Brrr… A 14º night is definitely the coldest weather this Texas girl has ever experienced. I know that there are many who scoff at our amazement when the temperature dips this low, as it’s old hat to them, but this is a major disturbance in South Texas! Any northerner (as in, north of the Red River) would have known that if you start driving in 22º weather, even with the sun shining, that you should not try to wash your windshield. They would have expected the sheet of ice that formed across my view as I semi-barreled down our one-lane country road with the sun directly in my eyes. Me? No, I had no idea. Me? It went something like… Defrost full blast, swish, swish, swish, spray. Duck down to see out the hole in the ice at the bottom of the windshield. Swish swish, swish, spray. Pull over. Wish I had one of those foreign objects, an ice scraper (I have actually seen one before.) Swish, swish, swish, spray. Sprayer is now frozen. Or empty. Curse my ignorance, using terrible words like ‘stupid’ and ‘blasted.’ Defrost full blast, swish, swish, swish… wait until the hole is big enough to see the road, and go on. Lesson learned. I did feel better, though, when I started to recount it to Honey, and he stopped me, and told me the exact same story about his drive home. See, it’s a southern thing.
Our poor chickens can’t do anything but huddle together in a big bunch and try to keep warm. You’d think they would go into the coop, where they are at least shielded from the wind, but, alas, they are chickens. They aren’t known for their intelligence.
I’ve been watching the weather reports online, and they said it wasn’t supposed to get cold until Tuesday. Monday night was to be in the 40’s, with the temperature starting to fall Tuesday morning. Not that they are ever right, anyway, but I listened. When we got up on Tuesday morning and I sent Jake out to cover the lovely lettuce that has been growing in the long-neglected garden, it was already frozen… As was the water in the chicken pen, and the water in the spigot. That means it had to be well below freezing during the night. My dad said, “Yeah, I don’t think farmers trust the weather man.” Another lesson learned. (I guess they aren’t known for their intelligence, either.) Oh, no, I didn’t! That was nasty. I take that back. Actually, weather is not something they can control (depending on who you talk to) or predict with accuracy, as it is a NATURAL occurrence (created by God in Heaven, not ‘mother nature’), so they do the best they can. I’d certainly hate to be the one that everyone blames for bad predictions, but that’s exactly what they are… guesses that turn out to be wrong almost as often as they are right. You have to give them credit for trying, and I’m sure they are very intelligent people, using as much of the knowledge and technology as they can to help us out.
As for the lettuce… the lettuce that WAS in the garden… it was a total surprise. I could see a couple green plants out the kitchen window, and I knew there was cilantro and dill out there, so I didn’t get excited. When I got out to the garden, there were several varieties of lettuce (from seeds I planted in, oh, October, the last time I was IN the garden) growing beautifully. Well, isn’t that nice? I work my haunches off in that garden all spring and summer to eek out as much as I can, babying, fertilizing, growing stinking tomato plants in the house from seed, losing 85% of what I planted, and as soon as I give up and leave it alone, it grows! In the dead of winter, it’s alive! Well, it was alive. Now, it’s dead again. I should never have walked out there. We did get to have one lovely salad with the ‘wild’ Red Romaine, so that’s better than nothing.
Ooh, chorus is letting out… time to go brave the scary teenagers to find my son, who will be joining their ranks before long. Groan. As unpredictable as the weather…
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