Friday, January 11, 2013

Freeze Warning - It Is Done

The most dreaded time of year for a person who has a property full of plants and trees will occur in the next 106 hours.  That's the freeze warnings that are extended from tonight until mid Tuesday morning.  Low's in the mid 20's in outlying regions, low 30's where I live - though I am up at a higher elevation than downtown and at the base of a mountain, so I suspect cold temps can hit here more easily.

Of course, I covered plants in the bad freeze we had some 3 years ago - and definitely many of my plants still sustained damage, but they all came back.  I actually stood out there and prayed over the whole lot of them not 30 minutes ago and asked the Lord to protect them in whatever way that I obviously cannot.

There are many plants and trees that are not covered - I do not have that many covers even though I have been accumulating them for some time (4 large lawn and leaf bags full of them), but there many trees I cannot cover anyway.  Those are mostly the Sissoo trees and in that last deep freeze we had 3 years ago, they all "died" - they appeared dead anyway - but came back to life in the spring.  I also deep watered all plants 2 days in a row now, the experts say that is another way to help them through the cold.

I can only wait now and hope.

Meanwhile, I was Googling vegan diets.  LOTS of sites on that subject.  Lots of different takes on it, too.  A plant based diet only; a plant diet with eggs allowed; a plant diet with diary allowed and a plant diet with both eggs and diary allowed.  I haven't decided what to do, yet.  I haven't done a no-meat fast in ages and NEVER for 21 days.  The church-wide fast starts at sundown on Sunday.

But I do figure on lots of oatmeal; some amount of peanut butter; obviously lots of salads of varying kinds and even meatless spaghetti.  I can actually make that taste pretty good - at least for me - with lots of sauce with chunks of tomatoes in it.  Whether I allow myself to drink milk and have yogurt remains to be decided.  I like eggs, but I don't really thinks it's all that good to eat too many of them, so even if I do eat some eggs, it will be very limited.  I think "true vegans" don't like eggs because they come from an animal.  I love animals, I love eating them  : ) ...........especially cows; pigs and chickens.

It's Friday evening.  Oh what I wouldn't do to have a fireplace in this house.  I can get free wood as much as I need.  At work, ductile iron pipe is delivered on trucks with flatbed trailers and uses either pine or oak board.  Big, thick boards.  The oak boards burn for a long time, so the contractors who take them home or to the mountains to burn them tell me.  But I don't really want to put a large hole in my roof to have a vent for it, I would have to pay a contractor to do that, just not in the cards right now.

Eerily quiet evening.  Tenants are gone. My son is wherever. Mark is in the hospital, by now having had the surgery and now 2 weeks of recovery.  Lynnette undoubtedly over there with him.  A good time to get in the Word, seek the Lord and pray.

What is the worst thing that can happen in the morning, getting out of bed and doing your daily rituals?
I about had 10 cows.
I haven't gone to work without having had taken a shower first - I don't even remember when the "last" time that occurred, probably never but I couldn't say that for sure.
The water got up to a temp I would call cool, not even warm but not as cold as the cold water is.
Then I remembered: Mark is going to the hospital for 2 weeks, probably drained out the water heater.
Or is there something wrong with it?  Well if there is, it isn't showing in the faucet I just checked: water heating up again.

Too late.  I just looked at the forecast: the high today is only going to be 50 degrees! Yikes!  That's my version of a cold winter's day!  I wish I had a fireplace!

Ummmm, so anyway.  I didn't get the blankets and sheets out yesterday, it was too late in the day and it was getting dark and anyway, after checking the forecast, it's tonight it's going to get cold, allegedly anyway, not last night.  I watered my plants nicely instead. They claim well watered plants will withstand cold better than no-so-well-watered-plants.

I dunno, but I may run strings of Christmas lights on some of the plants - Honeysuckles - to help create a bit more warmth when considering running them through the plants and then covering the plants with blankets/sheets.

This is pretty much a yearly affair, but temps that low are not really that common.

Well anyway, I am preparing myself for a Daniel fast.  Praying, reading the Word - and admittedly - eating a lot of meat just before it starts! LOL.  3 weeks without meat!  I have never done a Daniel fast that long.  I will have to prepare food in advance for work - you can't buy a salad without meat at any of the restaurant chains that I know of save Subway.  Oh.  Well maybe I will be eating at Subway for the next 3 weeks - preparing salads and such for work every day will get old in a fast hurry.

Okay, so that's en-queue - just sort of thinking about that one because it's soooooo long without any meat.  I remember it was Daniel that was in the King's service in training that didn't want meat and only wanted a vegetable diet and challenged his keeper to give him 10 days of vegetables only and see if, after those 10 days, he didn't look better than those that were in training that were on the "King's diet".  I would be interested in finding out what, exactly, they had them dining on.  But, a vegetable diet is a - vegetable diet.  Lol.

Well, Friday and..........of to work.



Well yesterday certainly didn't turn out like I expected.  I was sitting in that truck yard (Brownsville) waiting for a trailer to show ...