Hurricane Irene

According to the weatherman we were going to get hit hard by Hurricane Irene...and for us that meant loss of power(meaning no lights or water) and possible trees down. Don't have to worry about flooding cos the Mohawk River is about 600' below us. If the water rises that much we just don't have to worry, everything will be underwater! It was all scheduled to start after midnight Saturday night and be over by midday on Sunday. Yea, well, it started to rain about 2am Sunday and it did rain steady and hard. Jeff went out to check the garden and his tilling paths were allowing the rain to soak in. No flooded canals in our garden! It was his opinion that the storm had been 'overhyped'. Then about 10am the wind started to blow and the big oak trees around our house started to sway. The power started to go off and on. For awhile it looked bad...then it moved on. The garden took the most damage...pepper plants and the corn patch were knocked over. Onions and carrots were beaten flat...but the raddishes and lettuce were standing tall. And Jeff's tomato fences held! All the tomato plants in them were standing basiclly undamaged by the wind...the fruit hadn't even fallen off! Yesterday he hilled up the peppers and corn plants hoping they'll reestablish themselves. Everything else looked good.

I knitted during the worse of the storm...my usual activity for times like that. I have an 'end of summer' swap to get finished and luckly I found the skein of yarn I had wanted to use. It's a cotton/rayon blend from Amsterdam, NY, I think handdyed and probably hand spun from the texture. The colors are beautiful with purple and blues mixed with grays and golds. Just right for a scarf. So I sat there and knitted as the wind howled and the lights went off and on. It was a small skein, only 60 yrds, so I was able to finish the scarf about the time Jeff announced the 'worst' was over. Yesterday morning I looked at what I had done and found a large hole in the middle of the scarf where I had dropped a stitch and created another several rows later. Since it was suppose to be a slit scarf but the hole was in the wrong place so I ripped it out. Last night I tried again but I'm not satisfied with the results. Need to look for another pattern. Oh, well.

When I got to work yesterday Joanie from camp called to tell me some bad news. The storm was much worse up there and several trees had gone down in the park...including one thru a window in my camp. Good neighbors covered the window with plastic and Jeff and I will go up Thursday or Friday to replace it with plywood. The deductible for the camp's insurance is $1000 and this was a tripletrack window...no where near that amount. Oh, well, again. Photos to follow!

If that's the worse of Hurricane Irene I don't have anything to complain about, now do I?

What an Interesting Weekend...not!

I did 5 round trips to Cooperstown this weekend starting Thursday night.
Thursday after supper Jeff & I went to Lowe's coz he needed a hole saw. He was changing the kitchen door's lock & knob and the new one wouldn't fit in the old holes. After we got that he told me he was having a problem and we probably should call his MD. So we did...after we went home and put all the tools away, went to Urgent Care...which was closed, and he stopped for a ciggie. Anyway, he finally talked to the MD and she told him to go to the ER. Good thing I'm use to driving to Cooperstown. I just put the car in cruise and steered to the hospital. They were quick about hooking him up to monitors & taking blood but then we waited for 3 or so hours until we saw a MD. There was blood in his stool and his blood count was a little low. They admitted him...but there weren't any rooms available so they moved a bed into one of the ER cubicles and that's where he stayed the night and I drove home around 1:30am. The next day his sister and I went down together and got there in time to hear the MD tell him they were going to do another colonoscopy...but it wouldn't show anything, maybe another endoscopy...but that wouldn't show anything either, and possibly more barium x-rays...but they woudn't show anything either. They finally got him a room about 4pm on Friday and they did the colonoscopy Friday night. Of course, it didn't show anything, so they did another one on Saturday morning. (He drank 2-64oz bottles of pineapple flavored elixer in 12 hrs. If he wasn't bleeding before then, he sure was afterwards! And the smell...pineapple baby shit blood.) Still no source of the bleeding. Now they had to do a transfusion coz his blood count was so low. Once they unhooked the IV's, Jeff wanted a cigerette. He had gone from Thurs evening to Sunday afternoon w/o 1 and he just wanted 1. He got into a discussion with a nurse and eventually went outside for his smoke (MIBH is a 'smoke free campus' where you find piles of butts on the street corners), scoring some brownie points with other staff members while arguing his viewpoint. His sister and I left him at the hospital Sunday thinking there'd be a nuclear tracer test on Monday and then maybe he could come home. But the bleeding stopped just as suddenly as it started. I got a phone call at work yesterday to come an get him and when I got to the hospital he was standing outside waiting for me. So far no more bleeding and the tracer test can't be done unless it starts again. He's got to see his regular doctor this week and he's going to ask about side effects of long-term use of some of his meds. In the meantime he should take things easy. He did take a nap yesterday afternoon but I found him stirring up the compost before supper and trimming the apple and lilac trees in the backyard about 8:30 last night. And he had finished putting in the new door knob before supper,too. That's taking it easy?

I want to post some new garden photos I took Monday morning but don't have enough time right now. You can't tell but the tomatoes are starting to ripen and we've got a load of bell peppers! Oh, a hummingbird has found our feeder, too!

Garden News

This is the most recent photo of the tomato row. Those poles are about 6' high and yes the plants are doubledover. Now if the tomatoes would only ripen. We saw 2 that have started. Can't wait!

Here are the photos of our 'harvest' : We picked purple beans (they turn green when cooked) squash & zuccini, green sweet peppers, lettuce and parselry-oregano-basil to dry .yesterday. We had the beans & peppers for supper! Jeff dug up the first row of potatoes, too. The plants had died back, seed pods were formed and he was told it was time to dig them up. I think we were both disappointed. Out of the 6 or 8 plants we got 12 potatoes: 1 really big one, 4 good size and the rest small. Better luck next year, huh? We've still got 2 other rows of white potatoes and 1 row of sweet potatoes that are still thriving. Hope we do better with them.

Swap again

Here's another swap package I sent...this one didn't have a large project involved...but another rubber ducky and more Stewart's ice cream cone certificates were included!

Swapping Fun

I got involved in some knitting swaps this summer and have really enjoyed myself. This is a pic of what I sent as a Summer Time Swap to Pennsylvania. The only requirement was 100 gms of yarn and your favorite cake recipe...everything else were extras! I loved the rubber ducky and the ice cream cone certificates from Stewart's that were in the summer reading program prize box so much that I asked for some in exchange for the graphic work I did (after I made sure there was a Stewart's Shop near where my swap box was heading.) The 2 beaded stitch markers were made by someone in the shop and the bottle huggers were last minute additions to the box. I found the directions on line and since I was using a new skein of yarn I thought they'd need charms to help identify who was drinking what. The colorful plastic flip-flop buttons were perfect! I noticed that all the packages I had been getting from England had tea bags included and since I couldn't excatly put in bottles of water, I settled for individual packs of Crystal Light. My cousin liked the plastic reuable ice cubes that I found at the dollar store so much he visited several Dollar Tree stores before he found any in-stock (then bought all the packages!)

Jeff helped me block and starch the hat ,and reconstructed a cardboard box that it would fit in. I'm not sure we were speaking the same language some of the time but we finally got it all together. I packed all the goodies in the crown of the hat and wrapped the entire thing in plastic on a piece of styrofoam board that fit excatly in the box. It made the trip without much damage...a lot better than Jeff predicted. It was well received. I'm glad I joined the swaps and I am looking forward to the others that I signed up for.

Catching Up

Yesterday Jeff turned the compost heap and spread some in the garden. Then he tilled up and down the rows and around the whole thing in anticipation of rain. It was suppose to start last night and rain until Tuesday morning. Right now (4pm on Sunday) it hasn't started to rain yet. If it doesn't start raining by tomorrow morning I will have to wrestle the hose and water things. Just can't wait. Today was suppose to be a 'washout' but so far totally dry. The Today Show this morning said NYC got 5"!

Tomorrow I get the stitches removed from my ankle. Now that's something I really can't wait for! And on Tuesday I can go back to work. (Actually missing that a little.) Just no 'jumping for joy' for a couple of months until the screw holes naturally fill in.

The shop has been selling well and my rack actually got cleaned out! I sent a couple of sweaters down with a friend this week and next Friday I'll take some more down with me. Between knitting for the shop and knitting for the swaps I'm in my time home has gone pretty quickly.

Here's Pete's photo of our garden with Fran in the middle.

Visitors to the garden

Fran, who's our head cheerleader, brought his friend Peter over to see the garden. They almost got lost between the eggplant...behind Peter... and the peppers...that's Fran. Peter took some photos of his own, and Fran asked for a panoramic view...to take home to Greece. Now if the tomatoes would start to ripen we'd be really happy!!