Snow day number 4!

I'm not sure how many of you have been following the national weather news but Kansas is getting hit with a second blizzard today. The first blizzard we had was great!! We had gently falling snow, around a foot, that the kids were able to play in. Over the weekend the weather was actually gorgeous with lots of sunshine! 

This second blizzard however is not going to be good because of wind. Our weather forecast is calling for a possible foot of snow accumulation but I don't think that's going to happen. I woke up to look out the window and the snow was blowing horizontal down the street. The winds are blowing about 30 mph with gusts into the 40's! I thought it was great when I heard we were going to get so much snow but who knew that two blizzards could be so very different. 

So....this is snow day number 4. Though the boys have been out to play over the last five days Yahoo and I have not. Thursday afternoon she was running a temperature that spiked up to 104 a couple times. I thought it was coming down Saturday but no go, it spiked up to 104 again Sunday morning. Considering the blizzard that was coming we opted not to wait and DR took her to the ER yesterday morning. And guess what? She had an ear infection!! She never messed with her ears and even when I asked if they hurt she told me no. I think I'm going to have to invest in one of these because that's the second of my kids that have gotten ear infections without complaining about hurting ears.



By the way, that's called an Otoscope. Does anyone have one or ever used one? Are they hard to use? 

So Yahoo and I have been stuck in the house since Thursday. My boys don't know yet that there's no school, they are sleeping away and I'm not going to wake them! They've been able to play outside but not today. Over the weekend Yip even got to spend the night with his best friend so Yap had 24 hours of brotherless time! But that still didn't keep them from arguing and picking at one another when Yip returned. 

I'm just hoping we can stay busy enough today that there won't be too much fighting. We might have to get creative today with our indoor time...or I might just have to threaten them within an inch of their lives!! 

Snow day number 4. This must be some sort of record for Kansas! I don't think they've had a blizzard like this since 1971, much less TWO blizzards! Yep, it's windy. Yep, I'm stuck in the house with three kids and have a bad case of cabin fever. Yep, we are sick. But I wouldn't trade it for anything because all that means MOISTURE!! I'm already dreaming of what all that wonderful snow is doing for my garden plot. 

Yep, I'm in the middle of a blizzard but I'm still thinking of spring!! 

The Draw of the Tumbleweeds

Rollin', rollin', rollin...

see those tumbleweed rollin'

Rollin', rollin', rollin' on by!

Tis the season of the tumbleweed!

See all those bushy like things out in that field? Well those are the curse of SW Kansas. Russian thistle.

They may look nice and green most of the year, I wouldn't know, drought you know, but this time of year is when they dry up and get blown all over. To give you an example; last weekend I was driving and for about a mile stretch tumbleweeds were constantly blowing across the road. I bet I saw at least 50 blow across the road in that one mile. DR and I have a game we play this time of year when we drive. We try to time it just right to hit the tumbleweeds as they roll across the road. It's quite a sight to see them obliterate! The chain link fence at the high school football field is covered with tumbleweed that has been blown in these last couple weeks!

For my boys tumbleweeds are cool! Of course they are cool to them. They've only seen them the last year and they've associated them with cowboys. I imagine their affection for tumbleweed would be similar to a Kansan's fascination with Indiana Morning Glory. Cool to look at, a pain to deal with.

The locals already think we are strange with our Purdue Boilermaker gear so I'm sure they thought this little scene was hilarious to them. The boys took off for about 30 minutes and came back with a long row of tumbleweeds tied to one of the bikes!

Oh my. And they are coming straight to our house with all those tumbleweeds! I can hear all the neighbors giggling right now,

"Those crazy Hoosiers!"

Yep, you can't see it but Yip there is pushing his bike attached to all those tumbleweeds right into our front yard.

Ha! It took those two silly boys a good half an hour to get the rope and tumbleweeds off their bike. They only work this well together when they are making a mess. Namely spreading a weed all over my front yard.

When I asked them what they were going to do with it they said, "We don't know...maybe we'll make a tumbleweed snowman out of them." Of course, since we don't get snow.

Now wouldn't that be a sight. Maybe I'll get lucky and stiff wind will blow the tumbleweed away before they can get to work on that project!

Return of the Wind

The Wind has returned to Kansas.

It's no secret that Kansas is a windy place. But oddly, or so I'm told, this past summer's lack of wind was very unusual. Maybe it had something to do with the drought or the extreme heat we had. One of the locals told me that it seems that the hotter it gets the less wind there is but even this year's 100+ temps the lack of wind was extreme. Lots of Kansans complain about the wind unless of course the wind is bringing in a storm.

I took this photo Wednesday night at the boys' football practice. Those were a lot of clouds and there was a LOT of wind that night and I was hoping for some rain but so far no luck. The weather has been calling for chances of rain all through the weekend...we'll see. Even if we are in the middle of harvest I don't think anyone in Kansas would complain about some, or lots, of rain.

I like the wind, of course, I haven't lived here long to learn to hate it like the locals.

Driving in wind can be tricky and is probably the worst thing about Kansas wind. When there are 40-50 mph winds and you are driving in a place with now trees it can sound as though someone is throwing sand at your car. Last week I wasn't paying attention and a sudden gust of wind blew my car onto the shoulder of the road. Thanks goodness there was a shoulder.

And of course if you leave your house windows open, and you aren't home, and a strong breeze blows all day...well, you come home to a layer of dust over the entire house. That's pretty aggravating.

But right now, I'm on my bed typing away on this blog post and the wind is rustling the curtains and whispering outside. It's a rather nice companion...for now. If I believe the locals Mr. Wind may wear out his welcome sooner than I think.

My Dry Garden is Feeling Puny

My garden is growing but not without a lot of work. Back in Indiana I rarely watered a garden. In Kansas I've had to water everyday; it is unusually dry here this year (so I'm told.)  This past week our daily temps have soared into the 90's and 100's. With Kansas heat comes Kansas wind. Normally the wind is welcome because it takes away a bit of the heat.

But my poor plants are feeling the brunt of all the hot air. Although I've watered the garden in the morning, the wind dries up all the moisture long before afternoon. I started to water the garden twice a day but it didn't look like it was doing that much good. DR bought a soaker hose today so hopefully that will prevent quite as much moisture loss.

I've always grown tons of carrots in years past but I can not grow carrots in Kansas. See that patch of dirt up there? I've planted carrots twice there and nothing has popped up but weeds. I suspect the soil content is just wrong for carrots.  *sigh* I love carrots.

I don't know what's the matter with my pepper plants either. This is actually looking good. A couple days ago it looked as though something had eaten it all. I don't know whether it's the soil or the wind.

My tomatoes on the other hand aren't doing too badly. We staked them today in hopes it will help against the wind.

My heart was sinking a bit today as I walked around my little garden. I'm starting to wonder whether we should just built a greenhouse over the whole plot over the winter and start a garden in February! But, I'm not giving up. We'll figure out someway to garden successfully....but it might take a couple years.

Wind

White Out

Today's Weather Forecast for SW Kansas

Snow and areas of blowing snow. Steady temperature around -2. Wind chill values as low as -26. Blustery, with a northeast wind around 24 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of 1 to 3 inches possible.

 

 Accumulation would be more likely if the wind stopped blowing. This is my view to the north. See that building on the right? That's only a block away and I can barely see it. Somewhere beyond all that whiteness is a grain elevator.

This is what you'd normally see at the end of my street.

But not today...everything is white today. White out! Wind a blowin' snow everywhere.

 The snow is blowing, it's frigid but we are warm inside eating cupcakes. Yum! Snow is a good excuse to eat cupcakes don't you think?

I know all this snow is a pain to drive in and

it's cold out and we are stuck inside.

But I can't help but be happy to see all this white stuff.

 Snow means moisture for my garden.

Spring IS just around the corner right Mr. Groundhog??

That's what you said last week!! 

This garden is NOT going as planned!

GGGRRRR!!! What a year to try to garden! My whole plan went out the window when we decided to move to Kansas. I don't know what I'm doing anymore.  

Usually we rent a big rear tine tiller on some Saturday and work up our garden plots twice before we plant. But since DR has been busy tying up loose ends on Saturdays and the weather hasn't been cooperating, the storm clouds are rolling in as I type, I attempted to get to work on my own this week during the good days.

This is one garden plot. See the green stuff? Yeah, those are weeds. I probably should have done something about those last fall. I'm not the BEST gardener folks.

For the last two years we've planted two garden plots; beans, peas, cucumbers, carrots, sunflowers, black beans, radishes, onions, tomatoes, sweet corn, popcorn, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, pumpkins, zuchinni. I think that's all. One plot is over there near the grain bin. See it? The one with the tree stump is closest to the house.

This year, since we are moving and I don't know when, I'm only putting in a small garden in the plot closest to the house. It measures about 36' x 36'.

I attempted to work it all up with this little $100 tiller that we usually reserve for weeding between the rows. It worked long enough for me to get a spot measuring about 20' x 27' worked up. But then it broke!! See the handle thing you pull to start the engine? Well, it stopped working. It doesn't spring back and now I don't have a workable tiller. So I resorted to putting in seeds in what I'd already worked up. So far only small rows of carrots, peas, beans, radishes and cucumbers have been planted.

Did I mention it was REALLY windy today too? Gusts of 30 mph or so. Do you know how hard it is to plant carrot seeds in wind gusts?

My poor hollyhocks may get blown over.

I was so mad at this point, wind and a broken tiller, I mixed up a double batch of chocolate chip cookies and ate a big giant spoonful....or five.....okay, I didn't count how much I ate. Don't judge me people, I'm a grumpy gardener.

Of course, it hasn't been all bad today. When she wasn't digging up my seeds, Yahoo was enjoying the dirt.

She even took a big mouthful....good for her!

And Yap volunteered to cut spinach for dinner all by himself. I was so proud of him! He was eating big handfuls as he went!

I know what you are thinking.

"Prairie Mother, aren't you just starting a garden today? Where did that spinach come from?"

Well, it grew from spinach that went to seed last fall. See? I told you I'm not that good of a gardener! Dinner for the grumpy gardener tonight will be spinach and chocolate chip cookies. Care to join me?

Wind Fun for Kids - How Wind Works!

I really wanted to know something more about wind turbines since we live so close to so many. I know they are a clean, renewable source of energy. But how do they work? Where do they work best? How does wind work? (I also realized I know nothing about wind.) Why can't we have wind turbines all over the country? As I started doing some research into wind and wind turbines and wind farms I decided this would be a good time to do some fun activities with my boys to educate us all on wind! So hang on while I sweep you off your feet with our wind activities!!


I found this wonderful website on energy which I definitely plan on using to do more activities with the boys. We started off reading this story about Wendy and her wizard father and how she asks him to stop the wind. Without the wind, the world is a dark and cold place because the sun is gone. We need the sun to have wind! Then we discussed how hot air rises (like a hot air balloon) and cool air takes its place and makes wind. (Ha! So that's how wind works!) We broke out our globe and talked about different places where it may be windier than others; tops of mountains, along the ocean coast, etc. We even found the picture of windmills in the ocean! Very Cool!

The template at this site helped us to see hot air at work. This snake was a lot of fun! When you hold the snake over heat the hot air will make it slither. This candle really didn't produce enough heat so I held it over my gas stove. Sorry, no photo of that..I was afraid I'd catch my arm on fire trying to take a picture!!


Then the boys made pinwheels out of some card stock and pinned them to the eraser end of a pencil. (I decided later we should have glued each blade to the center of the pinwheel first. They would have worked better.)



Right after they cut the four "blades", before pinning them to the center, we tried blowing on it. Of course it didn't work. After pinning the blades to the center we blew again on it to see the difference. Then we discussed how this blade design "catches" the wind. At this point we did a little experiment. I showed them a picture of an "egg-beater" windmill and other older types of windmills. I then asked the boys to try to change their pinwheel to make it work better. This was fun because they attacked this idea with gusto. They flattened, bent and cut the blades with some interesting results. We also tried designs from a circle and a triangle to make the pinwheel.

This has been a lot of fun with some great visuals of just how wind energy works. The boys have been creating pinwheels, (and a mess of scrap paper on the kitchen floor). Maybe next will be a field trip to the base of a windmill. Of course, I'm not sure what we'll learn there except they are really, really big!! And maybe that trespassing is against the law. Now that I'm thinking about it a field trip to a windmill probably shouldn't be a spur of the moment decision. What do you think?

For Miles in Every Direction......No Trees

I bet when you read my profile on this blog you came across the words, "plains of Illinois" and scratched your head. Before I moved here two years ago I didn't believe Illinois was part of the plains either...isn't that Kansas and Iowa? Nope...Illinois has plains...and here are the pictures to prove it.

EAST - Those are wind turbines you see over the state border into Indiana, about four miles away. One of these days I'll post about those. Very eerie at night but very cool. The red barn is only two miles away. See that? No trees.


SOUTH - This old barn is about a half a mile away and is fun for the boys and me to explore in the spring before the corn gets to high in the fields to walk through. Just past the pine trees is our nearest neighbor about three quarters a mile away from here. Those pine trees don't count; they're just a windbreak.


NORTH - If you look carefully you will see a barn and a silo on the left in this photo which is about three miles away. That's not a tree on the right just my lilac bush.


WEST - Here is my poor clothesline that gets battered by the spring winds. This barn is only mile away. And once again...no trees.


I grew up in Indiana, just a hop skip and a jump away. Every time I make the three hour trip back home I am always surprised by how much the landscape and topography changes in, what I view, such a short distance. I love trees...I miss trees. I grew up cutting down trees every winter weekend for our wood burning furnace. Despite how much I complained back then I'd volunteer to cut wood today if it meant I could spend time with trees! Trees were a major part of my life...but I never realized it until I didn't have any. Illinois doesn't have trees. Yeah, we have four trees in our yard but it isn't the same as that cozy feeling you get walking in a woods surrounded by trees. Giving hugs, the trees do, keeping you warm by blocking the wind.

Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, we don't see too many people out here. The mailman and maybe a couple farmers drive down our road during the day and that's about it. Since there are no trees I can usually see them coming miles away. Of course being so far out in the country means I feel comfortable letting my kids go outside to play without me. On the flip side, it also means they feel comfortable running around as naked as a jaybird during the summer with no trees to hide behind! Like they would hide...little exhibitionists! I'm just hoping that's a phase they'll outgrow or I'll have a lot of explaining to do when they're teenagers!

The wind...somedays I wonder if the wind will ever stop. My first spring on the prairie I wondered if I wouldn't lose my mind from the sound, the feel, the constant battling against the wind. Battling to keep my hair out of my face. Battling to keep lawn furniture from blowing away. Battling to keep clothes on the clothesline. Battling the giant snow drifts built by the wind. Battling the constant roar in your ears....oh wait, that's the sound of the kids. That's a different battle for a different post.

This is the plains of Illinois and I'm learning to deal with it and to love it. (Send saplings!!)