Texas weather

This is definitely the time of year when living in Texas makes the weather interesting.  It's about 28 degrees outside and everything is covered in about 4 inches of snow.  Last Monday we had an inch of ice and sleet.  And a week ago it was gorgeous and in the mid-70s.  I'm not a fan of cold weather and frozen precipitation, but luckily in Texas it usually doesn't last long.  And then we get those wonderfully warm days.  I'm more than ready for the wonderfully warm to come for the year and stay.

So most of the pictures in this post are from the last two weekends when I had the house opened up and it was mostly beautiful out.  For shock value, the last picture in the post is what it actually looks like outside today.  Anyway, my flowering quince was in full bloom as you can see, and the honeybees were going to town on it.  It might have been their first meal this year, but they were really swarming it.  I took pictures of them go about their honeybee business.

I also discovered that the Russian sage I planted either is dead or goes dormant for the winter.  It's just a few dead-looking stubs sticking up where I planted it.  I'm hoping that it went dormant.  We'll see if it comes back.  The Texas sage keeps it's leaves year-round.  Another surprising thing is the moss in the pot with the little pine tree.  The tree is definitely dormant and dead-looking, but the moss is bright green and seemingly thriving.  Of course, today it's buried under a little mound of snow.  I'll be interested to see if it's still green when the snow melts. 

 I got out and trimmed back all my roses on Valentine's Day.  Then I trimmed the peach shrubs into forms resembling trees.  Then I sawed and cut up all the branches and generally cleaned up the patio area.  Two of the peach trees now look fairly tree-like.  The third one was harder because of the way it grew, but I trimmed it up as much as I could.  This last Saturday was the same beautifully warm temperatures as on Valentine's, and I again got out puttering in the yard.  Then Saturday evening I re-covered my aloe out on the patio and Sunday the temperatures plummeted from mid-70s to well below freezing. 

Monday I didn't go to work.  I have become less likely to risk life and limb, and car, to the nasty weather when we get ice.  It's actually not the road conditions that make me stay in.  It's the massive number of crazy people out of the road.  By Tuesday the roads were relatively clear and I drove in to work, but the morons were still out there, both the morons under-driving the conditions (10 mph on the freeway is unacceptable), and the morons over-driving the conditions (the bridges are icy! don't approach them at 80 and slam on your brakes).   Then Friday it began snowing around 10:00 am and was still snowing when I left work at 4:00.  It took me about 1 1/2 hours to get home, and my commute is usually 30-ish minutes.  At least I didn't have to be anywhere today.

Monday while I was home I watched the birds at my feeders on and off all day.  I had a Cooper's Hawk hunting the little birds out there!  Big, beautiful bird of prey.  He probably stooped on the feeder about 8 times during the course of the day.  He may have caught one dove, but I think he came up mostly empty.  The shrubbery around there is prime for little birds to scatter into, and the patio where the feeder is hanging is a little bit tight maneuvering for a bird that size.  The birds would scatter and hide for awhile, and then come back.  And he'd try again.  I got some pictures, and this was about the best one.  They didn't turn out good, but he wasn't exactly trying to hold still for the camera.  I couldn't decide whether to be happy that the little birds were escaping him, or sad that he wasn't getting a meal.

The hawk isn't around today, but I have a bunch of doves about there, probably a dozen.  It's a mixture of morning doves and white-winged doves.  It hasn't gotten up to freezing yet today, so the doves tend to like to huddle on the patio, even when they aren't foraging under the feeder.  And of course the usual sparrows, finches, juncos and cardinals are out there.  Occasionally I see a blue jay.

Addy is still doing well.  I have to put a picture of her in my posts of course.  She did fine with the new pet sitters, but I'll be glad to have my regular sitter watching over her on the trips I have coming up.  March is pretty clear, but I have three trips in April - to Chicago, Washington DC and Philadelphia.  Then I have two trips in May - to Seattle and back to Washington DC.  Then I have a trip to Paris, France in June and a trip to Atlanta in July.  And this is just my President-elect year.  Next year when I'm President will probably be worse, trip-wise.  So I'm really glad Addy's health is looking okay for a cat-kid that's 19 years old.


Anyway, this isn't the latest in the year that we've had ice and or snow here, but I'm hoping it will be the last this year.  I'm really ready for warm and green and growing things.  Not only am I not fond of cold, I'm not fond of dead-looking plants.  Plus, I know I put my hummingbird feeder out in mid-March last year and had a hummer right away.  So I hope this is the last frigid weather we'll have and it'll begin being growing season soon.