Hell Frozen Over

Yes, you read it right: hell has frozen over; we have snow sticking on the ground in Houston.

I am incredibly grateful that this is happening while I'm out of work. For one thing, Mark hadn't covered the gardens. So I spent about an hour this morning in the snow laying all our tablecloths and extra blankets over the tomato and bell pepper garden and the herb garden. Then I began dragging all Mark's citrus trees into the garage.

He has about 10 more fruit trees than I thought. It's hard to be incredibly put out with him; after all, my hobby is knitting, and I probably have about 50 more skeins of yarn than he thinks I have. Having acknowledged that, I will gripe. TREES, y'all. The man is collecting TREES. We live in a freaking suburb. Our lot is like 1/16 of an acre or something. I want to have the trees we already have taken out, and he's collecting more? WARGARBL!

Regardless, I hefted them inside like a good little wife. His Kumquat, Meyer lemon, and Mexican Key Lime trees all are fruiting, and obviously, they're still in their pots. That's bad news for the trees' long-term productivity the way I understand it. So he's collecting useless trees.

While covering the tomato and bell pepper garden, I noticed a couple of peppers ready for picking. Only in Houston can you harvest vegetables while covering the plant for snow. I got four "grocery store" sized peppers and three baby ones. I probably left five more on the plants in hopes that they'll survive this freak snow and mature. I know they won't if I pick them, and they're really too small to eat right now.

I have butternut squash in the refrigerator, and I'm looking forward to making soup for dinner this evening. Right now though, I'm going to run a couple of errands. I know it makes me crazy, but I LOVE driving in the snow.