After the Hail

After the hailstorm ended I ran out to see what the damage was. A lot of leaves and some branches down, quite a few more bees and assorted insects didn't make it and the hostas are torn and battered.


Like little diamond pearls, the hail and one deceased insect.


Taken yesterday at 10:30 AM, the hostas were at their finest - proud and shiny.


The same plant after the hail, amazingly the flower stalk is still intact but the leaves are shredded.

Hailstorm

Flowering Hibiscus and ice, August sure is turning out to be a beauty weather-wise.

Dusk

I took this shot of the big conifer in front of the house at dusk yesterday after temperatures in the 90s set off a violent thunderstorm. It was pretty dramatic out there for a while, you can still see the humidity in the background.

Cold water

See that blue water? Pristine blue water? Do you want to know why it looks like that? I'll tell you. Because no one has put so much as a pinky-toe in there since we opened it a month ago. Why? Because it's a freakishly cold 62F, that's why.
This year was the first Memorial Day weekend we didn't jump in the pool since we moved here. Even though we are hardy Europeans, we need at least a week of temperatures in the 70s to get the water warm enough for us, and this year that just hasn't happened. We've had one day, or at the most two, of warm weather followed by a stream of dreary, chilly days.
A neighbor suggested we use solar balls to heat the water but I can't find any more information on them. Does anyone know if these things work? It says non-toxic, but what are they made of? Will they mangle the mechanics of my new pump? I'd really like to start swimming soon and I'd be willing to try these things if I knew they'd do no harm.

Autumn at the Beach

2 pm, Monday October 22 2007 and it's 73F. We've had an unbelievable run of beautiful weather in NY. It hasn't been this warm through the end of October since we moved here. Someone termed in "perma-summer". That pretty much sums it up. The leaves are changing and falling and they've removed the awning down at the beach because summer is over but you wouldn't know that from the temperature or the number of boats out on the Sound.

Season of mists... and foghorns

On Friday evening the temperatures were in the mid-eighties, even at 10 PM, and the humidity was a killer. That set us up for a big blanket of what passes for fog on the North Shore of Long Island. Where I come from it would be described as a little light mist, where Steven comes from it wouldn't even be worth noting. Everyone else seems to have their air conditioners back on but I am too fiscally prudent mean to run the airco in October. So I opened all the windows as wide as they would go. And then it started.
Sometime in the Friday night/Saturday morning hours the foghorn sounded and it's been going off every five seconds since then, even though the fog lifted at around 9 AM on Saturday. How do I know it's every five seconds? Because I spent the last two nights counting One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi... Steven, of course slept through it. In fact he only noticed it on Saturday morning when he walked the dogs on the beach!
It got so annoying on Friday night that I went to another bedroom to try and get some sleep. The other bedroom is over the garage. At the end of the driveway are two large oak trees. This year has been a bumper one for acorns. They make a delightful ping when they hit the ground, Approximately one a second. So my night went something like this: One ping Missi ping ssi ping ppi ping.

The foghorn, I guess, is on Huntington lighthouse. And either it's part of the Long Island Fall Festival or the thing is stuck. If it's the former it should end sometime after the meatball eating contest today. If it's the latter I suppose it will be sounding every five seconds until someone goes and fixes it.

Season of foghorns and falling acorns
Sleepless nights for me.......

Curtain of rain

Downpour front porch
Originally uploaded by modernemama

Look closely at the slate step and you can see the water cascading off the overhang and bouncing on the path. If your eyesight is really good you can see the curtain of rain that fills in the frame between the house and the post.
Just a little local downpour.

freezing, leaking and updating

Last Saturday's blizzard dumped over 12" snow on us and for half a day after it stopped it looked so beautiful: deep white snow, blue skies, a little sun. Unfortunately, the snow was accompanied by freezing temperatures and that is the perfect combination for ice damming. That's when the snow melts off the roof but freezes at the roofline, especially behind the gutters. Icicles start to hang off the gutters, drip down the siding and reform over the windows. That's when the leaks occur. By Sunday afternoon we had water pouring in through Steven's study and my office. Normally in this situation I would grab the duct tape and effect a temporary repair but a thorough search of the house and garage revealed that the duct tape had disappeared.

The solution we came up with was to decorate the floors with plastic sheeting and black trash bags covered with towels. We had them in the kitchen in front of the slider (that was installed by an incompetent amateur), in the great room (under one of the second storey windows), in the den as well as in the study and office. It doesn't look very attractive but at least the wood floors won't get damaged. This should hold up until the thaw begins and we can solve the problem by attaching flashing over the gutter and under the roof, adding insulation to the roof space and installing the new windows.

Those who have visited my website will recall that back in July I joked that the new windows would probably be installed during a snowstorm in January. Well that's when they were delivered. Now they are in the garage awaiting a few dry days to fit them. It can't be too soon for me, I am freezing as I write this. If I get any colder I will have to wear fingerless mittens to type.