops can function property with the company software and systems.  They are getting it back up little by little.  Today our office took 12 claims for burst pipes.  Yesterday we had 8 claims.  Those are the ones we know about.  There could be people who called directly and we haven't been updated yet.

For those worried about Hobart and if he's staying warm, no worries there.  Here he is (when it was 11 degrees outside), curled up on a blanket on the couch after we covered him up.  He slept for hours there.  He's got the cushy life for sure.

He's not spoiled or anything...

UNFOLDING DISASTER IN HOUSTON

The freeze disaster in Houston (and a large majority of Texas) just gets worse almost by the hour...

Woke up to more sleet and freezing rain.  With the melting snow and rain and temps in the low 20's, things turned to ice on the roads AND now the power lines.

There are now 1.5 million people without power, up from yesterday.  There are homes in Houston where dripping water faucets have turned to solid ice and pet water bowls INSIDE the homes have frozen over.

There are apparently a large number of fatalities that are being reported, not just from carbon monoxide and house fires but just exposure.  They are actually giving people the warning signs of hypothermia for the first time in our history. 

Those up North are probably wondering why all of this is happening.  It's worth reminding people that our homes and indeed our entire infrastructure of electricity, water, roads, bridges, even the internet lines, are built around staying cool in our oppressively hot and humid weather.  They don't build things or prepare for Winter weather like this because we never have it...

And then the hits kept coming.  This morning we all awoke to a mandatory boil water notice for all of Houston.  We noticed pressure was low...and then we received this from our building:

Dear residents,

As some of you may already know, due to the frozen water lines, all of Houston is now experiencing loss of water, including our building. This is a citywide issue and we do not have an expected time frame as to when this issue will be resolved. 

Please be advised that due to our boiler system, with the water lines being frozen, we are expecting to lose heat. For updates you can text the keyword WATER to 713-526-1111 for the latest on the water situation. We also encourage you to call 311 for more information from the city. 

We hope you all are staying safe and warm. We will send more updates as soon as we receive them.

So now we have no water.  I mean, you turn on the taps and NOTHING comes out.  This is for ALL of Houston.  2.5 million people are now without water.

Thankfully we have a 5 gallon water bottle I just loaded into the dispenser the other day and a second one stored.  We have some smaller water bottles as well.  Of course we would have filled the tub to use for the toilet but there was no warning.  We just woke up and got an alert that there would be no water.  Sigh.  Also note in the building message I posted that there may not be heat either.  We're fortunate that because our building is a high-rise, it is built of concrete with 12 inches between units and 16 inches between floors and ceilings.  That makes it kind of like a cave or underground home, the temperature stays within a range (except for Summer, ha).  As long as we have power we have electric an electric blanket to keep warm and plenty of quilts.  Also have some nice flannel pajama pants and sweatshirts.  Oh and wool socks.  When we lived in the house, the floors could get cold in the Winter being pier and beam so I had us well stocked with warm clothing.  Grateful we have it now.

To top it all off, another Winter storm is coming but we think no moisture, which is good.  Lows Friday however could be back into the upper teens.  That will not help an already worsening situation in the Houston area and most of Texas.

HISTORIC FREEZE DISASTER

Now here's a sight we never thought we'd see...

...snow covering downtown Houston.  This was the view from the balcony.  It was a Winter wonderland but only in appearance.  There are 1.4 million people without power and things are getting dire in the area.

This was yesterday's weather and forecast.  It is still below freezing and will have been below freezing since Sunday afternoon.

Roads are impassable because of ice.

Pipes are bursting in homes.

There are boil water notices because of water pressure/power issues at the water treatment plants.

People are having to deal with below freezing temps inside their homes and several of our coworkers have been dealing with temps in their homes in the 30's.

Both airports have been closed to inbound and outbound flights until things get better.

It's not ice on the lines, instead this is a complete and epic failure by our power companies.  They did not prepare for an event like this and things are bad and getting worse.  This is not like a hurricane where the lines came down in the wind and crews have to get out and repair them.  In this case the grid has gone down across the region because of various issues related to "we never knew it could get this bad" and they are unable to push power to the customers.  The good side is that as they fix the problems, the power should just come back on because the lines are still fine.

Now we just hope for above freezing temperatures as soon as possible. It's looking better today as I type this, the above forecast has changed and we may get above freezing this afternoon but still so many people suffering in the freezing temperatures right now.

But round two of possible ice comes again tonight...