Sean and I have been taken back in time to when people didn't have electricity or running water. Our power has been out since Sunday at 2pm due to the hurricane category 1 winds that hit our area for about 4 hours on Sunday. We were quite lucky that the house and our trees survived which was not the case for a lot of people. Our neighborhood looked like a war zone. Tree and limbs down all over the place. A few blocks away a tree hit a house and damaged the roof. Another tree crushed a shed. I'm going to try and take some pictures this evening of the damage.
Gas stations are running out of gas and raising the price to 4.30 a gal. Luckily I have 1/4 of a tank which should last me until early next week. Tonight I need to clean out our frig and freezer. Some of the stuff we saved by taking to a friend's that has power and an extra frig. We also filled up quite a few bottles and some pitchers of water so we have fresh water to drink. If this lasts much longer I may be walking down to the creek to get buckets of water to flush the toilets.
Last night the Brinks security system, that was installed in the house by a previous owner, but we don't use, started going off at 5:00 am this morning. My guess is the battery was running out of power. We couldn't figure out how to get the cover off to begin with. It takes a square something. Luckily when I went to the garage to the socket set, I saw the control box in the laundry room. When I got the cover off I couldn't figure out how to disconnect the battery. However thanks to my Dad I knew to unscrew and pull out the wires to disconnect them from the circuit board. Now at this point you may be asking yourself why I was doing this and not Sean.....well funny story the cat knocked Sean glasses off the night stand while I was gone (in Colorado) and the dogs chewed them up. So Sean was basically blind. Anyways I'm frantically unscrewing and disconnecting wires and of course it is the last one that turns the damn alarm off! I'm of right mind to write Brinks an e-mail and state that as part of their disconnection they disconnect everything!!!! Bastards!!!
However I'm not really complaining or mad because we were very fortunate and I know the power company is doing everything they can to restore power as fast as they can. Apparently they had sent crews down to Texas to help those people who are probably worse off then we are. On the plus side this will be a story to tell for years, I'm saving money on electricity, and bonding with neighbors. On the downside work has power! oh well.
We are surviving with the grill, flash lights, and pb&j!!!
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Monday, September 1, 2008
Latest garden scoop
I've harvested and eaten and given away a whole bunch of tomatoes. I won't be getting as many as I had originally thought because the mites really got my plants. A couple of plants just died but the rest are hanging in there and I seem to have gotten the mites sort of under control. The cucumber plants only ended up producing a few. I think it got to hot for them. They keep wilting.
The melons (cantelope and watermelon) aren't going to produce anything edible. The cantelope kept getting eaten by the cucumber beetles and I think got a fungus as well as being crowded out by a zucchini plant. The watermelon's leaves suddenly started curling up and turning yellow and looking wilty. I think it might be bacterial wilt or something else. Either way it is quite sad since I did have a few baby watermelons. One of they appears like it might be getting bigger but it could all be in my head. The plants aren't dead yet but struggling for sure.
The green beans were and are delicious. They appear to be flowering again so I might get some more before it freezes!!! Oh and most exiciting I have corn. I unfortunately picked two of them too early, but there are still 6 or so still out there. I'll let you know how it tastes. Second most exiciting thing is my green peppers appear to be starting to turn!!! My thai hots have been turning for a little while now. In fact I need to go out there and harvest some of them. I wonder how spicy they will be.
I made salsa tonight from all my different types of tomatoes. I got a hot pepper from my CSA and decided to add some of it because Sean thought it was a little bland. It is good thing that I only chopped up half of the pepper (serrano I think) and then only put half of the chopped up portion into the salsa. Now it has a bit of a kick. I think I got a seed during one of my tasting because it burned the back of my throat. It is melding in the refridgerator until tomorrow. Hopefully it won't get too much spicier or I will have to add more tomatoes or something.
I'm going to try and make pasta sauce later in the week and maybe can some chopped tomatoes. I got quart sized canning jars from my next door neighbor. Tomorrow I'm going to look at good will for some pint sized ones. I want the smaller ones for canning jam. I've got a whole bunch of blackberries that I want to turning into jam. Apparently you can make small batches of jam in your bread machine (if it has a jam setting). We'll see how it goes!
The melons (cantelope and watermelon) aren't going to produce anything edible. The cantelope kept getting eaten by the cucumber beetles and I think got a fungus as well as being crowded out by a zucchini plant. The watermelon's leaves suddenly started curling up and turning yellow and looking wilty. I think it might be bacterial wilt or something else. Either way it is quite sad since I did have a few baby watermelons. One of they appears like it might be getting bigger but it could all be in my head. The plants aren't dead yet but struggling for sure.
The green beans were and are delicious. They appear to be flowering again so I might get some more before it freezes!!! Oh and most exiciting I have corn. I unfortunately picked two of them too early, but there are still 6 or so still out there. I'll let you know how it tastes. Second most exiciting thing is my green peppers appear to be starting to turn!!! My thai hots have been turning for a little while now. In fact I need to go out there and harvest some of them. I wonder how spicy they will be.
I made salsa tonight from all my different types of tomatoes. I got a hot pepper from my CSA and decided to add some of it because Sean thought it was a little bland. It is good thing that I only chopped up half of the pepper (serrano I think) and then only put half of the chopped up portion into the salsa. Now it has a bit of a kick. I think I got a seed during one of my tasting because it burned the back of my throat. It is melding in the refridgerator until tomorrow. Hopefully it won't get too much spicier or I will have to add more tomatoes or something.
I'm going to try and make pasta sauce later in the week and maybe can some chopped tomatoes. I got quart sized canning jars from my next door neighbor. Tomorrow I'm going to look at good will for some pint sized ones. I want the smaller ones for canning jam. I've got a whole bunch of blackberries that I want to turning into jam. Apparently you can make small batches of jam in your bread machine (if it has a jam setting). We'll see how it goes!
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