Winter’s Quiet Beauty

While the snow storms here in North Texas are over and the remnants are mostly melted away, I thought you’d enjoy seeing a little North Texas winter!

First Day of Snow

A couple of days before the storm, I watered all of the plants in both the front and back yards, and all of the pots. One pot I couldn’t move on my own and Mr. Ethereal was working long hours at work getting product shipped, so I tucked that pot right next to a small window on our front porch. I wrapped it tightly, doubling the fabric around it.

Update: The plant looks like it made it! The leaves all withered but the stalks are still green. I’ll keep wrapping it whenever it gets to freezing so it doesn’t keep stressing. This plant is really made to live in a more tropical area, like San Antonio.

I used to bring it inside in the winter, but I didn’t do that this year. I wanted to see what it could handle. (Sorry, no photos.)

We woke up to a light dusting of snow on Saturday morning, which was fun! I thought we were supposed to get more??

Well, throughout the day, we had little flurries.

The first evening…

I think Mr. Ethereal was excited to go outside and “play” in the snow! We ended up going out around lunchtime and picked up a couple of bags of water softener salt to use on the sidewalks.

This is a first for us seeing a flicker, I think. Let me know if you know what this bird is, friends!! He’s a big bird with beautiful striped wings!

With very few snow plows, or anyone who has a snowplow to put on the front of their truck, it was a game of “Remember Where the Lines Are!” We had no issues driving with 4WD. 😉

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Day Two’s Snow

My weather app said it was supposed to snow more, but at bedtime, it sounded like rain. We woke up to sleet ~ I guess. I never realized what that granular snow was! It’s really hard and slippery.

I found that my cow boots (my gardening boots) didn’t work ~ slip city! However, my cowboy boots worked perfectly on the sleet. They have tough ridged soles. 🙂 I had to go out to check the plants inside the greenhouse to make sure they were staying warm.

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The Greenhouse ~ How is it handling the cold?

That Saturday morning, the greenhouse was showing 43 deg. F. while it was 22 degrees outside. I was concerned that going down to 9 deg. for Sunday morning was going to be too much if we were only 20 degrees above the actual outdoor temperature.

Charles and I had been brainstorming about what to do for the extreme temps, so you know we added a second plastic layer over this inside layer.

Charles put old remnant PVC pipe, leftover from last year’s backyard watering system redo, laid over the top as “ribs” between the two layers of plastic to create a gap to trap heated air from the sun. It works quite well!

I can still open up the left side during the day when the inside is getting too hot, and leave the “door” unzipped and rolled up or left down loose. Having this extra layer is perfect for keeping the warmth inside on these really chilly days!

And literally, I couldn’t lift the left side all week as it was frozen solid to the ground. Even today, a week later, the last snow is still melting away from that walkway area heading to the gate.

I had an idea in the middle of the night to shorten the inside area by hanging a leftover piece of plastic closing off the back unused portion of the greenhouse. The poor little heater was having to heat this whole 16′ space!

Actually, the heater wasn’t really taxed at all. I checked it in the morning and it wasn’t even hot.

It is really an indoor heater which Mr. Ethereal ordered online. He picked up a second one for our garage, too.

This is me trying to tuck the plastic under the grey PVC ribs of the greenhouse but that didn’t work! Way too much ice and frozen snow on top, lol! 😉 I was able to shove half of the plastic over the 2×4 framing and then just clamp it in a few spots to the side ribs. Worked great!

This is just a photo of me tucking part of that plastic behind the metal trough.

Amazing how that changed the whole dynamic of the heating! Game changer!! It stayed at 49 degrees at 9 degrees outside. I’d say that’s a huge win!

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A few more winter photos

Snowy beauty out along the back alleyway…

I just liked the bricks peeking out from the snow. 😉

Each day as it warmed above freezing, the drip would land here coming off the backyard roof.

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A super cold but sunny day!

The persistent crabapple wrapped at the base to prevent exploding. ~ I unwrapped it on Groundhog Day and the lower trunk is just fine. <3

Incredible shadows!!! I asked Hubby to NOT go outside to scrape off the walkways (and tromp around the snow) until I could get outside to take pictures.

I don’t know what I was worried about as with this being sleet, the ground is frozen and there are no footprints! The ground is too frozen. 😉

I spent two days, and that final day for about 8 hours, wrapping plants, moving tender plants inside the shed and watering. Wrapping climbing roses takes a really long time. I took most of the canes down on most of the climbers, holding them down to the ground with bricks.

Here on the south wall, I kept some of the rose canes in situ and just really wrapped the base of the rose bush really well.

I planted a lot of hardy shrubs, so most of our plants are rated for weather from zone 5 to zone 9, for severe cold to severe heat. I wouldn’t have had to wrap the roses or the boxwood except with 70 degrees one week then an immediate drop to 22 degrees hits plants really hard. The box already have new leaves, so I used a flexible trashcan with leaves inside to protect one boxwood ball.

The sweet alyssum might make it… The cilantro/Italian parsley turned to mush. A bird planted the parsley at some point and I planned on picking it to bring inside for tacos but forgot. 🙁

I made suet for the birds. They may not really need it, but it was fun to make, as I threw bunches of seed out and they cleaned that up everyday. For seed is why we actually went out driving to the grocery store on Saturday before the big freeze came in on Sunday.

Really beautiful with the sparkling snow!

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Thanks for stopping by today and I hope you enjoyed a little snow from Texas…