Stormy Weather

[salymap]

Thanks greenilex. It's important that our native bluebells are protected but, like lots of species, if there is pleasure to be obtained from a bank of the 'wrong' sort I can't get too upset with mine.

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

by the side of the great water in the middle kingdom, in the woods along the shore ...

[eighthobstruction]

1 mile from in 2 months time....

[salymap]

Lovely bluebells. They used to grow like that somewhere outside Guildford; miles of them it seemed. Can't remember the name of the village though.

[marthe]

Lovely pictures! I think this is what HH had in mind when he expressed a desire for a bluebell wood. As for being the right sort or the wrong sort, they're probably the wrong sort as the bulbs are imported from Holland! They came from Scheepers www.johnscheepers.com by way of a local landscape architect who ran a small garden shop (until high rents forced him to close the shop.) Bluebells are not native over here and not well known either. I only planted 50 bulbs so it will be a while before we have that springtime carpet of blue under the trees. The snow is beginning to melt and I saw my first snowdrop along the south side of the house! Sunshine yesterday and rain today...and a malfunctioning freezer now that the temps are above freezing! M. to the rescue carrying trayloads of frozen food down cellar to the chest freezer! Got to save all those haunches of venison.

[salymap]

mornin' all. Seems colder to me today but that awful wind has dropped quite a lot. I haven't got over the weather on Monday yet. Truly scary.

How is your part of the world today? And is there any good music to look forward to, in your view?

[Uncle Monty]

'Morning, salymap. Reasonably mild here, but a SSWester getting up, and rain on the way for us -- but you may avoid it, by the look of the forecast.

There's a lot of good music around -- I know this, because I've got to stay in for a delivery, and I've been hopping round the classical music stations of the world, which I can play through my hi-fi. (Do you want the technical details? No? I thought not ) Kultura Radio in Kiev always have interesting stuff, and there's my other favourite, Baroque Around The Clock

[sigolene euphemia]

I have enjoyed every word written of bluebells and moose. I have no bluebells, but a field of them is a delight of a dream from my decades of brown mud and blue skies existence, where growing flowers was problematic.

As for moose, we had one bed down for a near two weeks outside in a birch grove, near our front entrance. (Northwestern British Columbia) Every night he would take a leisurely walk around the house's perimeter only his belly and legs visible from the inside glazing. His rhythmic thunder was slow and melodious and as the hoofs alighted on the crunchy crusted snow when he forged a new path or he once again trod.ed packed snow of his former path; he would saunter along, showing us his belly, once again. His hooves created a higher register to our ears.

Totally magical this moose.

salymap, have you seen the photos of so many of the roofs collapsing in New England ? The snow and ice load along with none of it melting and more snow has caused many roofs to crumble. And OKLAHOMA, today; more massive snow. A place that usually has NO snow !

be well,
sigolene

[marthe]

The snow is melting bit by bit here. Bare ground and snowdrops are now visible in the garden! Yes, the collapsing roof tops are quite a worry here in NE. Our roof is in good shape though. When I was growing up, and winter was more severe, we had a flat roof in the front of our house. After a heavy snowfall, we had to shovel snow off the roof so it wouldn't collapse. Most New England houses have gabled or hipped roofs with a good pitch so that the snow slides off. It's public buildings (schools, box stores etc.) with flat roofs that have a problem with heavy snow loads. The cold persists in some parts of the country, though, and my brother in New Mexico had frozen water pipes the other day.

[salymap]

Morning. Very sorry for people in New England especially in the terrible weather they are having. It is such a basic thing to have protection from a good roof, when it goes it is catastrophic.

I know it's miles away,but what sort of weather is usual in Greenwich, Conn. where I have cousins at the moment.Quite near NY isn't it? best, saly

[antongould]

Yes for all we, dare I say, moan about the weather in the UK we are lucky that we don't really have, yet, the extreme episodes that others seem, ever more frequently, to suffer.

[Eudaimonia]

Do you all keep a "storm pantry"? I grew up where there were a lot of heavy winter storms, so we always kept an emergency supply of tinned foods that don't need reheating in case there we were snowed in.

One healthy, cheap, nutritious and filling emergency food you might not have thought of is canned chickpeas--12 cans for under seven pounds!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Natco-Chick-Peas-12x397g/dp/B004HU1RIS/ref=sr_1_17?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1297321678&sr=1-17

Sprinkle a little salt and dried herbs or cayenne over them, and you've got a wonderful cold salad straight from the can. Protein, fibre, complex carbohydrates...the perfect emergency food. Very tasty, too! Other good options: roasted nuts, canned soups and stews, baked beans, sardines, tuna, peas, peanut butter, protein bars, boxes of crackers, etc.

If you don't have a storm pantry, I do hope you'll consider buying a few extra cans here and there when you can to get one going. You never know when it might come in handy!

[greenilex]

My grandmother's shelf of sardine tins and so on was always joked about as being "in case of a pogrom"...less likely in UK.

Although a Muslim housewife in Luton might feel otherwise...

[amateur51]

I think we have to be a tad more practical here, Euda!

12 cans of chick peas consumed in a confined space during heavy winter storms would certainly have eructogenic probabilities which would lead indeed to a stormy microclimate

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

..storm pantries ... Maggie Thatcher boasted about hers and she was Prime Minister ..... i don't know quite why but such thoughts put me in mind of the tins of powdered egg so 'popular' when i was atiddler ...silver coloured with dark blue labels and writing ... on the shelf in the kitchen in 1948/9 .....



a grey day in the middle kingdom today ...