I am in the pink area

I woke up this morning to….. snow….. When I went to bed last night I expected to wake up to rain and wind, after all the weather gurus around here were saying we might get a few snow showers this evening.  Now in all honesty there is just a dusting of snow.  It looks a lot like what powered sugar would look like on a donut.  There is now a chance of 1-4 inches of snow tonight and tomorrow.  Not that bad but still messy.  I guess I will have to go down to the barn and get the snow shovel.  I don’t know why I did not think of that yesterday when I was getting ready for the “Frankenstorm” other wise known as Sandy.

I talked to my boys on the Outer Banks.  As of yesterday they had faired well.  It was just another storm to them. 

I will be glad when this storm is gone; it has been non stop news for the past week.  One good thing about it, the storm knocked the presidential election off the front “page” of the news for a while!!!

I am sitting here in my mountain home at 7:30 pm the end of October with my windows and doors open.  It was in the upper 70’s today as it has been for nearly the whole month.  I thought earlier this month that the cool weather was here but it seemed to just be a blip on the weather map.  Tomorrow is forecast to be even warmer.  If the weather gurus are correct we should be back to more seasonal temperatures by the first of next week. 

I moved to the mountains to live in the summer of 2008 and with the exception of the first part of the winter 2009-2010 the winters have been pretty warm and the summers almost hot.  The old timers around here comment on how unusual the weather has been.  A lot has been said to play down the effects of climate change but from my point of view it is real and we as a society need to accept that like it or not things are changing and we need to prepare for that change. Sticking your head in the sand doesn’t do a whole lot of good when that new house you built on the North Carolina coast gets flooded or you don’t have water in that new house you built in Nevada. 

this is a link to the Frontline program on the climate debate

 Climate of Doubt | FRONTLINE | PBS

I have been wanting to point this out all day; today is

10-11-12

Few people alive now will ever see these numbers in a date again.
Some folks are looking forward to the next sequence this year 12-12-12.
Just think after 12-12-12 there will not be any sequential dates until the next century.  There will be the date 11-12-13 but no 13-13-13.  After 12-12-12 dates will be just dates on a calendar again that is until the next century opens up a new opportunity for folks to plan special events on dates like 01-01-01

This is where the chimney goes into the sealing.  I expected  it to be packed full but it was only a big hand full and there were no egg fragments or bird droppings so I am guessing that the bird that did this work gave up and went elsewhere.

This is the top of the stove.

I set October 1^st aside each year to clean my stovepipe/chimney out.  This year I did not get to it until the 3^rd but the point is that the stove does not get used until the pipe is cleaned out.  The photos accompanying this post shows why it is so important to clean out the chimney.  I repeat the cleaning out the stovepipe/chimney routine on January 1^st, just to help keep my mind at ease.  That is down from my every 2 month routine when I first got the stove.  I figure that if the pipe is bad in January I can always increase the cleaning routine.

Every year around here more than one house suffers smoke damage and some even burn down due to a faulty chimney.  By cleaning out my chimney a few times a season I get to inspect it and can correct any problems before they become major.

In other news the weather right now is GREAT……. cool evenings and pleasant days.  Weather Underground is saying that the temps should get into the LOW 30’s this weekend so I guess I will spend some time in the garden today.  I have some plastic that I can use to cover the plants I have out there but they won’t need to be covered until this weekend. I won’t have time to set things up then so now is the time to prepare.  I was reviewing the first frost from last year and this year the frost seems to be coming earlier.  Could be a cold winter.  I heard their going to name winter storms now……. I prefer the way folks have described the winter storms of the past, you know the Halloween storm of 1991, blizzard of 1993 that sounds dramatic, but who knows maybe I will have a T shirt that says I survived the Gandalf storm of 2013.

I will be peddling around on the property today.  I was scheduled to work today but they did not need me so yay for some unscheduled “free” time. As I said above this is a good day for the garden and to get a few chores that I have been putting off.  Its going to be a busy weekend so this unscheduled “down time” will be nice.

Today in paradise it felt like fall.  It was cloudy and rainy and the air was cool.  I went out this morning as I always do and looked at the mountain.  There was a bank of fog obscuring the mountain but the trees were starting to really show their colors.  The photo above is not the best but it will give the viewer an ideal of what the beginning of fall looks like here in paradise.