mattie g

Alright, alright...title edit made. I’ve been preoccupied with training this week and have only been around occasionally. I hope my quick drive-by edit has made everyone happy!

Garlic shoots have started sprouting in force in the last week. With temps in the 70s yesterday and mild overnight temps the last two nights, they’ve now taken off. Good thing they’re hearty and will withstand the upcoming blizzards. I’ll have to post picture of the forsythia at L’Enfant - plenty of yellow on them. Likely that the first daffodil shoots in the neighborhood have started coming up, too.

Pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before on the boards, but I was in Lewisburg, PA that year. I remember heading up there from South Jersey after winter break on one of the coldest days of that winter, and Philly was covered in ice and steam from all the buildings - like a scene from a Soviet factory city on the Volga or something. We seemingly got snow after snow after snow, with an icing here and there for good measure. Not sure what we ended up with, but it had to have been 75”, give or take 10” or so. There was fairly deep snow on the ground for weeks and weeks on end - an absolutely unreal stretch of weather that I’m glad to have experienced.

It’s more unlikely than likely that anyone here will see an 09-10 equivalent in this area again, but it’s not at all impossible.

WAAAAAAAAAAAAG BWI: 25.3 DCA: 17.6 IAD: 29.2 RIC: 16.9 Tiebreaker (LYH): 30.1

Since we're getting 8-12" next week, we're going to see a lot of revisions in here.

I wanted to get my garlic in on Sunday, but it didn’t happen. Not concerned - I’ll hopefully get it in this weekend.

The one year I choose to go with late picks...

None were even close except Dulles.

I may be mistaken, but I feel like that hasn't been the case the last couple years...that Richmond's first freeze was near the same time as DC's.

Taking the over for 90% of the mentioned areas.

So take some darts and throw them at a dart board with various winter outcomes pinned to it. You'll (maybe) eventually hit one that you like...and it will mean basically as much as any forecasts put out there at this point. Fun discussion points, but not really worth much more than that, in my opinion.

Every year, my guesses end up being far too early in the season, so I'm going to push it out a little this go-round... BWI: 11/15 IAD: 11/15 DCA: 12/2 RIC: 12/1 Tiebreaker: 9.2"

Wow...already? I'll be harvesting tomatoes until at least mid-October. I want to get every last fruit off the vine that I possibly can. I have a ton of maters and jalapenos that are still maturing - I'd hazard that I'll harvest 10+ lbs of tomatoes of various variety between now and then.

Yesterday, we took out 50 sq ft of river rock that bordered one part of the patio we had put in a couple years ago and replaced it with sod. Painful process, but it looks so much cleaner now. Hopefully our kids (with the help of the neighborhood kids) don't destroy it. My hands hurt today.

Not a bad idea. Better than killing the (poor?) thing, i guess!

You should be good. Tomatoes are surprisingly tough plants, so with with root system intact they'll snap right back. A couple years ago, I had a hornworm eat through 90% of the stalk on a huge Amish Paste plant. I duct-taped a strip of old t-shirt around the wound and to try to keep moisture in and moving up the stem. I didn't really expect it to work, but the plant continues producing as if nothing had ever happened to it. HOWEVER...this year I have a squirrel who refuses to take the hint that it's not wanted. Doesn't care about my dog, does care some when I put cayenne down, but it returns as soon as the cayenne gets washed away. This is the first time I've dealt with a persistent squirrel in my tomatoes, and I'm fantasizing about putting it six feet under. Honestly...if I lived out in the country I'd have purchased an air rifle by now to off this thing.

We're totally redoing our garden area, but I only got a chance to build one of the two raised beds I'm planning on. Even so, the half-garden I planted is doing really well. I planted late, but tomatoes are really starting to fruit, so we should be in the goods within a few weeks. I just need to get the second raised bed built in time for the late-summer/fall seeding period. We've had enough rain at the right times, so the lawn is doing just fine. I rarely water it even if it really needs it, so getting the rain we have has been really nice to keep everything green and growing (though not too fast).

Frustration reigns when there are sharp cutoffs. Hell...I was annoyed watching the evening band set up 20-30 miles north of me even though it had already dropped good amounts as it came through here and left me with close to double digits. February 10, 2010 dropped 8-9” here in Burke. Had one really intense band in mid-morning, and it snowed for quite a few hours, but definitely missed out on bigger totals in my neck of the woods.

Haven’t measured depth recently, but it was well over 8” at 4:00 or so. Great spot on the deck railing.

Per usual, very much in line with my obs, though I had a little more with the WAA and less with the ULL.

Gotta love the govvie-contractor relationship/rules and how they differ from agency to agency. Thing is...my client will probably think we’re dumb when I tell them we went in.

Gotta love being a green-badger and having to go in while our client is home tomorrow. That complaint out of the way, it was a great weekend. Despite being mostly shut out in the last few hours, ended just shy of 10”. Had such a blast with the kids (6 and 16 months) today - two rounds of sledding and a lot of snow eating!

F’ing subsidence...

Meh. Was looking good for double digits up until an hour or two ago. My loss is your gain.