Frozen February

January may have flown by, but February seemed to go on forever.....at least while we were frozen in. That brief bit of snow we had last month was just a starter apparently, as this month we had a dose of real winter.  

This "cold snap" started out as a crystalline wonderland, with fences and tree limbs sparking in their coats of ice. The boys were here for the first day of the icy weather and they had a ball exploring the ice encased tree branches, pulling chunks of ice off of the frozen bird water pots, and admiring the various textures of ice. As we toured the yard there were a few science lessons too, like, why does the heater (heat pump) have ice on it? Papaw explained that, and soon we all went inside to defrost our hands! 

Over the next couple of days the weather turned much colder and much less picturesque.  Our specific location hit 4.8 °F at 7 a.m. on the 16th. We had two days of extreme cold, and soon after, it warmed slightly and we began to have snow, which was much more picturesque than the ice. The dogs really had never seen snow as deep as we had with this storm, and they thought it was great for romping in, though they never wanted to stay out for very long. 

It was interesting to go out early in the morning while the snow was fresh and check out the various tracks..... birds mostly, and small mammals. Watch decided to follow one set of tracks into the woods - odd little feet with something dragging, which after consideration we decided was probably a cat or skunk. We have all manner of small critters living in the bushes at the corners of the property so it's hard to know for sure. 

As the demand for heat increased the electric grid suffered and we began rolling blackouts, that stressed the pumping capabilities of our community water supply, and then that failed too. Yea - back to the "good old days", preparing meals by the light of candles and lanterns,  buckets of water for washing up and stored water for cooking. 

Actually, many people had it much worse than we did, so not complaining too much on this end!

I'm sure the folks up in the Dakotas and other northern states think we're wimps down here, but really, no one here has the gear necessary to be really comfortable when the temperature hits 4 degrees! 

Central Texas homes aren't adequately insulated for one thing (we usually want to keep the heat OUT, not in!) and no one, except maybe a few hunters, has clothing that's suitable. 

We won't even talk about how to drive on snowy roads, and what to do to be prepared for really cold weather. Even tow trucks are often not equipped for the road conditions we had. 

Our years in Oregon, particularly eastern Oregon, where we lived near Crater Lake, gave us a pretty good background, so other than having the electricity out for a time, and the subsequent loss of water service, we weren't terribly inconvenienced.

We had plenty of stored water, and our rain storage tanks came in handy too. Of course, we didn't have to get to work like many people did, so we just hunkered down, enjoyed the view of sparkling snow and ice covered trees outside the windows, and tried to stay warm. Defrosting the bird water pans 2 or three times a day was one of the primary tasks. Not only did they ice over quickly, the ice was thick! almost two inches thick on the coldest days. 

In preparation for the coming "cold front" Steve had managed to get both of our generators working and weatherproof the RV, and he did everything he could think of to protect the household plumbing.  All his efforts paid off. We had no broken pipes when everything thawed out. Apparently not many people could say that. The hot topic of conversation on our neighborhood Facebook group was plumbing parts. People who were working on their own plumbing were trading them around and giving tips as to which, if any, hardware store in town might have what was needed. Plumbers were in hot demand too, as some of the issues were more complicated. 

The temporary loss of water and power utility services has certainly given all the talking heads a lot to chew on, and they are taking advantage of it, with everyone pointing fingers at everyone else. I'll let others take care of that. Our challenge is cleaning up the split trees and shrubs, and the puddles of mushy frozen foliage that used to be our landscaping. 

All the gardening pros advise "wait two weeks before you do anything" to see whether something is really dead or not. Ug. It's pretty obvious for some things, and having to look at dead twigs for two weeks is rather depressing. Every one of our large prickly pear cactus clumps shed a large number of pads. I don't know if it was the weight of the snow, or simply that they became too brittle to hold up the weight of the pads when they froze. Two of our favorite large shrubs had major limbs break beyond hope of recovery so they've already been taken care of, now there's just a broken cedar tree to tend to. 

Even so, our week of winter (that felt like a month) has quickly moved us into spring. We had a high of 81 just a few days after those days of intense cold!  Now we're back to more normal weather in the 70-50's during the day.  The balmy weather has all the birds singing like crazy, so it even sounds like spring!  We had masses of robins in the yard just a few days ago, busily harvesting worms or insects in the grass.

My wish last month to have the cedar wax wings hang around was granted. They're still a nervous lot, seldom sitting still long enough to get a good photo, but I've managed to determine that the flocks that are massing around the edges of the watering pans are juveniles, not the adults I photographed in January. 

My first clue was that they were smaller than the ones I saw in January, and then when I finally got the binoculars on one I noticed they didn't have the little red wing tips. It turns out that feature shows up during their second year. 

They're such funny looking little things, with their bandit masks and bright yellow tail tips - quite striking close up but very plain from a distance. They don't nest in Texas, I've learned, so the flock of young ones will probably be moving north soon.  

Every time I approached a window to take a photo they jumped and the whole flock instantly headed for the tops of the trees. It's characteristic of the waxwings to roost high up in trees. . . safe, but not helpful for photos! 

They often had to fight for space in those trees, as the whitewing doves and robins had also moved in - their large numbers made for a huge increase in demand for bird seed and water. It's amazing how much food and water a flock of songbirds can consume. The squirrels help do away with all that bird seed and water too. They pretty much hid out while the weather was so cold, but once it warmed up  they made up for lost time. 

Now that things have defrosted and the mud has dried up a bit we're on to the garden planting and tree pruning stage of spring. Planning a summer trip is also in the works! 

Doodlebugs!

We've been hitting record temperatures here. . . 107 yesterday, so staying in where it's cool and blogging seems like a sensible thing to do, so here's your nature lesson for the day!

Before we left the ranch here we had worked long an hard at battling fire ants, and I even posted on this blog about them.

After arriving here a few days ago I began noticing these little cone or funnel shaped dents all over the place, especially in the soft soil and I was afraid this was something similar.
Judging by the numbers, I wasn't looking forward to having to do something about them. 'Turns out they are my best buddies in the war against ants!!

Antlions are the larva stage of lacewings, which are sort of miniature dragonflies. The funnel shape is a sort of trap. When the doodlebug/ant lion senses a small insect in the funnel, it pitches dust up and the falling dust drags the hapless insect down to the antlion's jaws. Here's a short video snowing the 'lion in action (proof somebody else is fascinated by these strange things!) These little guys probably won't consume a large enough number of fire ants to endanger the species, but any reduction in numbers is welcome!

Here's one Texan's version of how the common name came about.  I found this comment from someone up in Austin on a bulletin board discussing garden insects. "Take a broom straw and when the cone is being made, insert the straw, twisting it slightly into the bottom of the cone. If you 'doodle around' long enough, the bug will latch onto the straw and you can ease him to the surface and get a look at him." I tried it with no success, but then it was 107 degrees outside at the time, so maybe the antlion was smarter than I am and decided to stay in where it was cool.

This morning the dogs and I were out poking around in the yard when I noticed activity in some of the holes, so I tried "doodling" with a straw again - still no luck. Then I grabbed a teaspoon and dug quickly in one that looked active. Bingo! This isn't a great pic, but you get the idea. They're creepy looking little things, even if they are less than 1/2 inch long.

Now that this mystery is solved I can go back to battling the weeds!

The Triffids are back!

Giant Ragweed

Well, they aren't really Triffids, as the ones in the movie "The Day of the Triffids" are entirely fictional, but the giant ragweed's scientific name is Ambrosia trifida, so I figure that's close enough. 

Normally these devils are only two or three few feet tall, but in wet years, like this one, they get a little "above themselves" and try to take over the place. This is only a small patch, just behind that six foot ladder I put there for scale. You see, when people in Texas talk about how big things are here it isn't bragging, it's just fact!

When we left in early June this area was full of wildflowers about 3 feet tall. This is what a lot of water and heat will do when you aren't around to tame the monsters. These plants are just about to start making seed, so one of the items on my to-do list is getting them chopped down before they do so. The old DR mower will be able to take these down in no time, the only concern is, how many bug bites am I going to get in the process??

Container gardening

Our place here in Hill Country is situated pretty much on rock - if it isn't rock, it's caliche clay, which is like glue when wet and like rock when dry. In other words, this is not a gardener's paradise, at least as far as soil quality goes. So, I thought since we are only here for a short time I'd put together a couple of little container gardens that we can move to Kendra's house when we leave. We'll see how that plan works.

In the meantime I'm harvesting Swiss chard and herbs, and now, a few weeks after I planted them, the tomato plants each have several fruit set on. So far the grasshoppers are ignoring them. The little beasts do seem to like marigolds however. The marigolds I planted around the edges, hoping for nice bright color for the wedding, have gotten smaller every day, some disappearing totally overnight. There are also large chunks out of the morning glory leaves, and I suspect grasshoppers in both cases. I've found large caterpillars on the wild grape ivy, but none on these two plants. Here are the pots as they looked a week ago, so they're even more filled out now.
There are morning glories in each planter that are now twining up on the porch railings, and hollyhocks creeping over the front edges. The planters are just storage tubs with drainage holes drilled in the bottom. I feed weak liquid fertilizer at least once a week so the plants are really taking advantage of the warm days and growing quickly.