I guess it's time to harvest...

[Southern Gardener]

Where I live, that would cause all the schools to close and all the grocery stores to run out of milk and bread! LOL! We love snow here, because we only get one every few years. Last year, we got a quarter inch of accumulated sleet, does that count?

Ditto! People in the south get crazy when they see that white stuff! We're having ok weather here, I just wish it would rain - we need it so bad.

 

[digitS']

Where I live, that would cause all the schools to close and all the grocery stores to run out of milk and bread! LOL! We love snow here, because we only get one every few years. Last year, we got a quarter inch of accumulated sleet, does that count?

If it was a part of an ice storm - you would have my sympathies.

I would rather shovel out from a 10" snowfall (unusual here) than have an ice storm. We are just too reliant as a household and a society on electricity. You can count on your pasta and rice for awhile. The kids can have cocoa instead of milk. But, if you have to break out the summer camping gear - life is going to get tedious after a day or 2!

In his retirement years, Dad set up a nice generator. However, it was only big enuf to run his fridge, freezer, pellet stove and the lights in his kitchen. With no 220, they would keep a kettle of water on the pellet stove all day and cook stew and slow cooker type stuff on it. Not so wonderful having the dang generator running 12 hours a day outside the kitchen window.

They probably felt like they'd gone back to the Great Depression so they adjusted fairly well. I noticed that when the power was on, Mom wouldn't allow wood heat in the house.

Losing water? I don't like the idea of bringing buckets from somewhere else but I suppose that we'd be okay, if we had to. Dirty clothes pile up and I can't remember ever needing to go down to the river and beat them on a rock . . . There was 1 winter, a long time ago, when all of the household water came in either in the back of the pickup or strapped to the scraper blade of the tractor when I couldn't get the pickup down my driveway . I was a lot younger then and electricity and a laundromat weren't too many miles away.

Steve

ETA: there is frost on our roofs again this morning!! those dang weather guys! i know that they can do better than i can and should be able to do better than this!

 

[cityfarmer]

I spent 3 hours Friday afternoon getting everything in--tomatoes, peppers, corn, pumpkins, acorn squash, herbs, and dried beans. I am glad I did since the forecast of rain mixed with occasional snow on Saturday turned out to be 4 inches of heavy wet snow. I wish I could be as wrong as the weather forecasters and still keep my job even though the mountains make it tough. The cabbages seem okay though. I am assuming my root veggies will be just fine since we are going to be back up in the 60's-70's all week. Still can't complain since I have had to go through this in September instead of October.

 

[digitS']

Cityfarmer, have you looked at the USDA hardiness zone map for Colorado?

It is a crazy quilt! I'm not sure if anyone can be sure of their climate zone there, or if they were, they'd just have to climb over the backyard fence to be in another. Colorado gardeners are admirable folks for the weather conditions they have to contend with .

The state must be the Gulag Archipelago for meteorologists, however.

Mountains make their own weather, I suppose. The Selkirks are older mountains than the Rockies so, I guess I shouldn't complain. They've been making their own weather since long before man came here to live at their feet.

Steve

 

[cityfarmer]

Steve,

I have looked at the hardiness zone for Colorado. It is crazy. That is why I have 2 zones listed in my profile. One for elevation (approximate) and one for geographic area. Where I live is about 7,000 feet in elevation which is one of the higher areas in town but the geographic area is listed as a different zone.