Weather & Crops

So far, here in Missouri, we are experiencing the 10th wettest June in 129 years.  Honestly, it's not that hard to believe if you live here.  You see, all it does is rain.  All the time.  6 days out of 7.  It's crazy.  That rain can be both a blessing and a burden, if you are a farmer.

 The corn is loving it and is growing quickly.

 The beans are coming up nicely too.

 But...on the other hand, the pecan grove shown here is surrounded by water.

And the river is HIGH.

Every couple of years the river will flood and then the farmland for several miles will get washed out.  I'm hoping this won't be one of those years, but it's looking like it will.

Just Lovely

In the past week, we've had a LOT of rain.  It's rained almost every day.  Sometimes it might be just a sprinkle, but most often it's been a downpour.

This past Wednesday though, it was just beautiful outside.  Big Daddy and I went for a ride in the truck and I found myself snapping photos with my phone.  I think the sky was looking just beautiful!

Rain

We had a few small, sprinkle-like showers yesterday morning and then in the afternoon, it rained so hard that the water came down the road in "waves".  Can you see them in the photo below?

46

46, 46, 46

It is 46 degrees F in my town this morning.  I can't believe it!  We were in the 90's just a few days ago.  I had to break out my winter coat to sit out on the porch this morning.  Brrrrr.....

The Last Week...

Even though I've been bored to death, there has been a lot going on in the last week.

 I joined all the turqua and cherry red granny squares together and then edged the blanket with a shell border.  There are 35 squares total with a one round turqua center and five rounds of cherry red yarn.  I used a size I crochet hook.  All of the yarn was out of my yarn stash, so this blanket ends up being a Stashbusting for Stashaholics project as well as something pretty for my household.  :)

The day after my surgery,  Mr. & Mrs. Friez brought by some lovely cupcakes for the family.  Let me tell you, they tasted fabulous!  Mrs. Friez is the school's Music teacher.  :)

I don't have a photo of it, but on Friday, my friend, Vicki, brought by dinner for the family - BBQ'd beef sandwiches, sloppy joe's, and poppy seed muffins.  Yum!

 Our Cherry Tree (in the back yard) is in full bloom.  Looks like I'll be making a lot of jelly and jams this summer!  Yay!  And I'll also have a lot of cherries to trade for other produce as well.

 I made these two "Colorful Coasters" using some cotton out of my yarn stash.  The pattern can be found by clicking here (just scroll down the page a bit once you get there).  This project is also a Stashbusting for Stashaholics project since the cotton came out of my stash.

 Last Saturday, I had a lot of visitors.  To my dismay, I didn't get photos of all of the visitors though.  First, my sister-in-law, her daughter and grandsons came down to visit.  These grandsons are my great-nephews Muffin Man and Blue Boy.  Remember them?  While they were here, my sister, Dea (in above photo with our mom) came walking around the corner of my house, holding her face, and dripping blood down her arm.  I opened the door, said..."We have blood" and everyone scattered to get "stuff"....washcloths, bandaids, neosporin, etc..  We have so much practice with blood that we're used to these type of injuries.  lol  Dea is a tough act, let me tell you, and she was afraid to look and see how bad the cut was, but it wasn't nearly as bad as we thought.  She was mowing the yard and something hit her in the face.  It busted her blood vessel and she's completely black and blue now, but it was only a tiny cut that bleed a LOT.  The front of her shirt was soaked and it had run all down her arm as well.  Anyway, she's good now.

 Later that afternoon, Dea brought her grandkids over for a visit.  Here's little Kinzie.  She was cuddled up in bed with me and we took about 20 "selfies".  lol

 And also, Mr. Kurryn, Kinzie's brother.  He's a pistol.  Let me tell you.  Such a sweet smile.  They live in Oklahoma, and will be heading back home asap.

 I started...

 And finished....the baby sized version of the Living Room Afghan Pattern.  You can find it here.  I used 2 whole skeins of I Love This Yarn from Hobby Lobby in the color Arctic Ice.  This is the Worsted Weight yarn.  I used a size I crochet hook.  This baby blanket will be one of three that I'm making for my niece, Z, who is expecting.

 I wanted to include this photo as we've had some beautiful skylines in the evening hours this past week.  This one was particularly colorful with the pink sky mixed in.

The next baby blanket I started was Beth's Little Star Afghan.  Click here for the pattern.  I'm using Hobby Lobby WW I Love This Yarn in the color Buttercup.  My niece is really interested in swaddling the baby and wants this star shaped blanket for the swaddling.  I am in love with the Buttercup color.  It's yummy!

Monday....

 I woke up to an eye turning black.  I still don't know how it happened.

And snow.  It had been in the 80's all the week before and now we're back to cold temps and snow.  Crazy.

Sky

We've had a lot of interesting skies over the past few weeks and I've taken a few photos them.  I wish the photos would have really captured the uniqueness of the skies, but I think they did ok with getting it.  At least you can get the gist of it.  I think it's amazing to see the holes in the clouds with the sun rays pouring through.

Simply Amazing!

The sky tonight is simply amazing!

Snow

We had a little snow over the weekend (again).

 I tried to capture the snow when it was falling so thickly.  It didn't work.  It looks like smoke.

The aftermath.

Big C

Big C came home from college last weekend.  He arrived on Friday afternoon and promptly left to spend time with his friends.  We didn't see him very much at all.  He was set to leave Sunday around noon.  I woke up early to finish his laundry and that's when I figured out it was snowing again.  So I hurried up with the laundry and woke Big C up to get himself showered and packed.  Then it was time for him to leave.

 Can you see this big snowflakes that are falling?  Cool, right?  Yep.  Unless you have a 3+ hour drive ahead of you, like Big C did.

 Big Brother, Medium J, is helping him pack up the car.  It's actually Medium J's car, but Big C has been driving it back and forth to school on and off.  His frat buddies call the car, the "pimp mobile".  lol  They have to have something to razz him about.  Anyway, Big C headed out and made it to college safely.  I was relieved.

I popped this little photo in with the others simply because I almost never get a photo of Medium J.  You can't see his face in this one, but at least I have a photo of him.  :)

Snow

Sorry for posting another snow photo.  I just wanted to show the snow accumulation so far.  This is what's on top of the cooler in the back of the truck.  It's a good amount of snow so far and it's still snowing thick and hard.  Yay!

Snow Video

If you've never had the opportunity to see snow, you'll like this video.  I tried to take a short video of it snowing in my front yard.  Be sure to get a good look at the windows of the house.  You can see it the best if you look there.  It's hard to catch the snow on a photograph or video.

Snow, Lovely Snow

Look what I woke up to this morning.  We weren't surprised.  The forecast for the last couple of days was for 100% chance of snow today with an expected accumulation of 8 to 10 inches and that's changed now to 10+ inches.

 I took these three photos first thing in hopes of catching the thick snow falling.  But it's not showing up like I was hoping.

 This is about the only photo where you can sort of see it.  It's been a whole hour since I took these and the snow is a lot deeper on the bird house now.

The truck is supposed to be going to the shop to be put on the computer for diagnosis in half an hour but Big Daddy said it's not going to happen today.  Can't really say that I blame him.  I wouldn't want to get out either.

Big Daddy and I took the day yesterday to prepare for the storm.  We went to MFA and laid in salt.  We bought 3 (50 lb) bags of it for a total of $11 and some change.  Cheap.  It's a good thing we live in a rural area or it would have cost a lot more.  Then we mailed out the bills at the post office, dropped the trash off at our dumpster, and then headed out of town to Wal-Mart.  We picked up a few groceries that we can't buy here in town or that are way too expensive here.  We had to stop at several places in order to find a new battery for the truck.  We finally found one at the last place we looked.  It cost a whopping $175 plus change.  Geez!  When did batteries get so expensive???  Once we got back to town, we stopped at the local grocery store to get bread, eggs and toliet paper.  You just can't weather a storm without those items.  :)  Especially the toliet paper.  Then Medium J helped Big Daddy install the new battery in the truck.  Big Daddy just has't regained his strength from his illness in December, so it took Medium J's muscles to get the job done.

While I was doing the dishes last night, Little Ty cooked dinner (with my help).  He baked chicken patties and tator tots.  He did a good job!

I spent my evening, or part of it, knitting on the Knitted Toddler Blanket.  I ended up making a mistake and had to rip back several rows and start again.  This is the first time I actually managed to rip out a knitted project and not have to restart the whole thing.  I am rather pleased with myself for being able to do this.  I'm now less than 30 rows from finishing this and I'm thrilled to pieces!  I figure I'll get some good time in with this again today due to all the snow.  We obviously won't be going anywhere.

So...that's my update on yesterday.  If you are in the snow storm that's hitting my area, please stay safe and warm today.

The Weather

I know it's Winter, but the weather is seriously bugging me right now.  Yesterday, we woke up to about an inch of snow.  (see photo below)  That wasn't a big deal.  I can deal with that.  But this morning, we woke up to about half an inch of ice that started falling around 1 a.m. (yes, I heard it pinging on the house) and after several attempts to open car doors, we finally get the door open on the red truck and then it won't start.  Geez.  It's been in the shop for 3 days and this is how I get it back.  Anyway, appointments are cancelled for this morning (yet again) and we'll be spending the afternoon trying to get into the black truck and the white car.  Oh, and it's started snowing now.  We're forecasted to get 3 to 4 inches on top of the ice.  Yay!  (Can you read my sarcasm?)  

It looks like we'll be making another appt. at the auto repair shop for the truck.  We're headed to a different mechanic as the first one gave us the truck back in worse shape than it went to him in.  Now he says he doesn't know how to fix what he broke.  But please make sure we pay for him "fixing" it.  Big Daddy's truck is only a couple of years old, so....we shouldn't have to be seeing a lot of breakdowns and repairs yet.  It needs to get resolved asap as we've got a lot of traveling to do this month with appt.'s etc..  One really important trip is on the 15th.  We are headed to college to see Big C.  It's "Mother's Day" for the frat he's in.  It's a really big deal and he is super excited that I'm coming.  So I can't disappoint him.

Anyway, I'm sick of the weather.  And I'm sick of vehicle repairs.  For today.  So far.  I might be sicker of them tomorrow.  lol

Snow...and Lights...

Big Daddy finally put up a few Christmas lights outside on the porch about a week ago.  I told him it wasn't necessary this year as he's not been feeling well, but he did a few anyway on the last decent weather day we've had.

 I particularly enjoy the lights he strung around the base of the bird house.  The red rope lights are looking good!

I also like the multi-colored lights that he hung up.  In fact, I just enjoy lights in general.  :)

I wasn't really planning to take any light photos tonight but I did it anyway as I wanted to show the beginnings of the snow that's falling (on top of the entire day of freezing rain).  We've had another sticking snow this month, but this one is supposed to land us with up to 6" of the wet stuff instead of they dry powdery kind we had the last time.

Foggy

It's foggy this morning.  You can barely see the house on the corner, catty-corner to mine.

Flooding

Once again, it's that time of year....flood season.

 I took these photos a couple of days ago and since then, the water rose several more feet.  This is a photo of the boat dock here in town.  At the highest point, the water was at 29 feet and way up into the gravel, over the concrete in the shelter house and into the bathrooms.

 This is the railroad bridge across the Grand River.  The train traffic was canceled for a couple of days because the water ended up being much higher.  Usually, there is a huge gap between the water and the bridge.

 I love this photo....but...it shows the north side of the Grand River where the train tracks are the south side.

 You can't really see it....but there's a tractor and a bunch of cars and farmers sandbagging the Bartow levee West of town.  They are trying to save the levee and the farm land on the other side.  The water was extremely high here and the gravel road was probably 10 feet under water.

 Here's a photo of Hwy 24 West of town.  Water ended up going over this road and it was closed down for a day or so.

 The Budweiser barn....surrounded by water.  I have no idea if water ended up being inside the barn.  It probably was.

The guy that bought the trailer got a lot of guff when he put it up on stilts but it's a good thing he did.  There's water up in the house and in the barn by the trailer but the trailer is dry inside.

Rain

Wednesday, we received 4 1/2 inches of rain.  Add that to all the other rain we've been getting and that equals "flooding" and lots of it.  There are many road closures in the area and we had to make several detours yesterday to get where we were going.  I hope we aren't going to have another year of massive floods.  It seems like we are either in a drought or a flood.  No happy medium.

Guess What....

Yep.  You guessed right.

We woke up to snow this morning!  

*sigh*

And we're sure that Spring is here???

Weather

See my snow piles still in the yard?  Sorry, it was dark outside when I took the photo.  Anyway, the snow is finally starting to melt.  And we had rain through the night last night, so it's melting even more.  Woo Hoo!