On a lighter note

First hard frost last night - actually it's still going on.  Happy to find that the porch was dry enough so it wasn't a skating rink!  Some mornings taking the dog out is more of a challenge than I'm up to in the first 15 minutes of awakeness!

The trees will now be finishing the color changes and, sadly, dropping most of their local leaves on my lawns.  If I'm lucky a wind will come up and blow them all into the woods - I'm still waiting for the year that happens.  :)

Took the leaf tour a couple weekends ago - I haven't seen color this beautiful in a lot of years.

In a change of direction I drove up through Crawford Notch - usually I go the other way for the sweeping views down the notch when you come over the top.  Got to see things in a different way (not always a bad thing).

I've stood at the top of Mt Willard at the head of the notch - it looked a lot higher from down here!

The sky was a blue not so often seen in New Hampshire - sometimes the humidity makes it all "muddy" and not so clear.  Today, not a smidge of anything but clear blue and puffy clouds.

Sweeps of breath taking color everywhere!

Even the side roads had something to offer.

And, as in life, sometimes the most wonderful sights are right under your nose -

These colors pop every year within 10 minutes of my house - and the sun makes them glow.

So the point/motto/whatever this time around is yes, you can travel around the state (or the world) looking for wonderful things to see and sometimes just turning around in your own yard will show you something breathtaking or perhaps just fun.

It's been said by those more eloquent than I but take those few seconds to look around and marvel - it rests your soul for sure.

How many does it take?

Just wondering this morning how many extreme weather events happening in places that "it never happened here before" does it take before we take preparing seriously

And:

Make sure we have enough water stored for our families for at least a week (believe me, when the government says "three days"?  I hear "at least a week")

Doesn't have to be fancy - just store it in leftover juice bottles if that's what you have!

Ways to cook that don't depend on electricity being available.  Again it doesn't have to be fancy, we just have to have it before the "event".

I saw an interview on the Weather Channel yesterday.  Woman out looking for water for her family - and that was the third day from Michael hitting the Florida Panhandle.  She was already out of food too.

Which brings me to my next suggestion (yeah, I know - it's really nagging, not just suggesting):  Have some non-perishable food that you can eat without cooking (in case you missed the part about a way to cook)

Yeah, it's not gourmet but it's food and it can, in a pinch, be eaten without cooking.

And, by the way, even if you can get out to the store, what do you think you are going to find?

Yeah..........pretty much nothing. 

Realize that most stores don't stock much - they depend on daily deliveries and in the aftermath of even a small disaster (which Michael the Storm is far from being) deliveries are often impossible for days if not weeks.

So, it's only common sense (see?  I'm giving you all the benefit of the doubt and assuming you have that valuable commodity) to plan ahead, keep extra food in the house and be able to ride out an extended period of time in relative comfort.

All this would also assume that you are able to stay in your house.  Evacuation is an entirely different subject but the most important part of it is this:

IF THE AUTHORITIES TELL YOU TO GET OUT, YOU SHOULD ALREADY BE GONE!

Don't wait, don't waffle, don't argue - LEAVE!

And on that cheery note, please get a plan in place and be ready for the next time we are visited by something "that never happens here"!

Florence

Florence:  a nice ladylike name for a real bitch of a storm.

Part of the issue with storms like this (yup, up on my soapbox again) is that when they downgrade them from a HOLY CRAP CAT 5 coming ashore to a OH WELL IT'S JUST A ONE is that people let their guard down and relax.

From time to time we all do it:  figure that if the weather guys get paid for being wrong (or at least incorrect) half the time, then the chances of them being right drop to 50%.  Forgetting that it still means they have a 50% chance of being right....not wrong.

For days and days we saw her coming - in living color from weather maps, in news clips from the states that were going to be impacted, even in e mails from friends and family telling how they were preparing (or not) for the event.

But how many of us really took in the potential of this storm?

We focused on the coast and the brightest colors...and by "we" I mean most everyone.  How many of us really looked at the spread of this sucker?  And right now even inland far from landfall, things are pretty much under water four days after she "arrived" with the water either still rising or just barely starting to recede.

My point with this short post is that while Florence may only bring us rain in New England this time, our next storm may be a direct hit on us and even if it's "only" rain (and not snow) we need to pay attention and be ready to weather it (pun intended).

So look ahead and see if you have what it's going to take to get through our storms this winter.  You know they're coming, right?

So by "that guy" who can relax while watching the weather channel cause he's already.....ready!

Loose ends - that kind of summer

It used to be I thought I had things to say, ideas to share and, face it, warnings of potential problems to come in our everyday world and, hopefully, ways to be ready for them.

Somehow this summer, it all started to either come apart or disappear!

My life is normally pretty structured: go to doggy obedience school (with the dog),  garden,  try to prepare for things not going as well as hoped and somehow in the middle of all that, keep my friends close and my not so friends at least in sight!

A long time plan to go out to South Dakota in August for 3 weeks pretty much derailed the normal flow of my world.  Not that I didn't want to go, I just actually didn't know how to plan for it - me:  the quintessential planner.

Who

Knew

Along with all the non-planning (not much garden - no canning or pickling or relishes to make) there was travel planning to do - meals en route, apps to put on my phone so we could find fuel and RV parks and not just go blundering around hoping one or both fell into our laps.

What I appear to be getting at is I haven't had what I considered to be a shareable thought for months!  Every time I had a few minutes to think, my brain turned off.

So here we go into another fall season (read: hurricane season to be shortly followed by winter) and I would be remiss in my self-imposed duties if I didn't get back on that soap box and remind you:

Lay in supplies for when you can't get to the store or when the stores are empty (check out the Carolinas right now!)

Make sure you have enough water stored so if you can't get your faucet to provide any, it's not such a big deal.  Doesn't have to be fancy, just available!

Have flashlights handy and keep your car filled at least 1/2 full of fuel - if you need to leave, you need to be able to.  And you need to be able to see your way to do it!

You do not want to be "that guy" who never gets even a little prepared and is caught with his proverbial pants down and/or up that famous creek.

This is a little scattered - ok, a lot scattered - but see if you can at least put your mind to being the one who is ready when something like a bad storm hits - just think - you could be this guy!

So, where would you be right now?

It's summer and the living is easy (so the song says) and I think most of us tend to relegate preparing for emergencies to the "bad" weather of winter.

That being said, where would you be right now if the power went out?

It doesn't really take a blizzard or an ice storm to knock out the power to all of us for a period of time that can vary from hours to days depending on the damage a storm does.

Soooooo....do you have non-perishable food stored that won't be destroyed by an extended power outage?  Better yet, do you have an alternate source of power like a generator - even a portable one that would run the essentials?   Do you have at least some water stored so you can flush and wash and perhaps even cook if you have an alternate method of cooking?

How about lighting?  It gets dark at night even in the summer so flashlights and batteries would be pretty much essential.  Don't like relying on candles for a lot of reasons!  How about a battery operated lantern?

None of these things require a degree in rocket science - just the application of a little common sense.  Without any preparation for an unexpected emergency (and are there any other kinds?) we are all apt to end up:

Yup, up the proverbial creek without a means of propulsion. 

I realize you all must think I've given up trying to get everyone in the same boat (the one WITH paddles) but as a famous general once said "I shall return" - well, I'm back!

PS  Some of you are saying that you would just go to a hotel:  that would have been easier except you forgot to keep your car full of gas...

😄😄😄

Damn if it's not still there!

June 6, 2013 I think is the date I originally mentioned this piece of litter.  I was amazed as the weeks went by not only by the fact that no one picked it up but it never disintegrated.

It got rained on and baked in the sun.

Then it got snowed on and frozen.

And it pretty much never altered at all.  Yeah, sometimes it moved around a little - perhaps a passing car made enough wind to move it or maybe a gully washer of a rain storm actually floated if a few feet.

But it never changed.

And now....it's still there.  Hell, guys, we're talking almost 2 years here!  And whoever threw it out of their car for whatever reason probably doesn't even have the same damn car any more!

I haven't been able to walk my dog up that way since probably last November.  Too much snow, not enough edge of the road and too many people in cars who don't pay any attention to the rest of the world.  So I've been restricted to the dead end road I live on.

Today was the first time I've been up that hill and there it was:  THE TRASH FROM HELL!  Still looking about the same as 2 years ago...who knew?

As I said the last time around, I'm sure that none of us go around throwing trash out our car windows.  But do we do all that we can to avoid adding to the trashing of America?  In other words, do we avoid buying/using plastic whenever we can or do we at least recycle everything we possibly can?

Not just plastic - how about cans and bottles (glass ones) and how about things like toilet paper tubes & cardboard boxes - or even making the choice to buy our eggs in a cardboard (recyclable) container rather than the cute ones you can see through (but that are NOT recyclable)?

Do any of us think ahead to disposing of packaging before we buy an item and at least look to see if there is something comparable in recyclable packaging?

Our oceans are full of trash - most of it plastic if not all of it.  Everywhere we look there is plastic - probably never going to get rid of it all but at least we, as individuals, can do our best to avoid it.

There is a place just outside of Bangor, Maine that I refer to as Mount Bangor - it's a huge manicured grass covered pile of  garbage/trash/whatever you want to call it.

And I bring it to you using the wonder of the Internet:

And I can tell you it's a lot bigger now than when this picture was taken.

So along with remembering to keep out gas tanks at least half full, how about see what we can all do to cut our "plastic footprint". 

P.S.  If you follow the link to the Sunshine Guerrilla blog on the side of my page, my niece Barbara has a ton more good ways to go green.

Even though this year....

Here it is spring again.  At least the calendar says so.  I find it hard to remember a colder more miserable March and April myself.  After the lying promise of February with it's warm weather and sunny skies, it's pretty much your basic cruel hoax to see what the weather has turned into these past few weeks.

I admit to being a Weather Channel junkie - every morning when I am down on the floor trying to convince myself that somehow these stretches and bends and so forth are actually going to miraculously fine tune my body into a lean, mean flexible machine, I watch my buddies on the TV try to convince me that they are actually in the know for at least the next 24 hours. 

(By the way, how's that for a run on sentence?)

Anyhow, it's spring no matter what the weather - the days are getting longer if not that much better and although I swore that this year I would not "garden" with as much enthusiasm as I normally do, I find myself planning where things would grow the best.

Looked at last year's calendar and find that apparently this urge to plant strikes me at about the same time each year.

So, sometime today I will plant at least the peas.  I have a lot of seeds left from last year so the germination may not be all that great.  That just means I'll plant extra and probably end up with too many plants in a small space!

On the other hand, I may plant the beets too - maybe not carrots this year although they've done so well the past couple of years it's worth the extra effort to thin the plants.

And I'll probably make a stab at some greens.  After all, otherwise that little planter will just sit there alone and lonely with nothing growing in it.

And I know that small area will produce almost more greens than I can eat up as they grow.

So, here's your spring nudge:  if you have a little bit of dirt or a couple of big pots, you too could be thinking about where to plant at least a few things.  The seeds are relatively inexpensive considering you end up with actual food that you know (hopefully) isn't covered with pesticides.  Container gardening particularly takes very little effort compared to plowing up the back 40 (even if you have a back 40) so why not take a little while now and make a plan.

I might (later) plant some hot pepper plants out in front of the greenhouse after all.  Shame to let those gardens go to waste.

And pickled peppers are really easy to do....

At any rate, you see how it goes - during the winter I swear I will be more sensible in my gardening - come spring?  Not so much!  So how about take a few minutes to think about an easy place that you can grow a few things to enjoy - be it a small plot of dirt or a couple of pots. 

And don't forget to keep your gas tank at least half full - just sayin!