There is, however quite a lot of other land to be maintained around our house, and the largest percentage of that is lawn. Well good for us, we’ve managed to get a lawn care service to come around and trim our lawn every couple of weeks, and while they’ve only come once, the lawn is definitely looking more impressive by stages already. Jessie’s a bit of a lawn nut, so she’s enjoying the improvements a great deal. We’ve also been running the sprinklers as necessary, but that’s quite nice because we can program it to run at 4 in the morning, so the sun is down and the water can get down and do its job before the sun comes up to evaporate it all.
And then there’s our little garden planters. We’ve got a couple of areas around the front of the house that came pre-planted with several perennial and several annual flower types, and since it’s currently ‘plant stuff’ season, we’ve taken to dusting up our front yard with some new plants. Jess did most of the work, going off and getting some pretty annuals to clean up our landscape. There are definite vestiges of previous plants in the area, and we’re letting them grow because, quite simply, we don’t know what they are. There’s a good chance they’re just weeds, but we’ll give them a chance before uprooting them and replacing them with something much more colorful.
I’ve actually been taken by a fancy of growing my own potted trees. When the lawn care guy came around to check out our plot, he pointed out several tiny plants that had come up around our Live Oaks, and then reached down and plucked one from the earth, acorn and all. Turns out our trees have been germinating just fine, and have dotted the landscape with little babies. Well before he came around to chop everything to a uniform height, I decided to rescue a couple of saplings. I’ve currently got them in little pots, and they’re still green, though no larger, so I assume they’re at least doing okay. I’ve got a couple of larger, mostly wider, planter pots that I plan to fill up with potting soil and transferring the trees to to see if they’ll still grow. I’m also planning to drop in some random wildflowers in there to see if they’ll grow. I’m off season for that, unfortunately. I have seeds, and you’re supposed to plant those in the fall so that they germinate over the winter and bloom...well *now*, really. But that’s what these little pots are for. They’re experiments. I just want to see what happens. And if the whole thing goes belly up, I can just till my little potting plants and start over. Experiments.
And if you’re wondering why there haven’t been any pictures yet, it’s because I’m not done storytelling. So hush.
The other experiment I wanted to do was to germinate some burr oak seeds. Jessie’s mom actually sent, with her birthday pack, a quartet of what are supposed to be burr oak acorns. I thought, well, no harm in putting them in some pots and seeing if they turn into something alive. Maybe I can get some more pots for them. Well I set them outside in little pots, and when I got home from work that afternoon, I discovered that squirrels had ransacked my nuts and taken them off somewhere. They were already buried! I just imagine them trotting around, “I smell acorns! They’ve got to be around here somewhere...” and then discovering my hidden treasures. Sillier still, they continued to harry the same set of pots that had held the acorns for another few days, just in case I had decided to try again.
Yesterday, Jess and I were relaxing upstairs in our room, lying in bed, when we heard the pitter-patter of rain on our roof. We love this, let me tell you. Few things are as comforting as know that you own a structure that can keep the weather off of your head. After that, we heard a couple of distant crashes of thunder. Also very exciting. Then, as we continued to lie there, the rain got quickly much heavier. “Pap pap pap tap tap tap whiiiiiirrrrr smack smack smack pitter patter thud thud THUD.” What? Rain isn’t supposed to go thud.
We opened our windows, and we saw this:
That’s not my video. I had my camera off. It’s someone else posting the same storm, though, and I’ll definitely take some thanking now for taking the time to find one without a constant stream of surprised cursing.
Yes, that is golf-ball sized hail falling from the sky. Jess and I watched in stunned amazement as the stuff came down. It bounced pretty heavily off our windows a few times, but nothing has cracked. There are, however, a few notable sources of damage.
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| From Hail Storm, March 25, 2009 |
This is the only ‘wow’ sort of damage I’ve found. I’m pretty sure it’s just cosmetic, but it’s impressive regardless.
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| From Hail Storm, March 25, 2009 |
The most obvious victim, unfortunately, has been our fledgeling garden. Several of our small flowers were treated quite roughly by pieces of ice falling at terminal velocity. Can’t imagine why.
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| From Hail Storm, March 25, 2009 |
The thing I’m most worried about is the roof. I’m actually going to go check our attic after I post this, and maybe call up our insurance company to see that they will do. This sort of craziness is, after all, exactly what we have them for.
Oh, and you should check out this link to the rest of the pictures I took of crazy hail all over our house. Someone let me know if that link doesn't work.
Well that marked the end of that day. I was planning to head off to Wing Tsun, but, predictably, class was cancelled. I’m just glad we weren’t on the freeway when this hit.
Micro News!: Jessie’s sister and her boys come to visit today. We’re going to pick them up this afternoon and they’re going to stay and watch Jessie play Roller Derby on sunday. I got some nasty road rash when roller blading around last week. It’s healing up, but is still obnoxious and *really* ugly looking. Jess took pictures, I’m not posting them. Ew. And yes, I was wearing my protective gear. It would have been *much* worse otherwise. I was off of travel for a while, but now I’m back on. I’ll be traveling from April 2 through the 7, which is shorter at least, but I’ll be supporting a few 22 hour work days. Yum.
Enjoy your weather.
-N
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