The Big Wind Storm

What a fortunate set of circumstances surrounded the latest offering from Mother Nature! I was ready with the generators but never imagined it would be for so long.

This is the neighbor's house about 3 houses up with an uprooted, gigantic spruce on their roof. Luckily no one was harmed, it came down around 11:30 and it is a miracle they were not upstairs in their bedrooms!

The large oak out front is still standing and that is a miracle!

The night was warm (ish, this is New England after all.) I was waiting expectantly for the automated alarm call from the other greenhouses but it never came. I thought that was amazing but great luck! Also great luck that a friend was visiting and offering moral support. Then at midnight as I was filling the generator here for the night I decided I should go up there and check. That was when all the fire trucks and police were flashing up the street so we abandoned the trip. Good thing I didn't go out because further up the street was another huge white pine down in the road with lots of wires, another tree on a car, etc etc.

After a fitful night of sleep I went to Eliot to check and the power and phone lines had been down probably at the same time as the damage on our street. The good news is that it was warm enough for a greenhouse full of cold crop spring material and the wind didn't damage the un-inflated plastic! We grow in double wall hoop houses with air pumped (by electric motor) into the sandwiched layers. My storage shed did get a new look however ,this is minor!

So Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday making runs to Eliot fuel the generator every 6 hours
and the set up at home, one generator on the greenhouse and apartment and one for the house I feel fortunate to be so well set up. The weather did get much worse, rain, snow, wind, inevitably at midnight when I was driving to fill the tank. The sun didn't come out, which was lucky because no pumps for water either!

Back to plants here are some lovelies plucked while sticking cuttings: Vigna caracalla with it's exquisite snail shaped bloom, and Mannetia flowers that are like little glowing fireflies! The plants are as happy as I am to have the power back on, little details like water, air fanning from the horizontal air flow and a grower, after a few naps and a good night sleep, who can see again to take care!

Wind makes me crazy.

Wind blowing hard all night long, sounds like a freight train running at top speed directly at the front of the little propagation house. I don't sleep well on nights like this, waiting for the alarm to go off, wondering if I will know how to fix what ever is broken when the alarm goes off. It is just howling. You know it is cold when the arborvitae are black green, standing like frozen soldiers and the rhododendron are all hunched in, curled leaves dancing around. My favorite oak tree is waving and rattling like a Shaker dancer. I wonder what life is like when hard weather doesn't make you fret and fume. This is the part of horticulture/agriculture that you don't learn about until you live it. We are at the mercy of the elements. You have to do your work to plan, build and maintain accordingly and then it is up to faith.
It's Monday and that means seed day. Any seed crops for week 7 get started today, we fill our seedling trays with a peat perlite germination mix, get them nice and moist and then in goes the seed. These weeks that are early in the season are the nice because we still have space! We have some perennial plugs arriving later and will be opening up the big greenhouses for the planting season. That means cleaning, fixing, and getting all the systems ready to roll.