Where are you, Barb?

Wherever it is, you are a world apart from here! The 800 or 1,000 miles, as the crow flies, and 6 or 8 degrees of latitude, have made the difference.

I was surprised to learn that we have had over 1" of rain this month! Surprised because they keep threatening us with more. This, after a record amount of snow in November!

For awhile, I thought, "Oh, NO! Flooding!" But, it hasn't happened.

There was so much snow before the 10 below weather in November that the ground wasn't deeply frozen and the rain has mostly come as sprinkles over the last 2 weeks.

Yesterday, we were supposed to have a high of 42F. Today, I wake up to 43F! Nearly all the rain that might have fallen yesterday, passed to the south -- evidently not far enuf south to do you any good.

Watering in mid-December! Snow storage was getting to be a serious issue 2 weeks ago here so there's still plenty of it in my yard, even tho' it is entirely off the south slope of my roof. If you need any snow . . . I can still find enuf for a truckload or 2 to send south!

Now, we can hear more about drought in Colorado! Are you having really warm temperatures to match??

Steve

ItâÂÂs 60 in my backyard right now, Digit! That would be on the north end of the Metro Denver area. It was in the low 50âÂÂs around sunrise this morning. I could hardly believe that! My snow crocus are happily growing! IâÂÂm still wondering whatâÂÂs gonna happen to them! Could they REALLY bloom in December? No buds yet, but if it stays this warmâ¦â¦â¦

I donâÂÂt remember what the exact figures are, but weâÂÂre something like 18â below the average snowfall for the year so far! Normal is just under 20â and weâÂÂve had just over an inch (officially) the last time I heard. IâÂÂve had a few flurries a couple times. Period! If you can find somebody to truck it up here, IâÂÂd LOVE to have a load dumped on my front lawn, Digit! IâÂÂm REALLY feelinâ like I should be watering the grass in the front yard, but IâÂÂm kinda afraid one of the neighbors would send the guys in the white coats to come get me!!! Watering the grass in DECEMBER??? If it would just get cold I wouldnâÂÂt worry about the lack of precip, but itâÂÂs been SO warm! I guess itâÂÂll just have to tough it out! At least I water infrequently and deeply in summer, so it has pretty deep roots.

But, Barb, I have watered all my perennials in the backyard a couple times since it got âÂÂcoldâ out! I spent a couple hours hand watering out there a couple weeks ago---going back and forth and back and forth so it would soak in deeply. Especially on one end of the fence, the neighborâÂÂs cottonwoods are about a foot away on the other side of the fence, and whenever I water I can hear the cottonwoods going SLURP! The moisture just totally disappears on that end! I checked under the mulch in a couple places the day before yesterday, and it seems ok for now yet, but if it stays this warm and dry, IâÂÂll be watching them closely and watering some more. At least in the back yard I donâÂÂt have to worry about being hauled off to the loony bin!

ThereâÂÂs a âÂÂslightâ chance for snow again on Wednesday and Thursday, but the way the precip has been slighting me so far, I think itâÂÂs more than slightly likely that IâÂÂm gonna be slighted again!

On BonnieâÂÂs âÂÂMissed my Windowâ thread, I said: Come on Snow! Billie said I should be careful what I wished for-----but in this case, IâÂÂm still wishin! Bring it on! IâÂÂll GLADLY shovel it---right onto my front lawn!

Right now IâÂÂm thinkinâ of buying a big palm tree in a pot to put in my front yard to decorate for Christmas!

Skybird

OK, guys, when I previewed my post above it looked ok!

I can't stand to type into this TINY box, and I don't trust it since, if anything goes wrong, everything I've typed DISAPPEARS! I'm on the new--not so wonderful--Mac, and this is the first post I've tried. Typed it in Word, and when I previewed that it messed up the apostrophes with a Question Mark! I then copied it into something a Mac has called a TextEdit, and then re-copied it into the nasty little box. When I previewed that, the apostrophes came out ok, so I posted it! NOT! If I can't find a way to compose my posts on a separate document and copy them into the Little Box, I'm afraid I'm not gonna be doing much posting around here anymore! I'll keep looking for a way to do it!

Skybird

P.S. Not to mention that with this computer, when I type in the Little Box, it's coming out as about an 8 point size! I can hardly see it! And It's reallyreallyreally hard to hold the magnifying glass and still type with both hands!!!

This is a test! (Mail)

I'm
You're
Doesn't
; : " ' ----- @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) === +++ [ ]

Sorry to have to actually post this here to check it out, but since I obviously can't tell from the preview what it's gonna wind up looking like, that's the only way I can know for sure if it's gonna work!

Second Test! (OpenOffice)

I'm
You're
Doesn't
; ; â [ ] ( ) @ # $ % ^ & * --- === ++

âÂÂLooks okay to me, Skybird. âÂÂEven your 1st post on this thread - apostrophes look okay.

We all know that you type in Word âÂÂ. Looking at an olde post of yours the other day and it had all those little diamond ?'s ⦠ÿ. I don't think you should worry about it âÂÂ.

What does ; ; â [ ] ( ) @ # $ % ^ & * --- === ++ mean?

â Steve

Are you serious??? You mean all the apostrophes in my first post look like apostrophes to you????? Are we all really seeing something different when we read GW????? Like the problems where some people can see the pictures and some people can't!

Then when we post here, how can we ever know if somebody else can actually read it or not? When I go up to that first post I did, it's almost unreadable!

I'm typing this on an email! It appears that if I copy if from here everybody will be able to read it---including ME! But then I guess I don't know that for sure!

The: ; ; ââ¬�" [ ] ( ) @ # $ % ^ & * --- === ++ (don't know what it might look like copied here!) was just a test of OpenOffice to see what it would do with the various symbols. It APPEARS to have had everything come out except the quotes, which came out as ââ¬�" and that's what I'm seeing wherever there's an apostrophe in my first post! At least I used to be able to tell from the preview what it was gonna look like when I posted something!

I don't want to hijack this thread, so let's go back the watering issue Barb started this thread with! I'll keep playing with things to find something that works for posting!

Skybird

P.S. I don't know what you're gonna see here when I post this, 'cause I'm copying things directly from your last post, and when I preview them, they're COMPLETELY different!!!

Treebarb is absolutely correct on watering if you are in the Colorado front range. I doubt there is enough moisture in the soil to allow it to freeze. I have been running the hoses a small trickle for the past week.

Skybird I think if you are writing in Word and pasting in the box that is the problem. It looks like the Messages can only be in basic ASCII text. Word is not basic ASCII text. Have you used the preview message to see the message prior to sending it??

I don't have any idea in the whole wide world what ASCII text is, Dsieber! Little olde lady here! Yeah, like I said above, it looked totally ok in the preview---apostrophes and all. It wasn't until I posted it and went back to see what it looked like that it was all messed up. So while I used to be able to tell from the preview what it was gonna look like, that's not true anymore, and there's no way to know what it's gonna look like now until I post it and then look at it, and since you still can edit posts on GW, there's no changing it at that point.

It looks, for now at least, like it works if I compose on a write mail screen and then copy it from there---at least if this is readable, that works! What amazes me is that I've been composing in Word for YEARS, and it always worked just fine--until about 6 months ago! Now, even when I go back to look at posts I did years ago, that were always fine before, they're all messed up. Looks to me like iVillage is making the site even worse than it was when they "acquired" it!

And, Digit, I'd REALLY like to know if you're serious about seeing my 1346 post with "real" apostrophes. If you are, I don't see how it's possible for some of us to see one thing and some of us to see something else. And if it's true, maybe there's some sort of a setting I can change to make it "look ok!" Tho methinks that wouldn't fix it for others!

Skybird

Digit,
I've always had Z5CO in the zone box, but it's missing now, hmmm. I'm 30 miles north of Denver. We've had 1.5 inches of precip...since September! I watered everything over Thanksgiving weekend but not since. I kept thinking surely some rain or snow would come, but it keeps jumping over us and dumping elsewhere. With the pesky job thing the sun's coming up when I'm leaving for work and dark before I get home. The only time I can check things in the yard is on the weekends and I clearly wasn't paying enough attention.
Skybird, I thought you were swearing there for a minute! Or speaking in tongues! We get the gist of it.
Barb

Posted by skybird . . . And, Digit, I'd REALLY like to know if you're serious about seeing my 1346 post with "real" apostrophes. If you are, I don't see how it's possible for some of us to see one thing and some of us to see something else. . .

Yes, I am serious, Skybird. I don't see a single messed up apostrophe in the 13:46 post.

Text on GW can get messed up from one hour or one day to the next. What appears in the preview is not what necessarily appears in the thread. And, in all probability, it will appear differently depending on the browsers that display it in our monitors.

I recently came across a webpage of symbols using html code. They work on GW's test forum. There, I was also directed to a "Unicode Chart."

I thought that a world of symbols were available for my use in the GW forums. It doesn't look like it now. Maybe those codes are just unstable.

It gripes me that I can't use a degree symbol and that if I copy something from somewhere else, there is no guarantee that it will not get messed up when I post it. I recently copied the title of a webpage. Sure enuf, after pasting it into the "Name of the Link" - it was messed up after I posted it . . . like, the day after I posted it!!

Steve

5 minutes ago, your 13:46 post looked fine.

That has all changed. It is now a mess.

Apostrophes, like degree symbols, had better NOT be used in GW, I guess.

S

LOL! Yeah! That's it! I'm Speaking in Tongues! Now how about that! iV is helping me learn a new language!

Digit, I'm really not trying to be mean here!, but I'm kinda glad you're seeing the mess in my post now! At least it seems a little bit saner if we're all seeing the same thing! But now I guess you'll need to learn to "read" in Tongues!

Another question! When you posted at 1517, did you INTENTIONALLY put all those weird symbols in, or was that all another Magic Tongues Transformation?

Curiouser and Curiouser!

Skybird

That post looks weird to me, skybird, and Steve's tilde-capital-A looks great, but I have no idea what it means.

When I copy and paste stuff, the prevue shows up the weird triangles, but then you see them in the little box as well, where I go sub in an apostrophe.

Bonnie, you can use the little lines in the lower right hand corner to drag the box to a larger size.

Sigh. Right now, DS is back for the holidays from school, and thinks large print is for whimps, and sets this screen to itsy itsy itsy bitsy.

I watered the entire yard the week of Thanksgiving & likely will again here soon, spot watered several times already. South of Mt Evans, the Arkansas watershed is suffering moderate-severe drought & no relief in sight this year. Keep your hoses out.

Dan

They are predicting some snow this evening in Denver this PM but I am sure it is just a dusting. WE NEED A SERIOUS SPRING DUMPING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hang in there, Dsieber! It's not supposed to happen till TOMORROW nite! But the good news is that around noon they were saying there was a 20% chance of snow, a few hours ago they were saying a 60% chance, and NOW they're saying an 80% chance! So it sounds like we might actually get some this time! It still doesn't sound like a Serious Dumping, but I'll take just about anything right now!

Skybird

Now you've got me thinking, I probably need to water a few things too. We might get some snow this week, if not, I'll have to drag out the hose again.

Skybird, you're post looks messed up to me too. I thought Steve was messing with you but then again, he was seeing things a couple weeks ago that the rest of us didn't seem to be, so who knows...

:-) @digit

We have had a major "melt-down" with temperatures in the mid-40's and wind gusts above mid 40mph. A few trees fell, however, only the Kootenai River, as it flowed on into Canada, reached the top of its banks, as I understand it. The melting and rain has been going on for over a week.

If there hadn't been so much snow here - every bit of it would be gone. Only where it was piled up, does it remain. And, after raking snow off the ice dams and pulling chunks of ice out of the gutter - I'm not really sad to see it go. More is supposed to fall almost immediately and, I guess, that light cover should be around until Christmas.

All the mess that I put in my first post on this thread started off life as symbols that looked very much different from what they became. I tested them on the test forum before trying them here. You can see my efforts and reaction as they went to nothing. (Linked below)

No copying . . . I guess that's the important take-away.

Steve

Here is a link that might be useful: Test Forum

Well, so much for the snow storm---snow flakes---snow flurries here in Denver! At least up here on the north end! Up until about noon, it was looking like a real possibility this time!

Nothing!

I'm not sure I'm EVER gonna get any snow, or rain, or ANYTHING up here!

[Yes! I'm TRYING to tempt fate!]

Skybird

Yeah, we went from a forecast of 2-6" during the morning forecast to "not concerned about snow in COS or Pueblo tomorrow". Maybe tomorrow night/Friday.

Skybird and Greenbean,,what are you doing up in the middle of the night? I though I was the only one with arthritics that had to get up and walk out the kinks.
Nothing here in the way of moisture either.
KennyP

This old weatherman was surprised when all of a sudden the forecast changed, and suddenly someone thought it would snow and accumulate in the Denver Basin. Must have been a fill-in or holiday temp, because it made no sense. My yard sucked up the water from the sprinkler the other day...

Dan

I give up when I see the snow coming down I will know it is going to snow.

I haven't been watering the lawn, what little I have of it, or the mulched beds since mid October. We did get a fair amount of snow, maybe 6 inches, in this section of Aurora in November.

The compost pile, built in the sun for the first time this year, has been needing water quite a bit. Also some of the cover crops that are in the sunny areas have been getting some water lately.

Boy was that pathetic. Probably less than 1/100 " of water!!

Kenny,
I'm a night owl by nature. It always looks worse b/c the posts show Eastern time I think.

Well, here I sit at about 6800ft - about 10 miles up the Foothills from Denver. We are bone dry, not a glimps of white anywhere, which has pretty much been the case all season. If we aren't getting anything up here, I can't offer any hope for anyone at the base of the mountains. They are loaded with snow up high though. Guess it's time I started giving things a drink of water!!!

I finally conceded on Tuesday and tempted the guys in the white coats to come get me! I spent most of the afternoon and until about an hour after dark watering the FRONT yard! At least if they come to lock me up, my grass will be able to go on without me! I had never bothered to water in October, thinking it was going to get cold, and I don't even remember the last time I had any significant precip at all. Every time I walked across the front lawn to go to the mailbox I felt like the grass was trying, in desperation, to get ahold of me to beat me up, and I guess I finally just got more scared of the grass than of being dragged off to the loony bin!

I must say, the grass is now looking quite happy! It had been just totally desiccated looking---AND feeling! Now it's all "plump and perky" looking! But I TOTALLY have my fingers crossed that it doesn't break dormancy and start growing again! I am NOT going to mow it in January!!!

I got a bunch of the backyard watered too---grass and perennials, and the perennials, which, even with some hand watering, had been looking sadder and sadder, are breathing an audible sigh of relief! Plan to get the rest of the backyard watered WELL as soon as the hose on the north side thaws again---possibly on Christmas Day!

What an insane year this has been! I heard on TV today that they expect it to go down as the second driest year EVER here in Colorado!

I did notice one of the neighbors across the street had a couple small sprinklers on in her front yard today---for about 15 minutes! Not sure how much good that's gonna do, but I'm sure their grass is glad for anything it can get right now. It'll be interesting to see if any of the other neighbors start to water too. I'll be watching!

I wonder if we'll get ANY snow down here this winter!

Skybird

BTW, welcome tenderkat.

I'm too lazy for all that attention (and maybe too many deadlines) and I set out the oscillating sprinkler (the special one for winter only) and set the timer. And I've done that twice this winter already.

Dan

It is depressing on the front range water situation. One part of me is shocked. But the other part of me just shudders at the 8 hr drive from Boulder to Littleton on Dec 22 2006!!!! That was the worst winter/spring I have lived through. The compacted Ice on my street was around for 3 months.

Dsieber,
I remember that winter. Gawd, the ruts on the side streets were awful! My daughter was in middle school and I couldn't get my Corolla down the school street to drop her off, I kept getting hung up in the ruts. I ended up driving the truck most of that winter. I think it was the folks living in the rural areas around Ft. Lupton that finally took a fleet of pick ups with plows and dug the road out. The city just wasn't getting the job done.
It's just amazing that the mountains got 6 feet of snow and we're still dry. I guess looking back even to last winter I should be grateful for dry roads, but a good dumping of snow would be wonderful!
Welcome, tendercat, do get some water on!

Skybird, have you noticed how often in our posts we say, "What a weird year this has been!" I guess I should just accept there is no normal along the front range. Maybe that's why we love it here!

Well, off to mama's tomorrow for family time and ham! If I don't get back here before the big day, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Ramadan or Kwanzaa, whatever you may be celebrating (or not)! I am grateful for all of you. I appreciate the advice, the chance to vent, rant and get set straight when I'm wrong.
Barb

Treebarb.. I am with you. I love it here yesterday at 11OOam I took the dogs out to walk in the Deer Creek area (So Jeff Co open space South of Ken Carl). The sky was dark blue, sandstone formations, and a balmy 45F!!! Who needs a white Christmas!!!

Well, I agree with you guys about TOO much snow---especially when you need to drive in it, and that winter of '06 was a real (polar) bear of a winter, but I decided I HAD to have some snow for Christmas---so---I put together ten of my best snow storm pictures from Winters Past, and turned them into a Christmastime Screen Saver! The screen on this thing is BIG (I sit right next to it), and I was surprised how effective it was/is! On Christmas Eve I had had it on most of the evening, and when I got up one time and walked by a window that didn't have the blinds closed, it surprised me when I looked outside and it wasn't snowing! So I got my Christmas Snow---in a much more realistic feeling way than I was expecting!

I did get out yesterday afternoon and watered one more section of the backyard that I hadn't done yet, and then I hand watered all the perennials right against the north side of the house. That turned out to be a pretty chilly job---with water dripping on my hands! And today I got the "tomato section" of the veggie garden turned over for the first time---adding copious amounts of leaves under each shovelful as I was turning it, and then I set the sprinkler right in the middle of it and left it run for an hour---and then laid six BIG bags of leaves on top of the area, so, with lots of undigested organic matter and moisture---and insulation, my winter 2010/2011 vermicomposting should be going into high gear real soon! And when I finished that project I set the sprinkler in another corner of the yard I hadn't gotten to yet and watered that for a good hour.

All the plants in my yard are really perking up and looking (wintertime) good again, and that's making ME feel good too! (But I still think it would be nice to get ONE good snow storm!)

Skybird