They went home for the weekend.
Won’t the sheets themselves slide?
(I don’t know. I’ve never tried that technique.)
Hopefully not. I’ve never tried this technique, either! Fingers crossed I won’t have to…
It occurs to me that you probably don’t save it up to spread on your fields!
Mine wouldn’t produce enough to go very far, either, if I only had a couple of days’ worth.
You’re right about that. Most of my “crop” is Douglas Fir and Cedar trees.
I used to spread the wood ash on my vegetable garden, but I haven’t been gardening as I used to. A much smaller garden requires far less wood ash, so now most of what is left in the wood burner is periodically spread in the woods – even though they don’t really need it.
It’s still a good idea, though!
Yes. Be careful not to get too much – it’s really easy to make a small garden way too alkaline that way. Check your soil pH if you haven’t done that in a while, before putting any more on.
Which you may already know, but I mention it as one who’s done that —
Here in Memphis we got about 4-5 inches of fluffy snow. Which would be fine except that it is 11 degrees! In the daytime! I just watched a press conference with city leaders. The water system is holding but it’s early days. It’s expected that tomorrow evening through Wednesday there will be an historic demand for electricity. That will call for a conserve energy alert to try to avoid rolling blackouts. That should be fun! I’ve just got to hope that my fellow citizens will do what is best for the community. Ha. I’m kidding. I’ve seen their attitudes on Nextdoor. I’m doing my part, keeping the house at 68 during the day, 66 at night. I’m wearing three layers which is working except that my fingers are cold.
Thursday the temp will briefly get above freezing. But we are expecting freezing rain. Then nighttime temps in the single digits again for two days. We won’t get above freezing until next Monday. I’ve always gone out and taken photos of snow but I’m not leaving the house this time. I’m just trying to contain my anxiety.
Well, Environment Canada has ended the Extreme Cold Warning for my location. At -20C (-4F), it’s still pretty cold, but we’re no longer suffering temps colder than -30C, as we have for the last four days.
Tomorrow, they’ve forecast a high of -8C (18F). They do predict temps above 0C (32F) on the weekend, but I’ll believe that when I see it.
I think we had a poll awhile back on thermostats. I know when I go to bed I traditionally dial the thing down 6 degrees or more (66-60 and this week 57 or so).
They have Code Blue here where the homeless ( 10 the other night) are picked up in front of a church and taken to a church where they can sleep and have food overnight.
I still haven’t heard back from CAA. I gather they’ve been very busy with cars spinning out on the roads, hitting the ditch, and so on.
Also heard through the grapevine about a block in the city where the watermain broke and flooded a residential street, couple of inches deep.
And then the water froze, so you have several cars trapped in the ice. (Normally that phrase is used for ships in the North-West Passage, but it’s been an unusual year.)
Not sure how people will get their cars out. Axes and ice chippers, I guess, to break up the ice, but need to be careful swinging an axe near tires…
Northern_Piper: you might consider taking the battery out of the car and bringing it into the house–where you can warm it and recharge it. Then bring it back out to your car in the morning. How old is the battery? It could be old and cold weather shows a battery’s declining capacity while the battery will work fine in warmer weather. So you would need to replace it.
aurora_maire: you might consider wearing gloves. If your response is that you can’t wear gloves because you are on the computer you might consider fingerless gloves. While they sell these, you can simply make a pair by cutting off a couple inches or whatever of the fingers of an old pair of gloves. This will help your fingers even though they are uncovered because you are not losing as much heat from the rest of your hands.
I’m already ahead of you. I just found an old pair and cut the finger tops off. 
Feels better already.
At this moment (7 pm EST, January 15), the warmest place in Canada is Pangnirtung Airport, Nunavut - 200 miles/300 km north of Iqaluit on Baffin Island (or 1500 miles/2350 km north of Montreal, and not much further from the North Pole) - at 66 degrees north latitude.
It’s 6.5 C or 43.4 F.
You might try Yaktrax for ice. Not as hard core as crampons but they work well. I have an ice flow/dam that freezes at the bottom of my driveway. Happens every ‘spring’.
For car batteries, I’ve permanently hooked up a battery tender to my plow truck. Yeah, ya got to deal with an extension cord, but it beats have to jump start it. Especially when the snow is too deep to get another vehicle close enough to give it a jump.
We got the conserve energy alert about an hour ago. The temp is 13 going down to 6 tonight. I hope this works otherwise we will have rolling blackouts. And just to add to the anxiety, before I went to bed last night I noticed some water on the kitchen floor coming from between the refrigerator and the washer. I put a towel down and tried to go to sleep. That didn’t work so well as I couldn’t get my brain to shut up about all the horrible possibilities. But I didn’t wake to a flooded kitchen, thank goodness. The towel was soaked but it’s not a major leak. The refrigerator is working so I don’t think it’s coming from there. Must be something behind the washer. I put another towel down and will just have to watch it. I doubt I could even get a plumber here for a non-emergency at this point. And this extreme cold event is not going to end until next Monday!
You should have a water shutoff valve somewhere near your washer. I would use it.
A water leak is not something to ignore, or even put off. It may be small now, but there’s no guarantee that whatever is leaking won’t give way entirely. And water damage is insidious and can be hell to repair.
I climbed on top of the washer and looked behind. There is no water back there so it’s not from the hose. It’s apparently coming from underneath. I took the towel away over an hour ago and no more water is coming out. Maybe it soaked up what was under there. I’m going to keep an eye on it and try to get a plumber here tomorrow or Thursday. That will be tricky. From the looks of Nextdoor, they are worth their weight in gold right now. And tonight will be the coldest yet.
I’m trying to be very good about my electricity usage. But it is depressing to be in a semi-dark, not really warm house. Beats the alternative but still. Five days to go.
Theres only 2 inches of snow here. Going down to 8 degress tonight. Monday- a heat wave! 35!
It’s not so cold here, but every time it goes below 40F our dual fuel furnace switches over to propane, and it’s cold enough that’s been running since last night, and will likely do so until sometime Thursday. I might as well just start burning money.