Monday, December 12, 2005, 19:50
Icicles
After more than a week of temperatures with below zero windchills and below zero air temperatures at night and single digits and teens during the day, it warmed up a bit on Saturday to 30 degrees! And when the weather warmed up, the tiny bit of snow on the barn roof melted in the sun and dripped onto the plum tree growing by the barn, forming long and rather interesting looking icicles.
We often get strange looking icicles forming on the edge of the barn roof, and sometimes on the cedar tree by the house -- but that's usually in February and March, not in December. And as far as I recall, this is the first time the plum tree has had icicles.
The plum tree is really too close to the barn wall. I started it from plum pits from an old plum tree growing on an old farmstead a half mile away. The plum tree must be an "antique" because there has not been anyone living on that farm in about 60 years. The plums are prune plums, and they are sweet and delicious.
Unfortunately, after the plum pits had sprouted, we waited too long to transplant them. In no time at all, the tree grew too large to be moved. Randy and I were afraid we would injure it trying to dig it up and move it. So now it's stuck there by the barn for as long as it manages to stay alive.
I am looking forward to getting some plums off the tree, although so far, it has not produced any fruit. Maybe in a year or two.
I started more pits in a tub this past spring, but they haven't sprouted. I left the tub outside, thinking that perhaps the pits needed to go through a freeze/thaw cycle before they would sprout. If not, that's okay. I still have a few more plum pits from the old tree that I can plant.
I want to get a plum tree started here because the "parent" tree is slowly dying back, and I do not want that variety of plums, from that particular tree, to be lost forever. But in the meantime, until my new plum tree produces fruit, I guess I will have to be content with icicles!
LeAnn R. Ralph
Monday, December 12, 2005, 05:11
Almost. . .
With any luck at all, I will finish painting my office on Monday. I only have four feet of wall space left, and it will be done. Then I can officially say that I have the house half painted!
Of course, as my husband pointed out Sunday evening after we had moved the desk back and he had set the computer and printer up again, it's the foot and a half in front of the wall that presents the problem. There's a five-shelf bookshelf in that area, and I'm going to have to take the books out so I can move it so I can clean behind it and then paint.
As I have found out in painting my office -- the painting is the minor part. The painting goes very quickly. It's the prep work that takes time: moving the furniture, cleaning, washing the walls. The bathroom, hallway and bedroom were not nearly so much work because there wasn't so much furniture to move. The living room will be bad, too, because I will have to take everything out of the china cabinet before I can move it, plus there are two more bookshelves in the living room.
I am really going to have to work much faster if I hope to get the house painted by the time my family comes for Christmas on December 31. I have lost two weeks to the flu. And now I'm about 95 percent certain that I have bronchitis, although I have no idea if it's a secondary bacterial infection or a primary viral infection. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it is not a bacterial infection. I'm afraid to take any antibiotics -- I keep having allergic reactions to antibiotics, so at this point, it doesn't even pay for me to go to the clinic.
On a brighter note, Sophie was a very good supervisor Sunday afternoon. She sat on the desk and watched me paint, but she didn't try to get her little gray kitten paws into what I was doing. I have enough to do as it is without washing paint off a kitten!
Randy also got the chains on the tractor tires Sunday afternoon. It's a "good job done" seeing as the weather forecast says we might get 'significant snow' toward the middle of the week. Without chains, it's difficult to push the snow around. I don't worry about that as much, though, as I do the tractor starting to slip and then sliding over the bank on the lower driveway. That's what happened one year before we had chains for the tires. We had to have a neighbor come with his tractor and pull the 460 out.
More snow would be good. Right now we've only got a couple of inches. A nice layer of snow will help keep the frost from driving down so deep.
LeAnn R. Ralph
