Into mid fall

I had thought the leaves on the trees would be a repeat of last year. PFFFT went the leaves on the Winged Elms last year. This year, with a bit more rain, they have turned a bright yellow. The couple of below freezing mornings aided to the color change, but some large Oak trees were still green and these trees are just going to drop brown leaves. Now those trees, luckily are in the minority. I have 2 Sugar Maple trees. My brother and I cleaned out around them. Well the one in the back is beatiful, however it's NOW in the open. I may cut down the 2 pine trees nearby. They both have rather damaged trunks, and will clean out that space even better. In the front yard, that Sugar Maple is crowded by a couple of Winged Elms. And it needed to be watered, and really didn't get a lot of it, so it's not as pretty. The one in back is a vivid yellow, while the one in front wants to be orange. As I walk down Alpha Martha with Jolene, the colors are maximum. Sweet Gum trees have vivid colors ranging from bright yellow to a deep purple. Some of these Sweet Gum trees have the entire range of spectrum. As we turn down Sandy Run Creek road on the way down the hill to Mechanics Creek, the Red Maples are blazing red. Some of the other Oak trees also are a deep red. The granddaddy Sugar Maple in the basin of Mechanics Creek is a blazing orange. I would love to have that tree on my land. It has to be 60 feet tall. I bet you could get a lot of sap to make Maple Syrup. Down in the basin there are quite a few smaller Sugar Maples. I may get down there and get me a small one to transplant
Now, the trees actually, once we get a rain and another freeze will start dropping leaves and we shall head toward winter. But for now, it's a blaze of color. And the smell of fallen leaves is in the air. Walking the mile down and back to Mechanics Creek with Jolene is great. It's the most beautiful time of the year. The fall flowers are blooming also. Jolene is getting her winter coat in. Yes, the summer coat keeps showing up on the living room carpet. That's what the vacuum is for. Jolene, is my rescue, and is a German Shepherd / Sheltie mix. She's currently curled up on "her sofa" .
Speaking of her, I may get my friend who has the Husky rescue to make me a cart. He makes racing (sled dog) equipment. I think she would do well. I found out she can drag me if she really wants to, and she loves to RUN RUN RUN !!!! She does get to go to the radio station with me when I have to work evenings for ball games and I get to leave a bit early to come home and pick her up. She curls up in the control room with me.

Catching up

Summer was hot, and dry, but not record setting like last year. We had some more severe weather but nothing to write about. Some late summer and early fall rains helped a lot but this year we are around 6 to 10 inches of rain below normal unlike last year when here on Alpha Martha it was closer to 30. We had no record breaking temperatures. Just a boring summer.

March was a BLAST

The Storm Prediction Center first put us in a "Moderate Risk for severe weather then gave us a VERY rare High Risk category. Were they ever right. SC had 17 tornadoes and 40++ million dollars damage. These storms were very fast moving and had multiple tornadoes in the long lived supercell thunderstorms. It went from lightly overcast to dark enough to turn on the security lamps, and then there was golf ball sized hail and 75 MPH wind. The sky was this dark purple green. I was not amused. being a storm chaser, being THE CHASED! The sky was smeared over and there was no storm structure visible in these storms.

We had a minor repeat of this stuff on Friday night April4, while I was at the radio station. The worst here went through Jalapa, SC and did some damage.
Powell

In to the new year we go

Well the new year has come. 2007 ended on a wet note, but we need well above normal precipitation for some time to work on this drought. Had some more rain, and the coldest temperatures of the winter season. Here on Alpha Martha the low one morning was 13. We are now in another warm spell. The middle part of the country has had this warm weather, but with a large tornado outbreak. Tornadoes in January in Illinois is execptionally unusual. The system that is spawning this outbreak is tempering and that is a good thing.


I am going to be a cooperative weather observer for the National Weather Service. They will be installing stuff on Friday. I have always been a weather watcher. I took and passed the NWS Advanced Skywarn class. Steve Naglic at the NWS office said I could teach the course.


I took Snoppy the so called Chihuahua mix back. There is more Terrier in him than anything. I figured he's mostly Rat Terrier. I saw an article on them in Dog Fancy. Yep, one of the dogs in the picture is his spitting image. Jolene was not unhappy that he went back. IF he had been housetrained, and IF Jolene would have played with him inside, I might have considered him. Rat Terriers can be difficult to housebreak. Also I have to leave Jolene's food out at night for her. Snoopy would eat on her food also, and then left me little "presents".
I am now also writing letters. In the Yahoo FPC (Fountain Pen Collecting) there is also a writing list. I hope my writing gets better as time goes on. IF I have fountain pens, I need to actually use them. I hope it will make my writing better. It's too easy on a computer. The hard choice is what pen and ink when you put ink to paper.


Sunday I got my brother to assist me in getting rid of some of the small trees that clog up parts of my yard. I especially wanted to get the jumble out of and around my 2 Sugar Maples. Note: raw Sugar Maple sap tastes like very watered down sugar water.


Powell

NOT a White Christmas here!

Cloudy, and low 50's. The rain in Georgia is marching this way. As of 8 PM there has been a light shower in the area a few hours ago. At least we have had 3 inches of rain so far this month. We won't make up the remaining 20 inches below normal, or at least I hope NOT at once. One of our recent rains was 2 inches, and it all soaked in. Then we had few very cold mornings with one morning in the upper teens.
For Christmas I have a little 4 legged visitor. Snoopy, a white with some reddish tan markings is a foster from the Newberry County Animal Control and Care. All of the other little dogs got fostered out for the holidays. I took him with me. He's listied as a Chihuahua mix, but naaaaah! It's more like Jack Russell Terror , I mean Terrier. He's a pretty good boy, but he needs to learns some manners. He learned SIT immediately. but he needs to learn other things. He's sleeping with Jolene. She accepts him, but she will NOT play in the house. He does. DOES HE EVER! But they both go a mile in the morning, and when I had more time to spare away from the radio station we've done 2 miles. He goes back Thursday or tomorrow if they are open. I worry about Jolene missing him.

I got a big surprise from the radio station. I got a nice bonus check in my regular paycheck. The nearly 30 years at Bellsouth they never gave us anything, and neither much at my other part time places. Yes, I am very grateful.

I am glad that Christmas is over at the radio station. Christmas music can get tiring over time. Well, there is next year.


See you all in a later chat.

80 Degrees in December ?

We've had a bit of rain a week or so ago. Enough that water is flowing very slowly in Sandy Run Creek. It had been dry for months. Trees were ablaze with color, but not have faded to bare limbs except for the Willow Oak in my yard. The leaves are mostly brown with some yellow, and they are falling like snow. Right now we are in a spell of record breaking high temperatures. They have been hovering around 80 degrees. One more day of that, and by the weekend we will be below normal again. On my walks with Jolene the GSD / Sheltie mix, you can tell it's winter. It's that "winter" smell. And the last few days you can smell the sap from the evergreen trees. It's beginning to smell a bit like Christmas.
We might even get some rain toward the end of the week. The chance is not great, but we need it. It seems we will end up 2007 well over 20 inches below normal in rainfall, and the bad part is, the latter part of 2006 was also dry.
Well, there's not much new out this way.

BRRR ...turnin' C-c-c-c-cold

It's Wednesday night and it will be even colder than last night. Down on Alpha Martha, temperatures dropped to around 25 degrees. My older thermometer said 20. I am not so sure I believe it got that cold, but 25 seems right for here. Leaves were dropping like snow from some trees on the morning walk. This evening at 8:30 PM, the temperature had dropped to 38 degrees. BRRR! I guess I won't get to see pretty leaves on MY Sugar Maple, but I did find the Grand Daddy tree. It was down by the creek, Mechanics Creek to be exact. I have not seen one that big down here, but the wonderful red orange color gave it away. I verified what it was by taking a picture of it in zoom mode on my new digital camera.
Wow! You can get 8 megapixels pretty inexpensively now. I chose the i830 Polaroid as it has the most reasonable lag time. It's better than most, and for under $100, though the 1 gigabyte SD card for another $18 took care of that. I got another set of NiMh batteries to go with it. It does fairly well, as I took a picture of Jolene, and had an 8 X10 made and the picture was superb. I was actually blown away by the picture quality, and of course Jolene is a beauty herself! I don't know if I have mentioned her before, but she's a 45 pound mix of German Shepherd and most likely Sheltie. She was badly abused as a pup and also missed a good bit of puppy socialization time. She was terrified of men, and was so bad, that though Pets INC normally doesn't put down healthy dogs, she came close until I started working with her. When I moved out here in January I took her, as no one wanted her. I worked her hard to get better socialized. EVERY man we came across had to pet her, and we made many trips to Tractor Supply Company. That is one of her favorite places, and the staff there saw the improvement in her. She will never get over the puppy trauma, but she's a world better than before, and of course I'm the Alpha Daddy. I have to be the calm assertive leader, if only for her. No laughing from the Peanut Gallery, either! You could say I'm the “Jolene Whisperer” ! I think I am repeating myself a bit, I also took her to the radio station for a couple months, as when I brought her to Alpha Martha she showed some signs of separation anxiety. So after a 5 months I left her home for short times. Now when I go to WKDK to work there is no problem. Of course a radio is left on WKDK and she hears familiar voices, Heather Jimmy and me. Works for me, and she often is in a regal pose on “her sofa” when I come in.
On my walks, I see and smell the smells of fall. Because of the dryness, the colors this year are very muted. So far we have had just under 18 inches of rain this year. 50 inches is normal. It doesn't look promising for a break in the drought any time soon, either.
I am afraid the last of the 5 kitties have departed. The last one actually was Jolene's friend, and more social to her. I'm guessing the age about 5 months. A pretty, and talkative grey and white one. I haven't seen the little devil for about 2 days and that's abnormal for that one. I had named the cat Pat, for either Patrick or Patricia. I had just gotten Pat social enough to me to maybe pick the kitten up and carry Pat to the house. I am afraid a coyote may have had a snack, and Pat wouild have thought the coyote was a friend to play with.