Pond’s frozen. Our friend Joan is out gardening. Spring fever is starting to hit.
We’re meeting Joan for lunch today if she’s not standing out in her garden as a stiff and frosty garden elf.
Time, however, to get out and get some stuff. If we don’t stop for cat food our lives will be in danger.
We have however, been able to diet the poundage off our two incipient meatloafs—took them off dry kibble and began feeding these little tubs of actual chicken and salmon we get at Petco: grain-free, actual shredded meat that looks like people food, but has what the kitties need in the way of taurine, etc. Our kitties instead of sleeping all day are beginning to climb their cat trees and wrestle — and yowl —
And both of them now have waists.
Come spring, I swear, I’m getting us back to our diets.
Rain, rain, and rain. We’re in the rainy season, but c’mon! Last Saturday I wished for sandbags at the library. We have an enclosed garden with a roofed lanai. For 20 minutes mid-day, the water poured off the lanai roof into the garden in a continuous sheet, faster than the drains could cope. We had water creeping up the lanai and lapping at the door. I stuffed cleaning rags around the threatened door; luckily the water subsided quickly after the cloudburst.
Someone posted a picture to Facebook of DH’s shop; the parking lot was knee deep and some poor sod was poking at the storm drain, trying to see if something was blocking it. DH was panicked; we had a flood several years ago for a burst pipe in a neighboring unit that closed the shop for 3 months, and didn’t want a repeat. Again fortuitously, the shop is on a slight rise. Whereas the garage and businesses across the street were awash, the water stopped its advance a yard from the door.
We seem to have accrued another stray at home. A B&W cat has been hanging about and cleaning up the food dishes of the 3 Stooges. He is very skittish, but as long as he doesn’t cause trouble for the established pecking order, I won’t throw anything at him.
We learned to sandbag when we lived on the lake: to secure a door: tape sheet plastic or garbage bags above any likely water level, and stack sandbags like bricks against that. Assures that water seeping through bags won’t come seeping under the door. And cut the airconditioner if water rises into the outdoor unit.
My sympathies. My complete sympathies.
And congrats on the 4th Stooge. He’s found a soft touch. 😉 We appointed ours as garage mousers, and left a door open for them, but since that family moved, we’ve had to resort to mouse bait, which I hate doing.
If they’re mousers, perhaps they hail from Lankhmar? 😉
We in SoCal have been getting the spin-off from Hawai’i, quite a lot last weekend, but thankfully no big mudslides. More coming, but it’s chancy from that distance. The whole continental climate (thinking more of the Midwest) seems a dubious pleasure to me. You spend Winter in a sensory deprived stsho wilderness. Spring brings reworking the garden (in my area, most annuals aren’t). Summer gives you 90°F+ and 90%+ humidity. Aside from a few weeks of color, Fall destroys the garden you just finished a few months ago. Season Affective Disorder: the light? Seriously?
English, maybe all human language, can be amusing or distorting depending on perspective. A friend complained that taxes were “decimating” his income; I responded that a 10% tax rate sounded pretty sweet (“Good point”). In that spirit of parsing for pleasure, isn’t any flood above likely water level? 😉
@5:2 dieters: Remember protein, especially on fast days. (Per thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/does-intermittent-fasting-lead-to-muscle-breakdown-and-protein-deficiency/ “…we actually recommend an increased protein intake on fasting days…”) One recommendation is 0.8g/kg of body weight, 2.2 lbs/kg. So, 40g per 110 lbs: 60g if you’re at 165 lbs, 80g if you’re at 220, etc. Another way of looking at it is 10g/100 calories, since you’re supposed to fast at 25% of normal calories. The protein target is admittedly tough to hit without a lot of meat.
I’ve gone to “more or less alternate day fasting”, maybe 4:3. Once you get the fasting down, by drinking lots of zero cal drinks and avoiding “trigger carbs” that make you hungry, I find it easier to just alternate since then I can cancel any day’s fast without any worry about exhausting the seven days without fasting twice. I’m down to what my doc thinks is a good weight; I’d kind of like to drop another 10 lbs or so, but I’m not pursuing it with any diligence.
I read something in the last week or two that “mature” adults should probably eat twice the RDA of protein.
That’s a lot of protein! I do that on feed days, usually, but I’m not sure it’s even possible on fast days; maybe nothing but turkey. I suppose I’ll have to stay irreverent and childish–childlike, I mean childlike.
That was from a different source, nothing to do with the 5:2 diet.
It’s getting ready to rain here again. Southern Ohio is getting much more snow than we are further north. I don’t know why that is, but it’s working out that way.
I finally cleared that blankety-blank newspaper that was jammed in between the impeller blade and the housing of my snow thrower. I got the machine put back together yesterday afternoon (I only took out 8 screws), tried to start the engine, and when I pulled the starter rope, it went about 6 inches and stopped cold. It wouldn’t budge, so I just put the machine in its cubby and let it sit overnight. This afternoon, I went out and tried again, it was still stuck, but I could hear pressure release from the valve when I’d gently pull on the rope. That tells me that the cylinder was flooded with gasoline, and because liquids don’t compress very well, it prevented the piston from moving up, actuating the cam to move the valve to relieve the pressure, etc. After a few gentle pulls, though, it freed up, so I applied more vigor to the pulls, which were unsuccessful. Time to let technology work for me, so I plugged in the starter motor, pressed the button and let it crank for about 5 seconds as it spit gasoline out of the exhaust, and then caught and ran on its own. I let it run for about 5 minutes, while I activated the auger to see if it worked. It turns fine, but I believe it’s contacting the housing at the bottom where the scraper blade is located. If that’s the case, I have to find a way to get it clear, possibly with the engineer’s hammer if it’s bent. Otherwise, I don’t know where it’s contacting the housing. I can’t look in there and see exactly where it’s making contact, because I have to hold the clutch for the auger at the same time and I can’t look into the housing while doing that. I’ve tried using a clamp to hold the clutch lever down, and that works, but I still haven’t figured out where the auger blades are hitting the housing. Well, no significant snow expected for the rest of the week, but it is supposed to get cold again.
If it is grinding away at the housing, you should be able to look inside and see scraped paint or shiny metal. Not to mention that lovely scrunching noise.
CJ, what brand is that at Petco, please?
I get good results with Katz-N-Flocked Solid Gold, though it’s spendy. I learned the hard way with a previous kitty, whose stomach got so he couldn’t abide any other dry. I can attest that my current two like it far batter, and have fewer problems with it, than with other dry foods I get, to give them a taste variety and see how they like those.
But for wet food, I go with the usual brands. Goober has built-in appetite control. He’s lanky by build, long and thin. On top of that, he’s so non-assertive that Smokey, aka Trouble, aka Mr. Assertive, (virtual cousin to Eushu) noses in and “steals” his food, and Goober rarely ever swats him. (I wish he would stand up for himself, but he’s too soft-natured about it.) Smokey’s the kitty who was a street kitten, rescued half-starved and suffering cold exposure. He grew up short and stocky, always stunted by his first couple of months of life. And he is perpetually “hungry” because of it. Never mind he doesn’t *need* more food. He *wants* it. *All* of it. He’ll always be that way.
But he’s now over 4 years old. (Goober’s now over 8.) On a bigger cat, he might not yet be tubby. But he’s small, short, stocky, and…tubby these days. He gets some exercise, but not enough to work it off. And Goober, meanwhile, gets too little food, I think, but is not so hugry that he’d push to grab his fair share. If I try to separate them to feed them, and heavens forfend if I close a door between them…oh my! (Despite that they’ll fuss like brothers or rivals, they also love each other, I think.) So feeding one more and the other less doesn’t work well.
So — Therefore, I’d love to know the brand of wet food you’re using. If it would help young master butterball lose weight, but help both with energy and proper diet (and a more natural food base), work to ease any cravings, despite plenty of food, that would be win-win all the way, I think.
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I have seen it rain like that here, including a few times not connected with a tropical storm or hurricane. Stay dry, Chondrite! And hurray for the lucky b&w kitty, from my two black and black and white kitties.
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The weather fortune-tellers claim we are going to drop from the present 73 degrees to 36 tonight, then 43 for tomorrow’s high and 33 (or maybe 35) tomorrow night.
Although I tend not to believe such a drastic drop, I have seen that happen around 2.5 hours north of here, when in college, several times, always accompanied by a front and precipitation.
So tonight and the next couple of days and nights should be odd. Extra blanket, both cats and myself as usual, and my warmest robe, maybe, for the evenings.
And greetings to you and yours, from Moe, Curly, Larry and Shemp (they take turns being Shemp) 😛
Joe, be careful with that thing! At a certain point you take it to the small engine repair guy and ask him to stick HIS fingers into it. 😉
Walt, I have seen flood come down above likely water level– 🙂 I lived on Ski Island Lake in OKC, which was one of a string of very small dam-created lakes in a residential area. Lovely. But the dams were a horror. The lowest-lying house owner got to keep the Sacred Key, which would open the floodgate. But if he wasn’t home, the water just rose. We had the SECOND lowest-lying house. On the other hand, I didn’t contend strongly for the honor, because holding the key meant you had to motor to the dam, which was about 3 city lots wide—get up on the berm, in an Oklahoma lightning storm, highest thing in the landscape, lay hands on the metal wheel in a driving cold rain, unlock and turn it until the gate would open to allow umpteen tons of water to get through the gap. FAILING that we had one other protection: weir boards. WHich was a bunch of wooden boards held in place by $30,000.00 worth of custom steel pins, that would bend when water overtopped the dam. This would deliver the Bad News to the NEXT lake in the chain.
Well, one year they were dredging Silver Lake, which was the lake before ours, and we were nearly dry. Looked like Mars out there—Mars with a few remaining puddles where the fish held out. Well, came a rain. Epic rain. Silver Lake filled, then spilled to us. And our lake, 30 feet from my back windows, came up eight feet and kept coming. The whole lake reappeared in a matter of minutes—and then the weir boards bent, and delivered the flood to the next lake. I went down to have a look at the dam, and the water pouring over our dam was hitting the bridge and rooster-tailing up about a story high, as water ripped through under the bridge, and rushed into the adjacent lake on the other side of the bridge. The house nearest the bridge had already lost a third of its manicured lawn, and was looking fair to lose more of it. Anything on that frontage was in jeopardy, and it was still going toward THEIR dam.
There was quite a to-do. Property values would go through the basement if the city forced us to give up the lakes and the dams, so even those who had taken damage fought it, but it was a real fight to get the Corps of Engineers and the city and what-not agencies to agree if we put in some improvements—(and if Lake Overholser, the very BIG city reservoir lake which had let that water out of ITS spillway for some pressing reason they neglected to tell us until afterward would kindly advise those of us down the chain the next time they delivered a surprise like that) —we survived the crisis, and the dams still stand.
Beautiful area. Egrets and geese on your back lawn. But that’s where I learned to fill sandbags.
while I was working on the auger and impeller, the spark plug was disconnected and the boot was moved off to a position where it would not accidentally contact the spark plug. Whenever the engine is running, my hands are as far away from moving parts as they can be and still operate the equipment. I still have all 10 of my fingers, even though I have a table saw, a chipper/shredder, the snow blower, a lawn mower, and several hand-held power tools.
I’m always of the “what if” school, or at least, I try to be always. I’ve made a few “oopses” and been fairly lucky. Nothing like a close shave from a table saw blade to make you realize that your finger is no obstacle to that blade. I keep my guards in place, I don’t override any of the safety features on my machinery. Yes, it’s inconvenient, but so is recovering from surgery to reattach fingers, if they can even be reattached.
I love the fantasy of living on the water, but my father lived on a Pacific-fed channel so I know the level of maintenance close proximity to salt water brings. No thank you.
I have relatives in the Midwest, so I get out there infrequently. I miss the loom of the mountains reminding me of the bigger world and life beyond suburbs. Not that I don’t like living in suburbs, as I do, but I can see the coastal foothills, at least.
The persistent high just off the coast that has forced the jetstream to dump on the east has given us the warmest February on record. Highs this weekend are predicted to get into the mid-60’s. I went and got fresh gas today, I’m likely to mow. It’s ~1A, but around the trees and such, it’s usually a 2hr job on my rider. In spring it’s a real PITA keeping up with. I need two good sunny days in a row (In Portland? Surely you jest!), one to mow and throw, and the second to go over with the catcher to pick up the clippings. I ran it dry in November, so I have hopes it’ll be an easy start.
Well, around here it’s been hotter than Beelzebub’s barbecue. There have been raging wildfires in this area since Sunday, but they are mostly out now. A cool day yesterday with a little rain helped a lot. At least 12,000 acres of vegetation were burned, but only a few houses. No fatalities, one firefighter treated for burns, and a number of people treated for smoke inhalation.
Tuesday afternoon I could see the fire burning on the mountainside above where I am, and Tuesday night there was a heavy cloud of smoke lying aver the area, and everyone had to close their windows. There was a light covering of ash everywhere the next morning.
The Cape Town Cycle Tour (the largest timed cycle race in the world), which takes place this Sunday and normally passes through areas hit by the fire has had its route changed and shortened.
Some images
http://mg.co.za/multimedia/2015-03-04-cape-counts-cost-of-raging-fires
A few more photos
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/photo/gale-force-winds-feed-wildfire-cape-town-n316186
Snowing AGAIN! Rain yesterday, but it started snowing early this morning. It’s pretty and looks like the woods have been dredged with sugar, but winter has worn out its welcome. I’m wondering what the world will look like on St. Patrick’s Day. That’s the day we brought Winter home in the middle of a heat wave! New England weather is straaaaange!
Toes crossed that the fishies are happy and warm in their pond. We can just barely see the outlines of ours.
Getting some ice here, temps are slowly dropping. Expecting 2-4 inches of snow later. But then we’re getting mid-50’s for most of next week. Spring is a comin’ !
Cloudy and temperatures in the low teens (Fahrenheit). About 100 miles southeast of here, around Portsmouth, OH or Point Pleasant, they’re getting a LOT of snow from this winter storm with some places getting over 10 inches of NEW snow since yesterday. I don’t have any snow on the driveway, there’s probably 8 inches on the ground from the storm earlier this week and last week. It’s supposed to get colder tonight, then start warming up.
Still wondering where the case for global warming lies. Last July, in Toledo, they set a record for the low temperature for that date, 48 F. I was just east of Toledo, out in the middle of a very large shooting range just on the shore of Lake Erie. The wind was cold, the air was cold, and yes, I was cold, too.
I can only hope that temperatures this summer offset this winter’s temperatures, but it would be at a cost of higher electric bills for air conditioning, etc.
“Still wondering where the case for global warming lies.”
The low temperatures over some regions are actually the result of global warming.
Here’s an article about it.
You can find plenty more information on the subject if you look for it.
The good news is that models predict that this effect of unusually cold winters over parts of Europe and North America will only continue for several decades, or anyway not more than a century, before it’s overtaken by continuing warming. And of course weather and climate are two different things.
But we’ve known for decades that the temperatures are slowly climbing, we’re just emerging from the most recent Ice Age.
My comment was tongue-in-cheek, anyway. 😉
I was born & raised in LA. My Dad told me it was consistently warmer when he arrived there back in the mid ’30’s.
Aaaand… there is snow on top of Haleakala this morning, probably as a result of preceding rain and low temperatures. Winter storm warnings are still in effect for Big Island summits.
Total, with only a bit more falling is ….. 6 inches ! As it got colder, the snow got nice and fluffy, so it’s on the trees, fences, etc. Beautiful. Daffodils will probably be up in a couple of weeks !!
We got between 9 – 12″ of snow according to the weather on the news; I didn’t go out there and stick a ruler in it to check their figures. It’s supposed to get down to 10F tonight and stay cold tomorrow. My witch hazel didn’t bloom in February like it was supposed to; don’t know if it’s been too cold for it. Normally the redbud would bloom sometime in March, but I’m not holding my breath for that to happen either.
I schlepped out to the compost heap last night through the snow that was still on the ground from our last snow and it was still 5 or 6″ deep out there before this one. So there’s probably well over a foot in the yard.
I’m sooo glad we sprang for a snow-blower last fall!! It’s been a life-saver this year. DH can do the driveway by himself now in well under an hour; before we got the snow-blower it would have taken us all morning tomorrow to clear the drive way with both of us shoveling.
Even so, I’m still ready for spring.
I think that blaming our race for all global climate change is hubris.
I can see your point, but I don’t think the Science is saying “all”. I think the proposition that humans can do whatever we want, with no thought to its consequences to the natural world, the greater hubris. I think the Apollo 11 “Earthrise” photo was the most important photograph ever taken because it showed so clearly we’re trapped on a finite world–we’d better not crap in our bed!
IMO There are two good reasons to reduce our use of fossil fuels. 1) It’s optional. That it is increasing a green-house gas in the atmosphere is beyond debate. That increasing greenhouse gasses will have no effect on temperature and ocean levels is beyond wishful thinking. That CO2 in the atmosphere won’t increase ocean acidification is willful ignorance. 2) It’s FOSSIL! It’s a finite resource–EVERYTHING on Earth is finite. It won’t be replaced until millions of years after the next Carboniferous Era. Don’t you think our descendants (well, not mine, I have none) 5, 10, 15 generations from now will need that resource too? More than we do, for things that cannot be substituted?
Self-restraint is a virtue. We have none. 🙁
Enter that other daughter of night, Nemisis!
My Witch Hazel is showing colour-though the buds have yet to unfold. At least I see colour when the snow deigns to fall off of the branches. The little gold buds against the interminable white is a treat. If I could get to the shrub I’d cut a branch to force. However there is a 5+ foot drift in the way.
A large glacier finally fell off of my roof two days ago – just before the snow started again. 8 inches yesterday.
Maybe there’s hope then; sounds like you’re more snowed in than we are!!
Magnolias are plumping up to bloom here.
We have a lovely Japanese lady who bring in flowers every couple of weeks and does ikebana, Japanese flower arrangements, around the library. Last week she brought in forsythia branches, with a constellation of tiny, spicy-scented yellow flowers. Although the blooms have mostly faded by now, the little green leaves are unfolding and someone is keeping the branches to try and root them. I had no idea we had forsythia here.
We have forsythia on our driveway berm, but it is an ill-watered, ill-natured bush, on which Jane has sworn vengeance. I love forsythia, and I’m sorry to lose that bush, but Jane tolerates my protection of a thorny 10 foot high flowering quince that shades my working window, so it’s even.
We still argue over what should replace the forsythia, and keep cutting it back, but it rises every year. We have a mock orange out front which was planted up against the house, entangled with a barberry—we got that prickly monster out, and now try to cultivate the mock orange, but this year we had to prune it severely—we don’t know whether bloom will survive. At least, however, it is now down to size.
We have dumped phosphate on all the wisteria, hoping to get blooms this year. We never have had blooms. Phosphate is what we were told. We shall see.
Have you ever seen a redbud shrub in bloom? It gets tiny pink bunches of flowers straight out of the stems, much like forsythia, and only a little later in the year.
Mock orange is native to the Wet Coast so they are damn hard to kill. They bloom from the second year wood so if yours was pruned severely you may not get blossoms this year. I don’t know how they fare where you are, over on the dry side, but being against the house should give it some protection. My mother always grew barberry, planting it wherever interlopers tried to cut through whichever gap or flower bed she thought they oughtn’t. But she was from Saskatchewan where the stuff was illegal (harbors wheat rust doncha know) so planting it brought her some sort of illicit pleasure I thought.
Redbud is the state tree of Oklahoma. At a wee bit of difficulty, because they like Oklahoma better than Washington, we have one in our small front yard. Along with a birch, a pink magnolia, a star magnolia, a cherry, two different Japanese maples (small size,) a wisteria, and a blue spruce, not to mention azaleas, a rhododendron, a smoke bush, a mock orange, an unidentified bush, various junipers, and a number of roses. With three 40′ tall hemlocks down the side.
D’oh! Shoulda known you would be familiar… maybe I should send you a satinwood bush, a plumeria, or pikake jasmine cutting 😀