10 posts tagged “winter”

Woke up this morning to a beautiful blue sky and the sound of thawing ice dripping coming from the gutters.  The ice in the driveway (all 6 inches of it) was turning into mush.  Mr. Weather Dude was forecasting a balmy day in Northeast Iowa! 

The temperature got up to 41 degrees and after days of minus 30, it felt like summer.  No winter coat for me, just my fleece jacket.  No Thinsulate gloves...I drove the car bare-handed.  I opened all the windows just enough to let a little fresh air in and get rid of that stale winter air.  It was a glorious day!t

I've gotten a little sick of hearing the crunch of snow and ice under my feet and navigating through icy parking lots with a shopping cart.  (Try it sometime...it isn't easy.)  I'm already being seduced by the flower and seed catalogs and their promise of sunflowers and herb gardens.  This is the teaser, the warm few days that make us think about spring and warm dirt under our feet.  I've even begun planning the World's Biggest Vegetable Garden.

But it's only February 1st and there can still be plenty of winter to come. Husband said today that the worst snowstorm in Iowa that he can remember happened in mid-April.  I'm trying not to worry about that.  I just want to think about Spring.

It's 5:00 a.m. and it's MINUS 21 degrees.  That's not the wind chill....that's the actual temperature.  The wind chill is MINUS 50 degrees!  The weather guy on tv says you'll get frostbite on unexposed skin in 5 minutes. 

I'm afraid to go outside this morning to drive to work.  At last notice, our schools were only on  two hour delay.  They really ought to close because we have so many kids who don't have bus service and it's just too cold to walk.

(must keep repeating...."I love Iowa"...."I love Iowa"..............)

A little frigid Iowa humor (funny but not so far from the truth) -  

You know it's cold when - 

you have to chisel the dog off a lamp-post

your shadow freezes to the sidewalk

you have to break the smoke off your chimney

you have to open the fridge to heat the house 

your false teeth chatter, and they are still in the glass

the fire department advises you to set your house on fire

the snowman begs you to take him inside at night

 

I'm not one of those bloggers who gets online every day and shares every minute detail of every day.  My life are pretty mundane and I doubt anyone would really care about my usual daily routine.  So I write when I think I have something to say, which apparently isn't very often.

We're in  the doldrums of winter.  It's not as bad as last year when the snow started in late November and didn't stop until March, but it's winter nonetheless.  Cold, very cold.  I heard someone say that when the windchill was minus 35 a few weeks ago, it felt like the skin was being ripped from her face.  That about sums it up.  I don't mind the snow so much when all my activities are in town.  But we had plans to go to Cedar Rapids today to visit the bookstore and Menards (our mega home center).  Nope, that isn't going to happen - I woke up to see 7 inches of drifting snow.  Did I ever say how much I hate Iowa???  (Which I really don't.  I just hate cabin fever.)

I finally joined the ranks of the gainfully employed and I wish I could be a little more upbeat about it.  Jobs are so hard to come by here, especially the Admin Assistant/Paralegal/Office Goddess sort so after months of nothing, I applied for and was hired to be a cook at a daycare center.  I guess I should be grateful to have the paycheck since we're in such a financial mess. 

It's really not so bad. I get in at 9 and prepare a healthy (?) lunch for 50 little tykes and their teachers, wash a sh*tload of dishes, mop the floor and then I can go home.  The problem is pretty simple - I'm absolutely exhausted.  I feel like I cook a huge Thanksgiving dinner every day.  I'm 52 years old, in not so good physical shape, and each day is an intense 4 hours of moving, reaching, bending and lifting.  I get home at 1 pm and sit....and sit...and sit.  Once I recover, I do my Mom/Wife/Homemaker routine to make sure my brood is cared for and then wind up going to bed by 9 pm.  I'm not sure how long I can keep this up. All thius fun for $7.50 an hour.  For this I went to college??

One bright spot on the horizon is the lead I have on a pretty good job in the County Auditor's office.  Not secretarial (yeah!), dealing a lot with real estate issues (I know a lot about that), it pays pretty good...amd it has benefits!  Benefits...like health insurance.  Of course, I lose my proud affiliation with the 46 million uninsured, but I think I can deal with that.  Networking is a good thing and it really helps to know the Auditor personally.  The application is in and I have my fingers crossed.

If winter is slumber and spring is birth, and summer is life, then autumn rounds out to be reflection.  It's a time of year when the leaves are down and the harvest i sin and the perennials are gone.  Mother Earth just closed up the drapes on another year and it's time to reflect on what's come before. ~Mitchell Burgess, Northern Exposure, Thanksgiving 1992.

Iowa weather - it's fairly predictable. There are four seasons and they don't spend much time overlapping each other.

Winter (mid-November - March) is damn cold, plain and simple.  You know it's going to snow a lot and it's going to stay put on the ground for months.  Forget about seeing anything resembling grass, green or otherwise, until the spring thaw.  There's going to be a blizzard or two where the words "white out" are taken quite literally.  If you go out on the road during a storm, the white of the snowy sky and the white of the snow on the ground meld into one and there's no horizon to orient you.  It's all one big white mess.  Best to stay inside for the duration of the winter, brew some spicy chai tea and peruse garden catalogs.

White Out

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Spring (Late March - late May) is like a big exhale.  It starts when you notice it hadn't snowed in a week and there's some water dripping off the gutters.  The snow level in the front yard gradually drops below 3 feet and it's safe to send the kids outside to begin chipping away at the 8 inches of ice covering the driveway.  The temperatures start to inch up and up, sometimes feeling positively balmy when it hits 20 degrees.  Time to shed that parka!

swing that hammer

Actually, there's two parts to spring, the thawing out and then the greening.  Part two is my favorite time, when the snow has completely disappeared and the yard has turned into a muddy, sloppy pile of muck.  In fact, we're so happy to see the ground that I really don't mind that it gets tracked throughout the house and across all the carpets.  It's a small price to pay for seeing winter weather leave for the next 6 months. 

Siberian Iris

Summer (June - mid-September) is perfection.  Oh, there are about two weeks of gawdawful heat and humidity, predictably during the county fair in mid-July, but the rest of the summer is glorious.  Summer only lasts about 12 weeks max, so the growing season is short and intense.  Nothing goes into the ground until the end of May, and even that can be chancey, but once the plants are established, there's an endless burst of color.  It's kind of like gardening on speed - do it quick, enjoy the rush, dread the crash.  But it's great while it lasts.

pretty closeup

Fall is my favorite season (mid-September - mid-November) with days like today - mid-70's, slight breeze, little white puffy clouds, not cool/not hot/just perfect. The weather forecast calls for this to continue for at least another week. The garden beds are looking a little scruffy with the plants putting out the last few blooms.  The evenings start getting cooler, down into the 30's at times, and the heat gets turned on to rid the house of a chill as early as September.  The farm fields are transformed into a patchwork of colors - the soybeans are bright yellow and brown, cornstalks pale yellow and green.  I want to savor this season because I know that the bitter winter isn't far off.

field

I've been gone for awhile, severely neglecting my blog.  I do that sometimes, just check out and disappear.  I get depressed when I'm stressed and in emotional overload. I think I'm emerging from that, but who knows for sure.

I'm still working for the Obama Iowa campaign, although things have slowed down. We had our County Convention a few weeks ago and did really well.  We ended up with 7 delegates to send to the District and State Conventions. Iowa's final tally of national delegates will be decided at that point.  I'm looking forward to the conventions, sort of as a way to have seen this campaign to  through from beginning to end.  It's been an interesting journey and I've learned a lot about the political process.  I was also elected to a 2 year term as Secretary of our County Democratic Central Committee. Ah, the life  of a politics junkie!

My son has been very ill for the past couple of months.   His bipolar disorder has developed some psychotic overtones, both visual and delusional and this has caused his anxiety and panic attacks to escalate.  We had to have him hospitalized for 11 days, which was really hard on us all, and he came home on Monday.  Things weren't much better.

Fortunately, his case worker was able to find a small apartment designed for mentally ill adults where he can live and get some help.He's independent in that he can come and go as he pleases, bu he's required to follow a treatment plan that includes learning independent living skills and learning how to live with a chronic mental illness.

Another major stressor has been helping my mother deal with my father's recently diagnosed Alzheimer's diagnoses.   We're separated by 1000 miles  but there isn't any other family to help out.  I do what I can, such as researching support groups and preparing the various powers of attorneys. l know I'll eventually have to fly back to Virginia to tackle the hard stuff when Mom can't handle things on her own any longer.  I have a feeling I'll be there in the summer.

Now my focus has to be on finding a job, since I've been unemployed since the beginning of  October.  That's where living  in a  rural  location  is a disadvantage. Unless I  want to work on a farm, in a manufacturer plant or as a housekeeper at the nursing home, I'm out of luck.  Office jobs that I'm qualified for (manager, admin. assistant and the like) are non-existent.  The ones that exist are taken by women who'll retire from them.  No one leaves! I'm trying to think of something I can do from home.

And winter just may be over, but I may have jinxed it by saying that!  I can finally see my wet, soggy lawn and a few plants are coming up.  My vegetable garden is planned and should be able to plant by the end of May.  I'm going to attempt a technique called "square foot gardening" which is supposed to increase the yield in a much smaller area.   I'll probably end up selling my bounty at the local farmer's market...but this unemployed person could use the income.

Depressing things to write about, but isn't what life is like?  I'm a natural pessimist anyway and I like Ben Franklin's outlook. To paraphrase. I'm a pessimist so that when things go good, I'm pleasantly surprised.

Katie at the Waverly Horse Auction
My cat friends, Chloe and Willie
Snow - I won't miss this!
This is what it took to get rid of the 8" of ice in our driveway.

And what I'm looking forward to....

Garden

Mark was out there yesterday ...shoveling through 3 inches of ice in our driveway.  First I laughed, then I thought of the following

The Myth of Sysiphus - The gods had condemned Sisyphus to ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight. They had thought with some reason that there is no more dreadful punishment than futile and hopeless labor. 

Snow

Garden

I spent Saturday at a wonderful Winter Gardening Fair which was a respite from our long, cold winter.  Really, I managed last year to find ways to live with lots of snow and cold, but this year's winter has been almost oppressive.  The snow has been constant, the cold has been bone-chilling, and there have been way to many gray and foggy days.  Even turning on the lights and reading gardening books and catalogs has been of little solace.

I was surprised about 20 miles from home by a ferocious snowstorm that completely covered with road with slushy, slippery snow.  I was about equal distance from home and the fair and made the choice to forge on.  It was a white knuckles trip and I did a good deal of sliding even though I was trying to be cautious.  Two miles from the event site, the driver's side windshield wiper came off and I drove to a parking lot to fix the thing while leaning to look out the other side of the windshield.  I was a little stressed out by the time I finally arrived!

I really enjoyed the seminars yesterday and learned a lot about cold climate gardening.  The four sessions I attended were on prairie gardens, design, perennials and gardens for birds and butterflies.  While listening to the speakers I sketched out plans for my front yard garden space.

I also had fun meeting Genie, a fellow blogger. She's also a transplant from the DC area and I enjoy reading her tales of adapting to life in Iowa and her adventures with gardening.  I highly recommend you check it out her blog, The Inadvertent Gardener, at  www.inadvertentgardener.wordpress.com

I have a huge expanse of grass and more grass in my front and large side yard that I'd like to fill with garden beds.  My two major projects this year will be a fairly big vegetable garden in my south facing side yard and a butterfly garden in the front yard that will run from the street to the house.  I have high (and possible unrealistic) dreams of vine ripened tomatoes and fresh green beans and cucumbers that I'll can.  Oh yes, I plan to reserve at least one or two tomato plants for my favorite fried green tomatoes!

The soil in my yard is perfectly rich and loamy and completely rock free.  Even with my arthritic hands I can dig up the sod with little effort.  I'm anxious for the snow to melt so I can start the work.

Snowsuit

It's here.  Snow.  More snow.  A little ice.  Cold, biting wind.  Daytime "high" temperature of 10 degrees.  Did I say cold, biting wind?  Ahhhh, Iowa winters. 

I read a piece online about Minnesota winters that really could also describe winter in Iowa.

One day in winter, he said, you'll wake up and it will be snowing. You'll go to work, come home, go to bed, and it will be snowing. You'll get up the next day, go to work, come home, go to bed, and it will be snowing. Day three, you'll get up, go to work, come home, and, maybe around dinnertime, the snow will finally stop. That's what Minnesota is like, he said. It snows. For days.

Snowy-japan-1

Am I complaining?  Well, maybe just a little, but that's because I still have enough Virginia in me to half expect to have a 60 degree day smack in the middle of January.  Ain't happen' here, folks.  I doubt I'll even see a patch of dirt in my yard until the April thaw.  But there's one good thing about winter here in the heartland - it's dry.  No slushy, icy, slippery snow.  It's mostly dry and powdery and just no darn good for making snowballs. 

Now, I think I'll go make a steaming mug of hot chocolate.  With marshmallows.

Another Iowa winter has arrived.  The weather forecast is calling for flurries tonight, a "wintery mix" starting Friday night and then freezing rain by Saturday night.  Then we are supposed to get snow on Sunday.  Sounds like way too much fun to me!

Winter arriving so early is still hard to get used to.  By this time in the DC area, there's still some warmer days and usually no snow until January.  When winter arrives here in Iowa, it makes its appearance as early as October, snows a lot, and doesn't really get warm until April.  The snow cover lasted for 12 weeks last year and I got a pretty huge case of cabin fever. 

Brrrrrrrrrr.........................

King of the Hill

White Out

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