Sharing my latest painting, as it is a snowy cold memory of living in Minnesota, which is how South Georgia felt today, if comparing this to a rather mild Minnesota day. Georgia can never be as cold as Minnesota, where it often drops below O Fahrenheit. I remember one frightening day when the temperature dropped to -25 F, -31 Celsius actual temperature, and that doesn’t even include the “real feel” wind chill factor! But, when our bodies are accustomed to warmer temperatures a sudden drop can feel miserable, like a bone-chilling flu has settled in. So, while Georgia isn’t “Minnesota” cold, it felt brutal today.
We had wind gusts of 35 miles per hour and a frost advisory is in effect until late morning. So I was out there with my daughter trying to clip plastic over our potted plants and garden. Much of our plants have already germinated and our beautiful peach tree has gorgeous pink flowers. Frost will damage our plants and might mean no harvest or a lackluster harvest. I think we’ve managed to save our trees, shrubs and edible garden plants, but I’ll know more in the morning.
I’m chilled and only very slowly warming up. It helped to have some tea, ironically it was peach tea, which is quite fitting since saving the peach tree is part of the reason why I needed the tea. The plastic was flapping in the wind, fighting against us as we tried to wrap the tree. The tree is much taller than I am so I rigged a telescopic “back scratcher” (novelty item, cost about $1, usually a stocking stuffer type of gift, looks like a tiny monkey hand or many a bear claw, so I call it my monkey claw and I use it to grab stuff) by tying one end of the plastic to the claw end and then we could extend our reach and pass the claw over the tree to the other person. My husband came home from work as my daughter and I were wrestling with this. He got the step stool, thinking he was doing the obvious, but nearly face planted off the step stool- quickly confirming why I didn’t do that. He’s fine, corrected himself before he fell. He found my improvised telescopic grabber useful after all. 🙂
What an adventure- reminds me of why we don’t want to live in places that have long brutal winters anymore. All it takes is one windy chilly day and I’m miserable. I do have wonderful memories of beautiful snowy days though, and the sense of accomplishment when surviving bitterly arctic environments. Perseverance is something to be proud of.
