December 22, 2008

Only two shopping days til Chrismas.  And unfortunately, we're still snowed it.  Even more so since the snow plow came through our neighborhood and built up a 3 foot snow wall in front of our driveway.  Great for folks driving along the road, but impossible to navigate if you live on the street.  And I mention the shopping days because we had things to do today.  Meaning we had to try to get out, take the kids to my folks, and shop for stocking stuffers. 

Funny story.  I figured with my VAST experience with tons of snow, that I could get by with just tire track-width clearing would be fine.  Unfortunately, I didn't consider the van getting high centered in compact snow and get stuck.  So instead of an hour of work to completely clear the driveway, it took twice that to dig the snow out from under the car.  Thankfully when I was finishing up, a neighbor came over and helped me push the car off the hill and even helped dig out the rest.  Rather nice of him. 

Needless to say the shopping was less than perfect, and the roads sucked outside of the really main roadways and the freeway.  Once the sun went down we had a real challenge with bad traffic and compact snow and ice.  Thankfully when we got to my folks to pick the kids up, they fed us a freshly made spagetti diner (my mom makes a cauldron of sauce twice a year).  Then, as folks were chatting, I went out and shoveled my folks driveway so my dad could get out (his finger's broken).  My brother had already shoveled my mom's car out.  So now they're golden.

So, since yesterday we got more snow, but I thought I'd share my hoop covers.  I left most of the snow on the covers to insulate them a bit.  I hear that works.  Who knows. 



That one was the one without the horizontal support (it fell down and I didn't get a chance to put it back up before the first snow hit).  As you can see, the flag-pole-stand pipes actually worked well to hold it up and support it.  But as you can see the openings are burried in snow, sealing it better, but keeping me from checking it out.



Here is my snow cave.  The cross bar is still in this one, and it's also the one that has the temperature gauge in it (currently it's 29 degrees inside at 10:30).  The bright side of all this cold and snow is I bet the carrots will taste like sugar.  Here's to hoping the lettuce, spinach and peas are still edible.

Lastly, the little bed.



It sure looks funny under all that snow, but I'm sure the cauliflower are doing just fine.  That is, if they don't mind not getting water for over a week. hehe

The funny thing is if you look behind the small bed at bed #4, it has only two or three inches of snow accumulated on it.  Though in the rest of the yard we have nearly a foot.  Odd, but fine by me. 

Tomorrow I'll share my compost bins.  I thought I would reverse them, but maybe folks would be more interested in my garden than my compost, hehe.  By the way, I've heard that we may get more snow before Christmas, but regardless there's a good chance we'll have our first white Christmas in forever!  The kids won't remember it, but we'll take plenty of pictures to help them.  It was always a big deal to me growing up, so it'll be fun to share it with my boys!

Enjoy your garden and stay warm!