Quigs’ Corner

Weather is news….no matter if it’s floods, tornados, hurricanes, blizzards, or as what is occurring in North Texas today, a snowstorm. Now, you all know that I grew up in New Hampshire where snow isn’t an event until it is more than 8 or so inches. Not here. McKinney will probably get all of 1/4 inch of snow today (can one really MEASURE a quarter inch of snow!?). Schools all over the area are closed due to the storm. Local TV stations have pre-empted programming all day to report on the storm-over and over and over. The snow in itself isn’t really enough for me to worry….it’s the lack of snow removal (aka plows) or ice management measures (aka sand) that scares me. It’s just plain dangerous out there today. The authorities seem to know this too, since elevated overpasses and bridges are closed.  Oh yeah, did I mention that this is most major highways around Dallas?

Yesterday it was 80 degrees. I was outside in a T-shirt! By 10pm last night, it was 40 degrees (brrrrr). A forty degree drop in 6 hours!  Today, we are a winter wonderland for what will be a brief moment, since the mercury is expected to rise to about 50 degrees by tomorrow afternoon.

 Thanks to technology, both Mr. Quigley and I are able to work productively from home, safe and sound away from speeding SUVs, slipping and sliding cars and trucks, closed roads and longer than normal commutes. We’ll stay inside and watch the weather from inside our house, and wait for all .25 inches of it to melt. 

Here’s a picture of the extent of the snowstorm.  These poor critters are bunching together to stay warm in this early cold snap! 

One of our duties around the house is to maintain the pool.  In the summer and winter, this is quite an easy task, with the filter and pool sweep on a computerized schedule, we spend about 20 minutes a week taking care of it.  This is perfect in the summer, because you want to spend time IN the pool, not ON it.  The other times of the year however, spring and fall, are not so easy.  Leaves, pollen, etc find their way into it and need to be cleaned up else it will look like something from a ‘B’ rated horror movie.  So, while skimming leaves off the top of the water the other day, and our four year old neighbor, Ethan, asked what I was doing….I told him I was getting the leaves out of my pool.  He was gracious enough to point out that the tree over my head still had leaves, and in fact was dropping more into my pool.  Out of the mouths of babes… 

This large tree in the backyard shades the house from the intense Texas summer sun and is located perfectly above the spa and the shallow end of the pool, and conveniently continues to shed its leaves right now….into the pool.  I make several trips a day to clean out the filters and pool sweep, which we named ‘Rosie’ after the efficient maid in the Jetson’s.  One thing that I noticed in that classic cartoon is that you never saw George or Marge do any maintenance on the metal house helper.  Apparently, we are not so lucky, and need to get rid of the leaves that end up in her belly so there is room for more…which there are plenty of right now. 

The tree is a quite large hackberry.  I can’t imagine how old it is, but it is one of the biggest in the neighborhood.  In New England, this tree would not be out of the ordinary, but not here…big, healthy trees are a rarity, so much so the City of McKinney has passed an ordinance that trees over a certain girth must have approval from the city arborist (I didn’t know there was such a job!) before it can be removed.  Native Texans scoff at the lowly hackberry.  Things like ‘well, at least ya have a tree, even if it is a hackberry’ are the types of conversations I have with the landscapers and aborists (though not the city of McKinney arborist…I suspect that he would say it is a great tree!).  I’m not exactly sure how the hackberry got such a low opinion. I will say that we nurture the tree, because it’s a nice tree and it does provide lots of shade. So maybe this is the problem…perhaps if we didn’t take care of it, we wouldn’t have the leaves and pollen.  Nor would we have the welcome shade on a hot summer day (I’d say cool shade, but August in Texas is anything but cool, regardless of WHAT tree you sit under) or a home for the birds that find this a desirable neighborhood to start their families in.  So, at the end of the day, I think I’ll take the hassle of cleaning the pool out a little more often to keep our tree. 

Even if it is a hackberry. 

So, here I am, in the Blogsphere at Quigs’ Corner, after numerous threats to Mr. Quigley to start my own blog.

In my blog, you can count on seeing opinions and comments about everything (no surprise there!). I’ll talk about food & wine, travel, observations I make (usually things I see when I don’t have a gun), photos, interesting things I read, and just stuff in general.

I hope you’ll check back regularly and take the time to comment back! I’m looking forward to having fun, sharing my view of the world, and hearing what you have to say too.

Welcome to Lynn Quigley’s personal cyber-home, www.lynnquigley.net . Check back soon as I begin to unpack my stuff and settle into the neighborhood.