Cat's Garden in Austin, TX

Glad to have nice weather back.  Last week was cold, both day and night.  One day we never got above 36 degrees.  Today its almost 1:30pm and we are already at 64 degrees.  Much nicer weather. I think we may have lost a few plants from last week's cold, but we will have to wait and see on that.  Some of the plants in front look just brown, like they may have frozen.  But I don't know if they have died.  Some of the bulbs I planted are trying to grow.  They would do better if the deer would leave them alone.  But the deer outside are not looking good and are looking for whatever they can eat.  Hopefully they will leave my bulbs alone long enough for the bulbs to grow.  We can hope, and wait and see. The plants in the green house are doing fine.  I did move some of the house plants that were outside into the green house.  Most of those house plants look like they will survive, though they do show some signs of damage. ...

They didn't say how much rain, but we are getting some light rain again.  We're not even up to a quarter of an inch, but at least its a slow light soaking rain.  The ground will be happy even if we don't get a lot of water into the tanks. One interesting lesson - we had a green breathable plant blanket covering a set of plants.  The plants were under  a PVC frame, then the plant blanket on top of the PVC frame.  Well, it may be breathable, but not a lot of water got to the plants.  The center of the plant blanket, where water collected in a pool, was letting a small drip of water thru.  We had a pool of water on top of the blanket.  We just went outside to take the blanket off and realized that we had quite a pool of water on top of the blanket. Interesting thing to remember.  They may be good blankets to keep frost off of the plants, but they don't necessarily let a lot of moisture thru them. Yesterday we had to go to Home Depot.  I...

The weather seems to have warmed up today.  Its 1pm and we are up to 54 degrees.  Its pleasant outside.  I went out and checked the greenhouse, haven't done that in a few days, more like over a week.  Surprisingly, everything seems to be doing well.  I did go into the greenhouse last week to move some house plants in there, but that had been all.  So today I went in to check everybody.  Actually all those poor seeds I had put in the pots seems to be more then happy.  They are coming up.  IN DROVES!!  I think I planted too many seeds.  But they are coming up. It is I admit nice and warm, not to hot and with some pleasant sun in there.  I think the house plants will enjoy it for a while.   I've decided that those pots that have the wrong soil need to be repotted.  I'm slowly working on it since I'm not quite sure exactly which pots need to be repotted.  But I think I'll just go with those that are stru...

Guess what!! I think we actually got a light dusting of snow last night.  It didn't last, but you can see this fine, and not quite so fine line of white in the angles of rooflines.  So I think we actually got a little bit of snow sometime last night.  I'm not sure if we actually got rain too, but it is wet outside. Its still pretty cold out there, so until it warms up its probably not the best place to go driving.

Weather update - They are saying we may be in for an actual winter weather event.  What is that you ask?  Possible snow/sleet tonight.  Right now I'm not so sure it will happen up here where we are, but you never know.  I'm sure it would be unusual.  On the other had, if it actually happens, I wouldn't want to have to drive up or down our driveway.  Our driveway is just too steep and I could see it getting treacherous. This new weather is due to hit tonight and last thru tomorrow, Friday, around noon.  We'll see.

Wicked weather.  We've been cold, cool, and still no real rain.  The weather has been up and down, some cold and cool days - right now at 8:30 am its all of 35, after a low of 32.  We've even had some below freezing nights.  But not any real rain.  I say not any real rain because the other day we had heavy fog - the houses across the street were mere shadows.  That much moisture registered on the rain gauge, but no rain fell from the sky.  So the water catchment tanks didn't get any new water.  So I can't say it really rained. And with some of these cold days, the humidity has varied widely.  One day it was cold and blustery, very windy, and the humidity level was down to 11% - that is dry.  Right now humidity is 78%. But the holidays were nice.  We saw some family on Christmas Day.  Then the day after Christmas we went to see some other family here in Austin.  That day it was so cold I wore one of my down jackets. ...

Yes its been a few weeks, and I've been gone out of town, out of the country.  And much has changed in that time. Yesterday the weather was in the low 80's, today we probably won't hit 60.  It's 3:30 in the afternoon and only 57 degrees outside. The tree leaves are changing, at least for those trees that can change.  The nights have cooled down too - last night got down to 47. So we have had a definite weather change. Now for the good news.  We had a neighbor's son water the outside plants while we were away.  We lost nothing.  Everything has survived.  Not only has everything survived, the outdoor tomato plant has two tomatoes, kind of large tomatoes ripening on it.  It does need some support but that's okay.  I had watered my few indoor plants well when we left.  They all survived well too.  Admittedly my dish garden needed water, there were just a couple of dropping plants in it, but not many and nothing was even close to dyi...