Below Freezing

26 degrees at 6am.  Way cold.  I can only go out and survey the damage later when it warms up enough for me to want to be outside.

After skirting disaster for two nights in a row, this third night was the charm.  We went very cold.  There is a warming trend on its way.  I hope it will be warmer tonight.

It is already above freezing.  34 degrees at 7:45am.  Hoping for the best.  Fearing the worst:)

Cold Nights

We have had a series of extremely cold nights.  Last night was thirty four degrees but the water in the horse pen had a skiff of ice on top so it is definitely ridiculously cold.  We reordered seeds on a two day air since we have to get the veggie garden moving soon to be able to have any chance at success.  So far, it is not looking good for the veggie garden.

The rest of the yard is thriving and I am thrilled.

The winds have been bad this year.  Some years are like this.  Every year we generally get a couple of 90 MPH winds.  This year we have had some 60 MPH winds  but they are just the worst of it.  Just about every day, it seems, we are having some major winds.  We had a year like that about six years ago but I think that year was very warm.  This year it is mostly very cold.  Yesterday's high was only 70.

This area of Nevada is always weird, weather wise.  There is no really normal year.  This year is, however, exceptionally cold for June.  I am threatening to put up one of those giant hoop houses so that we can do the veggie gardening without having to worry so much about the temperatures.

I have wonderful penstemmons this year.  The trees are growing larger.  I used the pressure pot on the irrigation lines and fertilized the yard.  So convenient.

Time to get out there and clean up the horse pen.  Supposedly it will be 77 and only 7 MPH winds today.  I would take the little horse out to play but I am exhausted and have to go to town to get my hair cut.  I cleaned a house yesterday for almost nine hours.  I am getting way to old for this.  It isn't done yet and I need to go back again tomorrow to try to finish it up.  Unfortunately,  it is such a mess that that will only be the living room, dining room, den, one bathroom and the kitchen cleaned.  The gal is in the hospital and absolutely does not want me to clean the bedrooms or the other bathroom which is fine by me since this has been a ridiculous amount of work already.

This house has dog pea on the floors and mouses have been living in the kitchen cabinets.  Ick!  I keep cleaning houses because I like contributing to my family but I kind of have to make myself keep cleaning when I end up at houses like this one.

What's the Damage?

So far, the plants don't look too bad and I can't for the life of me figure out why not.  Looks like one more really cold night tonight and then a somewhat cold night the next night.

The biggest casualty seems to be the manifold for the veggie garden/hose complex of irrigation tubing and hoses.  One of the valves froze and then busted.  Fortunately, Hubby can fix that although I have to make into Home Sleezo to buy the part.

One of the forsythia looks a bit unhappy but it was the first to bloom so maybe its just done blooming?  Perhaps I will notice more damage from the big freeze when I get out there tomorrow.  We shall see.

I'll have to go to Carson City on Saturday.

The good news is that I haven't bothered to plant the veggie garden yet.  Peas can take a freeze but a freeze down to 21 would have wiped them out!  I am planning on doing some planting this week coming up.

My tomato babies are doing great.  I haven't been leaving them in the greenhouse overnight but I have put them out there several days so that they get as much sunlight as possible.  I am not really using the greenhouse to its fullest extent this year.  Last year I did annual flowers and it turned out wonderfully but this year I bought perennial flowers that would prefer to be direct seeded.  Oh well, I will simply have to use that greenhouse for fantastic lettuce all the way into winter:)

Bruce had some heavy duty freezing as well in Ohia.  Looks like Raymond had pretty sparkly frost.  He is in Ontario.  That is Canada, don't you know?  He is behind us on spring so I don't think this cold snap quite the agony that it is for Bruce.  Here in the barren desert, we are just starting to see spring so I am hopeful that it won't be a huge set back.

Last year was a minor disaster.  The trees were all leafed out and we got a dip below freezing and that set the trees back about three weeks while they regrouped and tried to shoot out some new leaves.  It took half the summer for some of them to recover.

We had a mild winter and it seemed like the trees kept getting fatter trunks.  I didn't realize that trees kept growing in the winter time.  Deciduous trees, anyway.  The pines, Barker cypress and Rocky Mountain junipers all did really well this winter.  Nice to see us finally getting to a point where we have visible trees.  We have been here 6 1/2 years after all.

Boy, am I Frosted

Or at least my plants are.  Dang it, it went to 21 degrees last night.  I sure wasn't expecting it to get this kind of cold.  Oh well, there's nothing I can do about it.  At least most of the trees have held back on doing much leafing out or blooming.  I'll have to check for how much damage there was when I get home this afternoon.


At least it was one of the most beautiful sunrises ever.  Now that has to be some compensation.