Outside of town, it got really, really cold. Down in the mid-20′s cold. It’s only 33ºF at my house, so I have no doubt it dipped below freezing here at some point. You may well imagine the furnace is running full-on, high gas bills be damned.
As soon as I warm up from my last brief visit to the cold outside world, I’ll be bundling up better and stepping out into the garden to hover over my precious plants. Only the tomato bed was covered. The lightweight plastic tarp I found and had planned to use to cover the other bed turned out to be too heavy. If I could have been certain there would be no wind and it wouldn’t end up lying on the plants by accident, it would have worked, but I wasn’t sure of that. The executive decision was made to test the hardiness of all the plants in Bed One rather than risk them being crushed. I’ll find out soon enough if that was a wise decision or not.
Other than eventually removing the plastic covering from the tomato bed, there’s only one garden task to be done today. One of the potato plants is failing. I can see no outward signs for it’s failure, but it’s limp and dying. On the off chance it’s disease or serious pest related, the plant will be dug up and sacrificed to protect the other four, which are thriving.
In non-gardening news: The new server my web site is now sitting on seems very zippy! I am, for the moment, pleased. Hopefully, that feeling of pleasure with my hosting service will last. Anyway, the move to the new server seems to have gone off without a hitch, and everyone should be looking at the site at its new home now. Yippee! I’m not on Michael anymore!
Not sure what I am going to do with my day. I need to go to the grocery store, but I am certainly not doing that until later this afternoon when the temperature outside is as warm as it is likely to get today. Other than the shopping and doing the dishes, there’s not much on my list of “must do” tasks for the day. Looks like a good day to get something artsy-crafty done.
I’m about half done with that knitted hat I started this weekend, and I have decided I don’t like it … so I’ll be taking that apart. I’m sure it’d be cute if I finished it, but the self-striping yarn isn’t going to stripe too well on the last half of it. There are a bunch of increases, and the stripes will no longer reach all the way around. Rather than continue with something I know will only annoy me once it’s done, it’s better to just stop and take it apart now. I love the yarn, but finding a project that it will work well with has been a chore. I do not want any thick acrylic socks, and I don’t feel like making anymore hand warmers or gloves right now. The striping pattern is just to narrow and short for much of anything else. The colors are so great though! I have to find something to make with it!
The weather is perfect for curling up on the couch and doing some knitting though, and I do feel like knitting today. I’ve been thinking lately of trying a stash-busting top-down sweater on larger needles to use up all the various odds and ends of acrylic yarn I have lying around doing nothing. Most of the yarn is in blue shades and plain black, so I’m just going to start with the black and put in some blue stripes here and there. If nothing else, it’ll be something to do while I sit around the drafty house feeling chilly.
Maybe later today I’ll get started on the pad for the outdoor lounge chair too. I finally decided on the fabric to use, and it shouldn’t really take me too long to put it together. Not that today’s weather is much motivation for making outdoor pillows. It won’t be getting any use today, that’s for sure!
Time for the next cup of coffee, and then I think I’ll go check on my poor cold plants. I don’t think I’m going to pull the plastic off yet, since it’s still pretty cold out there, but I can at least take a peek to make sure my poor baby tomato plants are lying there dying. It’ll be a quick peek too, because it’s too damn cold this morning to be dallying around outside for too long, no matter how bundled up I get. Brrrrr.