Sharing photos, videos, vintage images I've discovered, and -- occasionally -- commentary and thoughts from retired life and travels.

around home

Dodged an icy bullet!

January 29, 2010

We’ve been watching this storm system move our way all week – and we’ve been getting ready for it.

ice_coating_on_tree

Yesterday, the weather forecast was that we could get as a .75 inch coating of ice on trees and power lines – enough ice to be disastrous.

Fortunately, though, the ice here didn’t get more than a quarter of an inch. Fortunately, the freezing rain changed to sleet and, later, snow.

It was enough, though, that we didn’t venture out all day – no need.  We’ve got about 4 inches of snow on top of the ice.

We were ready, though, just in case.

One of the first things I did was to move the motorhome between the house and the shop.  The area where it is normally parked is next to and under several large pines.  After our close call last year, when an ice storm dropped branches, power lines and even whole trees not too far north of us, we decided that we would move it to a safer location if another ice storm was forecast for our area.

We also made sure we had enough groceries, which we did.

Just in case we lost power like we did last year, I had topped off the fuel tank in the motorhome.  I also moved our other smaller generator up to the front porch and made sure I found the cords for running power to the refrigerator, fireplace blower, computers and TV.

Despite the winter weather we’ve had this year, we haven’t lost power this season – yet!

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It’s not a lily

June 20, 2009

crinum

It’s a crinum!

Back in the 90s, a friend who was quite a scavenger had rescued plants from an old yard. I don’t know what the plans were for the yard, but the old bulbs and shrubs had to go.

She also ended up with a  huge bulb mass that she carted around to various nurseries, trying to find out what it was.  This was back before most people had access to the internet, but one place did say they thought it was in the amaryllis famil.

When she split it up, she gave some to us, though we weren’t sure what we would get out of it.

We got crinums.

Crinums are a southern classic and a favorite passalong plant, according to The Southern Living Garden Book. Seldom seen in newer housing areas, they are now found in old home site, country gardens and in cemeteries. Needing little care, “they tolerate adversity so well that some say no crinum has ever died.”

Old bulbs may weigh as much as 40 pounds. They should be divided infrequently as, once disturbed, they may not bloom the first year after planting.

I don’t think you’ll be able to find these at many home supply centers or garden centers.

day 16

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Firewood, lillies, roses… and a hole in the ground (a “photos and captions only” post)

June 18, 2009

This firewood is all from last weeks storm. There's still a little bit to be cut up yet.

This firewood is all from last week's storm. There's still a little bit to be cut up yet.

One of many lillies in our yard.

One of many lillies in our yard.

Another lilly picture.

Another lilly picture.

This rose plant has been in our yard "forever"

This rose plant has been in our yard "forever"

This hole in the ground is where the bottom of a broken section pine trunk hit. It had broken off about 25 - 30 feet in the air and, based on annual rings, was 33 years old at the point of the break.

This hole in the ground is where the bottom of a broken section of pine trunk hit. It had broken off about 25 - 30 feet in the air and, based on annual rings, was 33 years old at the location where the trunk broke during last week's storm.

All that's left to clean up of the broken section of pine that broke.

All that's left to clean up of the broken section of pine that broke.

day 14

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Storm damage and cleanup

June 15, 2009

First of all, we’re pretty much back to normal here.  We got power back night before last, with it being off somewhere over 30 hours.  We lost water pressure some time on Saturday afternoon when we went to Little Rock.  Yesterday evening, we started getting water back after 8 PM — just a trickle at first as the whole system in our area had to fill and pressurize.

Even though we live in the country, we are on a public water supply system.  The system serves parts of three counties.  We signed up for it when it first went in back in the 80s.  We had been having problems with our well pump and the water had a lot of minerals, including iron which tended to stain things.  When we went on public water,  we had talked about installing a new pump to make the well available as a backup.  However, I had already pulled the pump once and replaced it and every time I’ve thought about doing it again, I soon forgot about it.  Since we’ve only lost water pressure once in over 20 years, it’s not been an issue.

Earlier, we discovered another problem caused by the storm.  The local television stations are coming in fine over the satellite receiver.  However, virtually nothing else is.  I did a little trouble shooting and it looks like the dish must have moved a little bit.  I’m planning to go up on the roof tomorrow morning before it gets too hot and “re-point” the dish.  While I’m at it, I’ll try to get a really strong signal from both of the satellites we receive programming on.  After I moved the dish up to the roof last year, the receiver seemed to be more susceptible to the signal getting dropped during storms than it used to be.

Yesterday, before we got water back, we drove into town to go to the gym to get showers after spending part of the day cutting wood and moving downed branches.  We took a side trip on the way to town to take a look at some of the damage.  Karen took some pictures on the way in and, then again, on the way home.

Not knowing that we would be getting water back, while we were in town we bought some more bottled water.  It will be needed, though, even with water pressure back.  Until the water company gets satisfactory results from samples sent to the state lab in Little Rock, people who lost water pressure are under a “boil water” order for any water used for drinking or cooking.

We stayed home today and worked on cutting and clearing.  We’ll probably do the same tomorrow.

Pictures:

tree down on houseed

There really is a house behind and under this tree (not ours.)

downed tree moved off roaded

A lot of trees went down across roads. In most instances, the trees were cleared off the roads by the public.

cleaning up downed tree-ed

restarting the chainsaw to cut some more firewood

firewood-ed

Maple firewood

day 11

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update: everything LOOKS a lot better!

June 13, 2009

We were getting ready to start setting up the camper for sleeping in it tonight.

While I moved our smaller generator so it wouldn’t be running right outside the motorhome, Karen went in the house for something.

As soon as she went in, she noticed that something “didn’t look right.”  Then she realized the dining area light was on and wondered how I had managed to get power from the generator to that ceiling light.  It didn’t take her much longer to realize that we had power back.

Everything looks better now since we can have our normal number of lights on.  We don’t generally have that many on, but we only had a couple on while we were using the generator.  It wasn’t a power concern — I was just limiting the hassle of running more power cords.

Power has been back on for a little over an hour.  With as much damage as we saw around the area, it wouldn’t surprise me if we lost power again, temporarily, so we’ve left the tangle of power cords running through the house.  That way, if we do lose power the cords will already be laid out to the essential things, like the refrigerator — and our computers, the modem and the wireless router.

We still don’t have water. :(

Hopefully, we will have water pressure by the time we get done with working on cleaning things up tomorrow.  If not, we’ll probably stop by 3 so we can run into town to use the showers at the gym.

Unfortunately, the water tank in the camper is almost empty. :(

We won’t make that mistake again.

day 9

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Still no power and it gets even worse ….

June 13, 2009

no water and no power
image uploaded to flicker
by ziga-zaga
There is a Creative Commons license attached to this image.

We went to Little Rock today, as planned, despite the storm debris that needs to be picked up in the yard — and the tree and branches that need to be cut up.

We didn’t stay long — just did a little shopping and visited with our daughter and son-in-law before heading home.

Not long after we got home we discovered that we didn’t have any water pressure.

No power and, now, no water.

Great.  :(

So…, we headed back into town to buy some water for drinking, flushing, and, cooking.  I’m sure there’ll be a boil water order to use water out of the tap until testing shows the water is safe to drink.  At 72¢ a gallon, though, it’s worth it not to have to deal with having to boiling water.

Then we went for pizza.

We’ll be sleeping in the camper tonight — sure is nice to have a generator and a cool place to sleep as the weather has turned warm and humid.

The good news — there are lots of Entergy (local electric power company — and my former employer) crews in the area working on the power problem

day 9

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Change of Seasons 2009

February 13, 2009

signs_of_spring

Karen took this picture a couple days ago.

It’s the first we’ve seen in 2009.

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Critters in the yard… and a really strange critter occurance!

June 8, 2008

Since we no longer have any cats, we seem to have a lot more critters in our yard. Granted, we do live in the country, but we’ve never had so much wildlife actually in the yard.

Of course, it’s mostly small stuff. There are at least 5 different squirrels, a couple of rabbits and lots of birds — many of them regulars at the feeder. Deer aren’t unusual and, while it’s been a while, sometimes we see wild turkeys.

Today, though, we were sitting on the front porch reading and I thought I saw a small dog heading across the yard. I looked closer — it wasn’t a dog.

It was a fox. It trotted lazily across the yard in front of the house and across the driveway into the woods.

I know that there are foxes in this part of Arkansas. I’ve seen one two or three times over the years on my way to work.

But in our front yard in broad daylight while we’re sitting on the front porch?

What’s the chances of that?

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I’m currently working on a new Woolly Hollow State Park page.

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Offline for much of the week due to unseen STORM damage

June 6, 2008

Other than the 7 trees that we lost earlier in the year, we’ve not had any other losses — until this last weekend.

It’s a good thing that I had pre-published some posts in advance. We were off line from Sunday through Wednesday as a result of the storms that blew through here Sunday afternoon.

We noticed that we didn’t have internet access at some point after the storm was past us. It didn’t come back that afternoon and evening and wasn’t back when I got up in the morning. Assuming that it was a problem somewhere down the line in town, I went off to work thinking that it would be back up by the time I got home.

Wrong…

It wasn’t, so I called the phone company’s high speed internet support number and — after waiting forever for a service person to come on line — went through the steps of proving it wasn’t anything I could resolve from this end. At that point I was told that the company would send someone out on a service call the next day, Tuesday.

Didn’t happen…

There was no change in the modem status when I got home. It still wasn’t connecting — no matter what I did. So I called the service center again. This time the wait was very short. They promised someone would be out on Wednesday.

Finally…

The problem was an easy fix. The modem had gone out as a result of a lightning induced power surge.

On Sunday, while I was taking a shower, there had been a loud crash of thunder — close enough and loud enough that I recall feeling the jolt through the floor of the shower!

I hadn’t thought about it after that as we had no obvious damage anywhere. However, the lightning must have struck directly across the highway from us. One family lost a number of electrical components. Another family’s computer crashed and couldn’t be restarted.

We were lucky, only losing the modem.

The new modem is about 1/4 the size of the old one, which we had had for quite a few years.

It’s nice being back on line — although I was able the check some things while on break at work. There is certainly a sense of something missing when you can just go to the computer and access the internet.

I wonder what it would be like just to go without it cold-turkey for a couple of weeks or more.

Might have to try that — take a vacation from all things computer related… ;)

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Tornado Warnings by Phone, Email, and Sirens Wailing in the Distance — Storm Shelter, Here We Come!

May 10, 2008

Another rough day and night for parts of Arkansas.

After nothing but weatherman chatter on the local TV stations, we had tuned the sound out.

Then, at about 7:15 P.M. our home phone started ringing. Less than two seconds after that, my cell phone was ringing — I forgot I had it in my pocket. Then we heard Karen’s cell phone ringing in the living room. Off in the distance the sirens were starting to sound.

When I answered my phone, it turned out to be the head meteorologist from the Little Rock TV station we normally watch. They offer a notification service — for a small annual fee — that will call your phones and send you an e-mail for the storm warnings that you select for your local area. We had selected to be notified for tornado warnings — and that’s what this was.

A storm cell with a possible tornado was heading our way and it was forecast to be here at 7:45.

A full 30 minutes advance warning!

I went and checked to storm shelter. It’s located inside the addition that we’ve been working on forever. We have to go outside to access it, though, as we haven’t got an opening between the house and addition, yet.

The storm shelter is in good shape and, 15 minutes before the storm cell was due, we headed to the that way. We took jackets, our laptops, the portable hard-drives with all of my photos, Karen’s purse, my wallet, our budget book and three flashlights. I had already put a couple of camp chairs down there.

About 7:45, it looked like the cell was going north of us, so I went back in the house to check what they were saying on TV. They showed the cell in our area, with the heaviest part of it to the north, but said that the part right over us was showing rotation, so I headed back to the shelter, where we waited for another ten minutes.

It turns out the cell went about 7 miles north of us and then died almost completely away over the next 30 minutes.

This is the first time that we actually used the shelter. Even though nothing came of it, it is comforting to have it available — just in case.

Especially the way things have been going this year!

I’m not looking forward to tomorrow’s news. We already know that Stuttgart, down south and east of Little Rock, was hit and that there are several fatalities from the storm system over in Oklahoma.

I’ve heard more than one person say that they ready for the hot, stagnant days of summer — something that few around here really look forward to.

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