Quality Time in the Garden

I know, I know. I've not posted for a week and a half now. I just don't know where all the time goes! I have so many things to post on I'm breaking them up into smaller posts this time. Maybe they'll post better on Blogger. All was going along swimmingly right on through my last post on November 26th. After posting, I started dinner as the power was starting to "flutter" on and off. It had been snowing so I figured it would go off....and come back on over night. Boy, was I wrong! We ended up with over a foot of snow and the power out for 47 hours. We were lucky as there were people with much more snow than us....and without power for 6 days! We're pretty used to power going out for a day here or there so I wasn't concerned on Monday and spent most of the day spinning and listening to the radion reports. Monday night I started to get concerned when the power didn't come back on.

I think I should explain that because we are "rural" and use a well for water, when the power goes off....so does the water. And the heat. We do not have a wood stove as our home is really too small (or too crammed with stuff, lol). So, while the snow was a wonderful beautiful and very useful thing during this power outage, the cold was a problem. Add to that the fact that our generator has seizures and I wasn't fully prepared for a "winter storm" this early......and there were concerns. At left you get a view of my garden under snow. I know...how pretty! heheh The raised beds look like Chicklets. heheheh




I spent some quality (read quantity) time in the garden on Tuesday making water. See, to flush a toilet, wash dishes ect....you need water. Don set this make shift burner on Monday night to get us enough water for the bathroom. While he spent most of Tuesday trying to exorcise the demons from the generator so that we could save our groceries, I spent most of the day making water. Don't get me wrong, it was warmer here than in the house.
This shows it set up for production mode.....two pots!

This gives you a better idea of the set up. This pot of snow will melt down to make about 2-3 inches of water in the bottom of that pan. It takes roughly one pan to flush the toilet. I made lots of water on Tuesday as it was really iffy on when the power was coming back on. After lunch Don decided that the generator was just going to have to stay possesed and built us a freezer pit in the back yard out of snow. We moved our freezer stuff there and set out our refrigerator stuff to stay cold. We were lucky and lost very little food in this.

After we had enough water stored in the house we went into town to get propane so we could try and take the chill of the house that night. As luck would have it the power came on right after we got home. I have to tell you, a hot shower never felt so good! We still have a good amount of snow in our yard, but the roads are clear and it's slowly melting off. I do love the snow, but I love it more with the power on! lol