Bleak and cold

TPP is home after a bit more than 24 hrs of travel.  Hard to believe how bleak and cold the upper Midwest can be especially having left a fairly lush tropical place.  The air is so dry.  The kitty girls are certainly glad the Phactors are home; it will take them awhile to get less clingy.  Several little things need attention, that's entropy for you.  Fortunately the polar vortex came and went while we were enjoying much warmer weather in Maui and Kauai. Arriving home last evening the temperature was about 30F, but it was very damp, and being most inappropriately dressed it seemed much colder.  Snuggling cats were determined to keep us close and warm.  The ultimate price of the extreme cold weather will await an evaluation of the damage come spring.  TPP already has a long list of plants that might be rather susceptible to such cold and no one else is at fault for having planted some not quite cold hardy in zone 5 plants. It has been nearly 40 years since the area has experienced near, or beyond, rock bottom zone 5 temps (around -20 F).  This is an interesting temperature barrier for freeze avoiding plants. TPP has blogged about this several times.  

Snow & cold avoidance

Erie PA made news for the big snow storm ( 50+") they got for Christmas, but TPP is a native of the upstate NY snow belt and you simply would not believe what can happen.  A long time ago like when TPP was starting college at the SUNY college in Oswego NY, the city got a 104" snow fall in 48 hrs.  When you hear something like that is possible, you go out and buy a week's worth of supplies, and in those days that would have been beer, milk, bread, eggs, Ping-Pong balls, pinochle cards, and not necessarily in that order.  And you parked your car where it could be dug out and was safe from snow plows that don't stop for anything. 
You'd tie an old fishing rod with a flag at the top to the front bumper so people could see you at intersections.  So the news from Erie brought back some memories.  Wow, glad that was when TPP was young.
Right now here in the upper Midwest, a few inches of snow covers the ground, but the snow was followed by a high pressure front that brought along really cold temps. The night time lows are hitting a few degrees below zero, but remember on the goofy temperature scale here in the USA zero is well below freezing, out -4 F is equivalent to -20 C.  The only solution for this kind of weather is avoidance, to leave, and that's what the Phactors are doing.  (You didn't think we'd go to Florida did you?)  Just after Jan. 1st the Phactors are heading for the southern hemisphere, New Zealand to be exact.  And all the really cold weather should happen while we are inverted.  TPP wants to see some Nothofagus, the southern beech, no matter what the scientific name means, in the wild.  It's on his bucket list.

Freeze and thaw

The high today was nearly 50 F and it felt like a heat wave. The snow cover melted from most exposed areas revealing an awful lot of lawn and garden work to do. Just picking up the limbs and twigs will take a couple of hours. With daily highs predicted to be above freezing for a week or more, the shift toward spring will being rather suddenly. Better get the cold frame repaired, but finding the right double-walled polycarbonate was not easy. The original material fell apart rather quickly & one explanation was that the polycarbonate for outside use was put in upside down with the UV filter coated side down (it is one-sided). The material used in the cold frame is thinner than what you can find in the big-box home stores, but our nifty local specialty glass place could get TPP an 4 x 8 foot sheet. 
On the other hand, the chest freezer needed some repacking and so TPP found himself delving deep into the freezer. You find some surprises, good ones and bad ones. Today the finds were good including nearly a kilo of Costa Rican coffee beans. Yea!  Tonight's dinner will be an attempt to finally get rid of the last of a large roast ham that had been lurking in the frozen depths for too long. Someplace there are guidelines for how long things can be kept frozen, but generally, if it can't crawl out of the freezer on its own its probably still safe to eat. Also found some nice Spanish chorizo to use with some of afore mentioned ham to make a paella thereby killing two ancient freezer items in one dish!  At times my efficiency boggles the mind. 

Valentine's day doings

It's cold today, and getting colder, and with a stiff wind blowing so the wind chill factor is significant. The weather news people never make it clear whether they are reporting the wind chill factor or the apparent temperature with the wind chill factored in. Is the apparent temperature -13F or is the wind chill factor -13 degrees, in which case the apparent temperature is -2 F (11 F -13 degrees). At times you wonder if they know the difference themselves. Saturday morning errands occupied the morning: replenish wine supplies, stock up on groceries, get light bulbs, a new light fixture, and who knows what at a big box. You should know that TPP got Mrs. Phactor some dark chocolate passion fruit cream truffles. Yes, they (passion fruit) are her favorite, a lasting artifact of our time living in the tropics. Now she is busy making a quite magnificent Italian cream cake for a dinner party this evening. The frosting uses cream cheese and butter, which is then topped with chopped pecans (and yes, TPP chopped them this being the critical component). Now that the kitchen painting is completed replacing, or rearranging, many items has commenced, and with each change a domino effect takes place resulting in other changes. However, it does look better, and fresh. Drinking a nice Rogue mocha porter while blogging, and it is highly recommended, drinking while blogging. Now that was one too many things: beer, blogging, and black cat in lap, and while you can do any two of these three, you cannot do all three at once. Cat left to lick some cream cheese frosting from the cook's finger. And that's just all that's going on.

Winter post-mortem and triage

Well, most the glaciers have retreated, and even the mid-week snowfall has melted, and it's getting easier to assess the damage and the cause.
Privet hedge - seriously wounded by bunnies; amputation recommended - recovery probable.
Plum yew (Cephalotaxus) - terminal, COD: cold.
Dwarf Japanese white pine - seriously wounded by cold; recovery in doubt.
Young hemlock (Tsuga) - terminally wounded by bunnies; no recovery possible.
Japanese umbrella pine (Scaidopitys) - older foliage damaged by cold; recovery likely.
Dwarf scotch pine - seriously wounded, 2/3s of crown removed by bunnies; recovery likely but it won't look the same.
Sedum ground cover has been nibbled to the ground by bunnies; full recovery anticipated.
Other shrubs will require more time before it can be determined what leaves out and where it leaves out.
That's the assessment at this time. Conifers really took a beating. Not everything is so grim. A clumping bamboo of doubtful hardiness appears to be quite alive probably due to snow cover. A young Helleborus foetidus of doubtful hardiness (winter cold killed a previous one) seems to be fine, and again the heavy snow cover may have helped. Otherwise the rest of the yards and gardens look like hell heavily littered by twigs and limbs, dead perennials, leaves, and wind-blown junk from who knows where. Clean up will take quite an effort.

Brrrrr! Temperature and wind chil

It's bloody cold outside, and a recent trip to the tropics makes it seem even colder.  The temperature this morning was 1 F (-17 C) and a moderately brisk breeze contributed a -15 F wind chill factor so the apparent temperature is -14 F (-26 C).  It makes TPP's sinuses hurt just thinking about this.  Weather persons in the USA quite often screw up the wind chill reporting the factor as the apparent temperature, which today are fairly close numbers.  The apparent temperature is the temperature it feels like when the wind chill factor is subtracted from the air temperature.  They say something like "the temperature is XX and the wind chill is YY", and you have no idea what they are talking about, was that the wind chill factor or the apparent temperature once the WCF was subtracted?  In all likelihood they have no idea themselves, but it's annoying when it comes from someone whose job it is to report the weather that they don't make that clear especially when they portray themselves as a meteorologist.  However, this is quite cold no matter what.  Once in Chi-town the temperature was near zero (F) and the wind was strong enough to generate something like a -50 degree wind chill.  Walking just two blocks was torture. Temperatures like this make it a great pleasure to walk into the local coffee shoppe this AM with its steamy roasted coffee humidity and aroma. Roasted coffee just has an appealing smell, and you also get to wrap both your hands around the cup.  Nice.  A colleague was sitting there with a pile of evolution exams to grade and he has no intention of going anywhere else for quite awhile.  Such a good idea.

Spring garden assessment

This wasn't a particularly bad winter except the coldest weather was not accompanied by snow cover, so plants were quite exposed. Now that spring growth is beginning some assessment of winter damage can be made.  Two new mountain laurels took a beating; one might survive, the other is toast.  A Leptodermis also new last year looks like a loss as well. A big old Annabelle hydrangea looks like a weed whacker went after it, but it was just bunnies.  Most of the trees and shrubs that we expended water on look pretty good this spring, which shows that winter cold often gets the blame for death caused by prior drought. A dwarf hemlock looks OK, and given TPP's track record with this species (0 for 3 attempts) it's a good sign for it to just be alive.  Our nominee for most improved (at this point) is a flowering quince that got severely bunnied last year, but recovered very nicely from within it's cage.  A Pieris has better flower buds than it has had for many years. Hoping for one or two  magnolias to flower for the first time: odds on butterfly magnolia - almost certain; odds on Oyama magnolia - still a long shot. A better evaluation of the patients will be possible as the season progresses.  Bright note: Iris reticulata multiplied nicely since last year (their first), and it's such a cheerfully colorful early bulb when planted in mass.  Drought didn't matter much because they go dormant in the summer heat.