Spoke too soon

About that "no monsoon this year" thing.... Ug. The past two weeks we've had on and off bouts of severe storms, complete with torrential downpours and high winds. My poor garden is suffering and my backyard is a lake.

My neighborhood is just not good for drainage at all. Yesterday morning, as I was leaving for work, a HUGE severe thunderstorm moved through and turned my neighborhood streets into rivers. Literally. Rivers. I drove through higher water than I should have and almost floated away! I got washed up onto a curb and had to drive over some downed tree limbs. That was on a street just two blocks south of me. I'm soooo lucky my street doesn't flood like that.

Coming soon: pictures!

I realized the other day it's been a good long while since I last posted pictures of what my house actually looks like. My house is really starting to feel like a home, with the addition of artwork (local and independent!). So sometime this week I'll take some pictures and post them. Oh, and of my yard too.

Speaking of the yard, I am deep in the process of researching square foot vegetable gardening.



I honestly don't know if I'll have the time or energy this spring to get it all set up in time to plant; our last frost here is April 15 and seeds would need to go in the ground no later than two weeks after that. But, maybe! The hardest part would be improving my soil. I'm learning about soil composition, and as expected in most Okie locales- my soil is super, super clayey.



(On the right is an example of clayey soil- pretty much what my backyard's soil looks like, and on the left, an example of "amended" clayey soil- with compost and organic matter added in. P.S., I'm beginning to feel like Dwight from The Office with my knowledge of *soil types.* Maybe I'll grow some beets?)

I would need to really work the soil down to a depth of a foot, adding in compost and other organic matter, to make trying to grow vegetables even worth the effort. I read in one book that soil is considered clayey when water stands on it for several hours after a rainfall. Several hours? Try several days! The southwest and northeast corners of my backyard can hold standing water for up to three or four DAYS after heavy rainfall. Of course, I won't be trying to grow vegetables in those locations, but it's probably indicative of my soil's overall quality. I don't understand how my big middle garden flourishes as it does. The previous owner must have improved that bit of soil before planting all that stuff.

In semi-related backyard news, severe weather season has finally began in Oklahoma. I love it. :) Just so as long as the hail, tornados, and flooding rainfall stay away from my house.

Finding the good things

1. Yard work. With the aid of my bestest guy friend, I FINALLY finished cleaning up from the ice storm this weekend. The ice storm was three months ago. And finally, save for one huge dangling branch, there are no visual reminders of it in my yard. This is a good thing, for my mental health. Now if I can just stop freaking out every time the electricity flickers during a severe storm (hey, you'd freak out too if you went 120+ hours without).

1a. Also, I got my hands in my garden for the first time this spring, and YAY! I didn't kill everything last year! I was so terrified that my neglect and abuse (and the monsoon season we suffered last year) killed off all my perennials. Not so! My rudebeckias and coneflowers are already emerging, as well as my day lilies! Even my miniature rose bushes look healthy! The only thing not emerging yet are my cannas, but I've read that those are slow to come up here in Oklahoma. So maybe my garden will be absolutely beautiful again this year, like it was last:



My big project in the yard this summer is going to be a vegetable garden. I'm determined to grow my own vegetables. It remains to be seen whether or not this will involve building a raised bed (a.k.a., lots of hard work), or just working out of a few containers. Either way, I plan to grow tomatoes, peppers, green beans, okra, and zucchini. I'm still evaluating my site and planning the layout.

2. This.


Yes, I'm a member of "the cult." And I highly recommend this etsy seller! She included a bonus print, for free! So I got the one in blue AND the one in yellow. How nice. It will hang in my dining room, once I get a nice mat and frame.

3. Planning paint for the kitchen. I'm so excited about working with my kitchen in any way I can- who cares if I'm poor and can't afford new cabinets or a new dishwasher yet! I can paint, and I can re-contact paper the shelves and drawers.

4. My cat. A.k.a., my sweet kitty boo. My boo-bear. My Dante. He turns two years old this Wednesday! I love him dearly, and overall, he's a pretty good cat. Most of my friends say he is the BEST cat they've ever met. Even my friends who normally hate cats *love* my Dante. Happy birthday, boo-bear!!

(here he is passed out on his catnip scratcher, shortly after I moved in last year)

5. Spring time, which leads to summer time, and Oklahoma sunsets.

(as seen on the drive back from Okie Noodling last June)

6. Approaching one year. The end of April will mark the one year anniversary of closing on this house. Looking back at all the changes I've made so far makes me feel good. I feel proud of myself. I don't often give myself credit for my accomplishments, but damnit- I'm 25, single, and I OWN THIS HOUSE. That really is something to be proud of.

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Okay, that's enough about the ice storm. My pile of branches (which I will take a picture of this weekend) will most likely sit in front of my house for a month or longer, as the city tries to find a private contractor to handle the $8.2 million worth of damage in my city alone (FEMA says it's equivalent to a Category 1 hurricane and Bush says we're a federal disaster area), so I will just have to live with it for awhile!

But look what I found on etsy.

This item is from another recently featured seller on decor8. I think this would look excellent in my living room! Maybe if it's still available after Christmas I will treat myself.

Ohh, there was another one I liked that she had for sale but it sold out yesterday! Darnit.

This is my last week at work until 2008, and I'll have plenty to do around the house during the break. If the weather cooperates, I'll do that second coat of paint in the bathroom. I'd also like to go to this cool looking local hardware store we have in town, because I think they sell the hardware I want for my bathroom. And if Santa is very nice to me, I just *might* be getting a new dishwasher soon.

Backyard, post-ice

The major clean-up is all done. Here's what remains of my backyard.

I wanted to take a picture of "the pile" out front, but it started getting too dark. It's easily as tall as me, though (and I'm 5'2"). I'm really lucky that it wasn't any worse than this. I'm considering my options on the fence. It would be great to have a privacy fence on that side (you can see my view beyond the fence is not that great), but I don't know if I have the money for that now. Replacing the chainlink won't be expensive, though.

Oh, and my power came back on Friday night. So it was almost six full days without power. The house was 40 degrees on the inside when my thermostat kicked back on. It had warmed up to 70 about four hours later.

Still waiting.

108 hours. No electricity. No sign of electricity trucks even in the neighborhood. At this point, my reaction is wavering between rage and amusement. I don't know whether to punch something and scream, or roll on the floor in insane laughter. I'm the only one left at my workplace who doesn't have power.

108 hours.

We're still supposed to get that snowstorm today, but after watching the weather, I think it might just be more of a rain event. And there could be freezing rain.

I went inside my house last night to check things out, with a huge industrial flashlight so I could see. Everything inside looks fine. I had some water collected in my bathroom cabinet, under the sink pipes, but I think it was just condensation. That pipe does that sometimes in normal weather. I wiped it down and put a towel down there, and with the water running, I can't feel anything coming out of the pipe, so I don't think it's a leak. If it is, it's just a very tiny one and not a big deal.

My neighborhood is nearly deserted. It's like a ghost town.

The city has announced they will be picking limbs up for the next TWO MONTHS. You only have to put them within five feet of the curb, and they can be as long as 12 feet. This is good. I already have most everything from the front dragged to the curb, and I don't think there's anything dangling in the trees in the front.


Maybe today. Maybe today is the day and my power will come back on.

Approaching 84 hours without electricity.

I am still one of my town's thousands of people without power. My sister got her power back last night, and she lives only one block north and two blocks east of me. So hopefully today will be the day. It had better be, at least, because the snowstorm arrives tomorrow.

I had an extremely kind offer from an old, old friend to help clean up my yard. Her brother is assembling a crew and will be helping people out, free of charge. I feel strange about practically begging people for help, but sometimes leaning on others is a necessary part of life.

This is why I will need so much help. I took these pictures Monday afternoon, when the ice was still on the trees. And the damage is WORSE now, keep in mind. I haven't seen it since the ice has melted, and I kind of don't want to.

Looking at the front yard from the side of the house. The front is not nearly as bad as the back and won't take long to clean up (still though, it's worse now than in these photos.)

The backyard.

I'm very lucky that these limbs never collapsed on my line and ripped my meter box off. That happened to a friend of mine who lives a block north of me.

Stupid ice storm.

I haven't had power at my house since Sunday night at 11:00 PM. I've lost one whole tree in my backyard, and most of the other two. The front yard isn't so bad. So far no structural damage to the house, as far as I can tell. There was no freezing rain today, but it rained all day long. So not only is my backyard full of tree limbs and parts, it's also flooded. I've been staying at my parents' house, because they have power.

If I think too much about the clean-up that awaits me, I feel paralyzed. So I'm trying not to do that. I'll do what I can, when I can. The house will eventually warm back up (it's hovering around 40 degrees right now). New food will fill the fridge. Everything will be okay.

This town looks like a warzone, though. Last I checked, still over 24,000 without power. And I'm one of them.



This has been a very trying first year as a home-owner.

Ice Storm 2007!

These little ice storms are a different experience when you're a home-owner!! I've got nearly half an inch of ice outside. It's been *thundering and lightning* and raining ice at the same time! It started yesterday and will continue through the night tonight. I've got my first "snow day" off work tomorrow for the first time in over two years! I lived in Denver for a couple of years before moving back home last January, and not once during our fourteen to eighteen inch snow-blizzard storms did I get one snow day! Ahhh, it's good to be back home, where people are wusses about ice and snow. :) And I can laugh at all of them, with my mad ice-scraping skills and treacherous road driving skills.

But anyways, I've lost power five or six times tonight. It just flickers off and flickers back on. My trees are coated in ice, as are my gutters. I've heard a couple mysterious thumps, so I'm hoping I haven't lost any big limbs.

Before the storm arrived Friday night, I did manage to finally get some raking done! I hadn't raked leaves since I was a teenager, when I used to help out my mom. I forgot how tiring it is! With the aid of two friends, I finished the backyard. Twelve bags of leaves!! I didn't even get to the front yard, where the leaves are still ankle-deep and now frozen over. And, I still have my pumpkins... from Halloween... on my front porch and they're also frozen solid.

Everything should clear up by the middle of this week, then I can *finally* start Christmas shopping.