Thursday, January 5, 2012

Green at -40

Oh it has been so bitter cold here this last few weeks, and it just seems to keep getting colder.  Nome is now seeing record low temperatures.  All over town people's water is freezing, sewage traps are backing up, folks are keeping to the indoors--even the ravens seem to have lost some of their cold-weather bravado, and the poor chickens.  We have a heater in their coop now, but it is still pretty cold.  The worst is there just isn't a break in sight.  I have been taking some comfort in my little lemon tree though.
It has been growing like crazy this winter.  I started this thing several years ago from seed, and it really struggled for a couple of years.  It is finally coming into its own now.  I'm going to need to make it a bigger pot to live in soon.  And you can always count on an amaryllis to make a bold debut:
This one was gifted to my by a lovely lady (and fellow green thumb) in my pottery class.  
To keep busy, miss Sadie and I have been doing all kinds of indoor projects, but her favorite by far this week was painting with blue, green, and yellow:
She was quite proud of the "ta-too(s)" she gave herself.  And I was quite amazed at the washability of these wonderful tempura paints.
Maybe with all this green around we wont catch the winter blues.

3 comments:

  1. can i say i looooooooooooooooove how this post is at 2 ends of the spectrum. "we are freezing our heinies off in nome!" and "here's sadie naked!!"

    makes me smile so much! you guys must have a great way of heating your home [which does make me wonder how you alaskans do the home heat thing. not many trees in the tundra. do you burn moose poo? ;) oil? gas? most days we need to wear coats INSIDE our house! but i agree paint on clothes is bad bad!].

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  2. Unfortunately, many rural Alaskans are pretty dependent on petroleum when it comes to home heat. There has been some exploration of alternative energy sources like wind power, but it hasn't really received the priority it should (in my opinion). Some people do use wood stoves. They collect driftwood in the spring or summer when the ice goes out. We live in a commercial building that is very old (oil-heated) and the zone valves are always broken, so our apartment is usually broilingly hot--or freezing. This day it was obviously the former. Plus Sadie just likes to run around nekked anyway. Must be a toddler thing.

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  3. i came back to this post today and just saw your response. my parents have an oil furnace but we have natural gas. i heard on the radio about the oil tanker delivering fuel to nome and thought of you guys! brrrrrrr.

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