The Crazy Weather in July

We've had the craziest weather this month! Like normal, we've been praying for moisture, or as was pointed out in the local newspaper, we should pray for actual rain, not just mist. And those prayers have been answered. We have had a lot of rain, but with that rain we have also been getting the companions Wind and Hail. 

On Sunday at church, I came up the stairs from dropping the boys off to their Primary classes and saw Curtis standing at the east door, looking out. He said, "These clouds remind me of the tornado clouds in Missouri. The colors and the swirling."  As we watched, and others gathered, we saw a funnel cloud snake its way to the ground. We were all stunned! We don't get tornadoes in San Juan County! But I saw it with my own eyes. Unfortunately, I didn't think to get to get my phone out and take a picture of the first cloud, but then another one started to form. So I grabbed my phone and clicked away.

Can you see that greenish/blue tinge in the clouds? That's the color Curtis was talking about.

Once when we were visiting we had some really bad weather in Missouri which is in Tornado Alley, but I've never seen a tornado and never thought the first one I saw in my life would be in Monticello. Wow!

This one never came close to touching the earth, it just got strung out horizontally and got thinner and stringier….

This is a picture I found on FB of the first funnel cloud that came down. This was taken by a lady from Colorado who was driving west on 491 towards Monticello so it's a reverse of what we saw looking east, but its the same funnel cloud. It looks to me like it touched down or came very close to it.

These are screenshots of the weather app on my phone that shows the lightening strikes in my area. You can see that some days were a little crazy. The blue dot is my phone and there were a lot of strikes that were incredibly close. In fact, there was a strike that took out our electric transformer, as well as damaging our phone, computer and tv. We had unplugged them, but the power came in through the phone line. It actually melted the phone line into the jack and the whole thing had to be replaced. So frustrating to have no tv or computer functional. I can live without a landline phone. ;)

I love these two notifications from the weather app. I had to laugh when I saw them! "Lightening strike 0 miles from your location. Make your move to safety now." I thought they should say, "Lightening strike 0 miles from your location. Are you still alive?" LOL

On the 15th the kids and I ran to the library and while we were in there a crazy hailstorm began. It was so loud in the library due to the hail on the metal roof, that the librarian had to yell to ask me my name to check me out. We decided to stay put until it was over. This was what we found when we were able to leave….

That is hail in Soren's hand. It's the biggest I've ever seen here. (This was at home)

This was a pile of hailstones that came off the roof at the library and piled up

hailstones at the library

a pile of ice balls!

There was no way we were going to go out into that pounding hailstorm. Ouch!

These next pictures show the damage to my garden… sad.

pumpkins leaves are tattered...

tomatoes are torn up really bad, poor little plants.

I'm hoping my garden will recover in time to produce something. 

This is my north flower bed. Those plantain leaves got shredded. Sigh.

Curtis said, "Well, we pray for rain, and don't stop to think what comes with that." Now I know. 

The other thing I've noticed is that around here, we don't get warm rain, so when rain comes the temps drop. We have had a relatively cool summer and my garden isn't growing all that well, even though its' had rain. It also needs SUNSHINE!

Highlights of May 2014

Just a few highlights from the month of May:

Surf and Slurp opens- first shaved ice of the year!!

Charles the Insect man...6 pairs of eyes.

Soren gets awards at Pack Meeting. Good Job!!

James has a bout with stomach flu. Poor little guy.

Ford and Shiala bring Kami down for her first visit to Grandpa and Grandma's house.

Why Yes! That is snow. In May! we asked for it.

Curtis gets to play grandpa again when he goes to the BYU Invitational. I am jealous!

Love this one! She looks pretty comfy there!

Montana has had a pretty good time in Idaho. He has gone to lots of fun places with his roommates.
He also had some heartbreak and it was very hard on him. Life lessons. They always hurt a bit.

Cambria, the shoulder angel?
You should have seen the process to get her up there. Oh, my!

The boys helped me plant some seeds in the garden. These are peas.
They were excited thinking about eating them when they grow.

Our little apple tree has lots of blossoms on it. We hope it will provide lots of apples in years to come.

Garden-summer 2013

Last year we started our garden by cutting down two trees and building the boxes for the raised beds. This year we wanted to get them going, but it was soooo hard to find compost or decent dirt that we could afford. We ended up spending more than we wanted and not getting quite what we wanted and by the time we got it the season for planting was pretty well past. We decided to just plant anyway to see how things would grow. We have been happily surprised to find that things grew well and that we were able to grow lots of things that we wanted to. We plan to build more boxes and someday the entire back yard will be a garden that will supply us with lots of our food. We have purchased a 'bender' for electrical conduit which you use to make hoops. The hoops and ag-fabric are used to make mini greenhouses or hoop--houses. This allows us to extend the growing season on both ends, being able to plant earlier and harvest longer. We will work on hoops during the winter and hopefully will have them available to use early next spring. When you live at 7000 ft you need some way to extend the growing season, it's pretty short. We also planted four trees this year, two apple-one Golden Delicious, and one Honeycrisp, one pear, and one plum. The plum tree did not survive, but the other three are doing well. We are excited to some day eat an apple off our own tree.

Good Things:
Harvesting all the greens today...
Evening thunderstorm...
Jordan and Lindsey are coming to visit next week!!

Our current garden beds-L to R
Strawberries/Green beans, Onions/Pumpkin, nothing, Lettuce/Spinach/Tomatoes/GreenPeppers/Chard, Raspberries

I LOVE strawberries. In all my married life, I've never grown any. I've planted them a couple of time but never gotten them to grow. We planted 10 plants this year, lost one, and finally we have lovely sweet red-all-the-way-through berries!!

Green peppers are quite prolific this year. We counted 14 peppers on one plant today. 

Lots of green tomatoes. All the rain is making it hard to stress the plants so that the tomatoes will turn red.

We feel very blessed to have been able to get this much to grow this year and are excited to think about the possibilities of the future. There is something so satisfying about growing some of your own food!

Can I really grow wolfberries?

Because I'm a wannabe gardener/farmer I sometimes read Countryside or Backwoods Home magazines. Last year I read about wolfberries, more commonly known as Goji berries. I decided that I was going to try to collect some seed and plant them to see if I can get them to grow here. 

When I went north in April to DYT Club Night, I stopped at Real Foods Market and found a bag of dried Goji Berries. Apparently that's the best way to get seed for growing them. Following the directions in the article I read, I soaked some berries overnight and the next day I squished the tiny seeds out of them. I should have put something in that picture for comparison's sake. But they are tiny, about the size of a pinhead. 

After letting them dry for a few days I planted them.  Hope this works!