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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Catching up

August 6th
Summer continues to be HOT! There are also afternoon thundershowers, but it remains fairly dry. There was some phenomenal wind a couple of days ago with dust blowing 20 feet in the air! The warning sirens went off--but people did not understand that the sirens go off for both tornados and severe thunderstorm warnings. We just had "brief, heavy rain" and "strong, gusty wind". It's tapering off now.

We have not made it to the ranch lately--too much home repair. We went and helped Dorothy move her stuff to her new storage shed and on one trip discovered the wind had tried to blow over the outhouse, which is tied down. Not good. Now we are trying to pull the cargo trailer down and have no luck getting it hooked up. We pulled it before....

I'm putting in a couple of photos and that's it for now.


Storm
Dust before storm















July 17th
Summer arrived and the cool is all over! The past week, we exceeded 90 degrees and it's for cast to be that warm most of next week. The wind has varied dramatically, kicking up in the afternoon and occasionally accompanied by light rain.

We've been catching up with house repairs so have had little time for road trips. Now that it is hot, I have time to catch up on inside stuff, including cleaning and sorting. I am at that "too much stuff" stage--time to reduce inventory. I don't want to end up buried by my stuff!

After the shower install (which included building a stub wall, replumbing, reusing and modifying shower doors), the entry door gave out and we replaced that, then fixed the closet door so it closes for the first time in years. Life in the fast lane!!

July 7
It remains cool. Yesterday, I had a quilted flannel shirt on while weeding the garden. The high reached a shopping 57 degrees! A slow warmup is on the way, but we re not sure for how long.

Pathfinder Dam went over the spillway this year. It's really a sight to see. This hasn't happened in over 20 years!

July 4
Woke up to peas sized hail and 46 degree temps this morning. Once source mentions the possibility of snow above 9000 feet. Such a nifty thing!

July2
It's kind of like summer here, at least the last few days. It has hit the nineties for msot of the week, but a cool down to more normal temps (low 80's) is said to be on the way.

June 17
There have been some warmer days after a very cold weekend. In typical Wyoming style, the furnace was running on the 15th in the morning and in the afternoon, I turned on the swamp cooler.

This is the busy time of the year. Since it is still raining, the mowing is more frequent (but still only once a week or less). Since I mow over an acre with a gas push mower, it takes a lot of time to mow--1 or 2 hours a day at times. It's good exercise.

June 10, 2010
It's quite cool here now--64 degrees. It is predicted to be even colder this weekend. I am looking at ways to warm the garden for the corn and bean rows. The corn is starting to come up, but with the weather so cold, it won't grow much. Beans have still not sprouted.

I am putting some black plastic down to see if that helps with warming. I have had trouble keeping weeds down. Weeds grow even when it's cold. If the weather dries out (we have had rain nearly every day for a week ) I will return to weeding and adding the plastic. It was on sale and I just bought a little to test how well it works.

I laid out the garden in "plots" marked off by string. Then I made a chart so I wll know what came up. So far, much of what I planted has come up except for beans, as noted above. I added three protable cold frames made from plastic (clear) and 1 by 2's. Maybe that will work.
grasshopper invasion

Hail on July 4th
Pathfinder Dam above the spillway
Pathfinder Dam looking like a waterfall!