It’s Back!

 What's back?  Well, winter, for one!  

Here in the South, we don't do fall.  We go straight from summer to winter.  Think I'm kidding?  Yesterday it got up into the 80s and my air conditioner was running.  Tomorrow night, we're under a freeze watch.  It was 60 when I got up this morning, and the temp has been steadily dropping all day.  I've already brought all my plants inside, just in case.  

The bad news is, the firewood guy didn't come.  The good news is, he messaged me and told me he wasn't coming because of the rain -- yes, it has rained all day!-- and would deliver the wood tomorrow.  

I still haven't turned on the heater, though.  One of my friends from high school said it's actually cheaper to use a space heater in the room you're in than to run the central heat, so I'm going to try that this winter and see how it works out.  I already have a space heater that I'd bought to keep the snake room warm, before I remembered that each snake tank has its own heater and they don't really need the entire room warm. 

I really want to widen the doorway between the kitchen/dining area and the living room, so that the heat from the wood stove can get into the living room better, but that would require a contractor and likely an electrician, and you know what those are like around here. 

You know what else is back?  The internet!

It was out all afternoon yesterday.  And I do mean all afternoon.  I called the tech control number and the automated message said they were working on the problem.  Even so, it didn't come back on until 6:45 -- just in time for the new cheesy Hallmark movie Joyeaux Noel, which was actually not so cheesy and pretty good.   However, thanks to those 4 months when I'd cut my internet completely off, I knew how to still watch the football games without having said internet.  

Well, since I figured it'd only be a temporary outage, I just turned my phone hot spot on and watched the game on my computer -- connected to the TV by an HDMI cable.  The things we do...

OK, moving right along.  Remember the other day when I said I'd show you a photo of how scary dry it has gotten here?  I'd meant to do that Saturday, but completely forgot.  Fear not, I shall do it right now.

Here it is:  

For those of you unfamiliar with swamps, this is a stand of cypress trees.  I took these photos on the bottomland trail at the Lee Tartt Nature Preserve.  If you look closely at the bases of the trees you can see the water line.  

All those dark areas are usually under water. Not only is it completely dry, most of it isn't even muddy any more.  Today's rain helped some, but it'll take a lot more before the swamp fills up again.  

And finally, if you see a hairy vine like this crawling up a tree, don't touch it.  It's poison ivy.

Ask me how I know.