This folks, is a wet day according to all and sundry weather forecasts locally. Definitely but definitely a Michael Fish moment. For the furriners amongst us, 1987 hurricane which didn’t happen according to the BBC weather forecast. Just the worst bit of wind for 300 years, that was all! Forests reduced to matchsticks in the South of the UK.
I do hope the bloody greenhouse doesn’t collapse!
Unfortunately, as far as I was concerned, the 2017 gardening season has already started. I always sow my eggplant, tomatoes, peppers and onions, plus assorted flowers the last day of January. Had I known, I might well have delayed a week or so!
Incredibly with a hot mat under them and a dome I can maintain 65F.-70F. soil temp. As you can see, they are going great guns on their alternative planet. Plus a space heater to keep the air temp above 40.
The first tomatoes and eggplants breaking through.
Weird, some guy with snow plough turned up, not the council, just ploughed and left, came back today too. Maybe the council paid him, we do pay rates after all! But definitely not a council vehicle. Maybe a councillor or big wig lives further down our cul de sac?! But mustn’t look at gift horse teeth!
Just to let you know that others’ weather forecasts are no more accurate than yours! I blame Trump, everything else is his fault so this must be too.
Boadicea's Chariot 
On the female-type parent’s street a man collects a few hundred quid each year from some of the neighbours and pays a snow plough driver to come and sort the street out. It’s a private road and the county refuses to pay for an inch more than it has to.
Nice pics, CO. The car should be in the garage, huh?
Looks like a lot of work Mrs. O. It’s 60 degrees here today, and sunny (smirk).
Janus: The more cars one has covering the driveway the less one has to clear.
Clear the Merc? You’ve got to be joking. We cleared the other yesterday, it had an inch of clear ice on it under the snow! Took hours literally. Garage for cars? Nonsense! Filled with freezers, storage, onions, squashes, mowers, contraptions and mountains of crap!!
It has got a lot worse since that picture. Oh well haven’t got to go out, so sod it. I think everyone else thinks the same, the roads are like the end of the world. No post, schools closed etc etc and a 100,000 out of power in the South Sound. Not even the dogs want to go out, sitting cross legged.
We took the precaution of doing a milk and bread run before it got too bad thankfully. So we’re OK for a week or so. Will binge on box sets etc.
A BIT OF Wet seaweed, still the best weather forecaster !
We have a white world too but it’s very low on the pretty/nuisance/oh sh*t scale. We keep siege rations here in the backwoods but luckily the forestry people keep all their roads and tracks clear; so our challenge is getting off our acre.
I seriously object to Christopher describing the USA as socially toxic. Maybe it is his attitude not theirs.
An illustration of the lack of toxicity re our somewhat unusual snowfall. This road is one of the more salubrious in town, there are some very fancy houses on it Yesterday, a knock on the door, a young couple from further down were going from house to house offering to dig people out or do anything else that people needed. What a lovely thing to offer. Spousal unit thanked them but declined help with the snow drift behind his car as we did not need to go out anyway,
The snow plough came again, I gather this was a private contractor paid by the council. Anyway it was evidently not up to scratch to the standards of our neighbour who has a building company. He acquired a tractor with a snow plough from his many sources, went up and down the street widening the ploughed area so cars could squeeze past each other and then cleared out all the drives he could get into. Ours was emptied of snow and the drift behind both cars was neatly stacked outside on the verge away from my raised beds. He knows I am a fanatical gardener! How kind can you get? I thanked him profusely, excess brownie points awarded for repayment with strawberries later in the year!
I doubt very much that either of these actions qualify as toxic! Or would be offered in many locations. I do think that Christopher should examine his own attitudes to others before he condemns a whole continent with such withering contempt and outright untruths.
Another example, in the local supermarket, I bought a basket of goods and didn’t have a penny in my pocket! How embarrassing! I was just told to pop in sometime and pay for it as I was a regular customer!
Not the trusting action of this day and age generally is it? Equally our community garden has no fences and is right in the centre of town, yet nothing is stolen.
Not the actions of a toxic society!
I have to say I found the people wonderfully kind. When I first arrived in Fremont (Seattle) I didn’t have a valid driving licence, so (on my second day in the US) I went to a local cycle shop to see if I could hire a pedal cycle until I was able to sit a driving test. They said that they didn’t do rentals but that there was a machine “out the back” that they had traded in that I could borrow, free of charge, for as long as I needed it. Can’t say fairer than that !
My friends in New England were the same: generous to a fault. free of social prejudices.