Into the Freezer

We should feel lucky, I guess. It's -13 in Jackson as this entry is being written and we are sitting at 39. The forecast for us is for freezing temperatures before the start of the weekend. Winter is here. We had winds most of the day yesterday - between 15 and 20 mph most of the time - and even though we only had a trace of rain, it was threatening all day long. Some real rain is expected by tomorrow, while Jackson is getting more snow.

The winds we had yesterday only served to make us more aware of the mess that the tree on our site creates. The Acacia tree is like a weeping willow except that it has little blooms, or puff balls, that have been falling off the tree for at least the last month. It is the fruit of the tree and I researched ways yesterday to prevent trees from bearing fruit - especially ornamental trees where the fruit isn't edible anyway. There is a spray that can be used  - Ethephon - that should be used in the early part of the season before pollination occurs. There isn't much we can do about it this year, but when we come back next year, we will consider getting the whole tree sprayed with that chemical. The tree is too large for us to spray ourselves, so we would need a professional service for that job. It's a real nuisance to use our blower after each windy day to clear away the droppings from the tree.

Even though we are saving money by only having the one vehicle - our F450 truck - we miss having the second vehicle for a couple reasons. The main one is that we are staying closer to home as a result of the poor gas mileage we get with the truck. That means we don't go to a lot of the places we would like to go as long Josie is working and we have to do shopping and make other necessary local trips on her days off. I also cannot save time by doing some of the shopping while she is working. Some of the savings we have enjoyed is eaten up by the higher diesel fuel costs and certainly by the mileage which is about half as good as the Jeep. We'll try to stick it out as long as we can, and as long as we can justify the inconveniences.

We will continue to be prepared for the expected rain that is coming by keeping the gazebo closed and the plants out of the freezing temperatures at night. It will be nice to see the warmer weather return again early next week...