Re: A taste of spring
gardenchat@hort.net
  • Subject: Re: A taste of spring
  • From: &* <d*@comcast.net>
  • Date: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 16:25:57 -0500
The 50's had some of the coldest years of the last century, and with no insulation those days, no wonder you were miserable. Now things are insulated for air conditioning, even those on stilts. The R values are about what one finds up north.
I haven't been there since Ivan tore my friends' homes apart, but parts of it were still beautiful then. And then there were those parts that one didn't want to visit, even at noon.
There are thousands of Oleanders. And Crapemyrtles, Gardenias, Azaleas, Camellias... 

d
----- Original Message ----- From: <Aplfgcnys@aol.com> 
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 4:00 PM
Subject: Re: [CHAT] A taste of spring



I lived in Pensacola in the dark ages - 1950-52.
There used to be a beautiful row of oleanders down
the length of Palafox street.  They were killed by that
cold spell.  I wonder if they were replanted.
I'm sure it is a different city now, but I thought it was
a pretty city then.
APL

In a message dated 1/30/2011 3:55:37 PM Eastern Standard Time,
dp2413@comcast.net writes:

When did you live in P'cola? I have friends there, and their homes are
better insulated than mine.

Even here, we follow the "let the faucet drip" on the coldest nights,
because our water supply pipes aren't very far underground (our meter is
about 8" down, covered with a metal disk at surface level, but we don't
have
anything like that.

d
----- Original Message ----- From: <Aplfgcnys@aol.com> 
To: <gardenchat@hort.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 30, 2011 2:07 PM
Subject: Re: [CHAT] A taste of spring



Daryl,
  I grew up in the Florida panhandle, and spent some of the
most uncomfortable times of my life in that area. One of my first
jobs was at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, and that winter
the temperature dropped to 8 degrees.  The water-heater tank in
my apartment froze, and the pipes under the kitchen floor froze
and burst.  In the bathroom basin, the faucets were set out on
a couple of inches of ice.  And this apartment was heated with
a couple of 18" gas heaters.  Talk about cold.

 I remember another time in my grandmother's house when
I went into the kitchen in the morning and found the floor a sheet
of ice like a skating rink. Knowing it was to be cold, we had left
the faucets dripping - that was standard practice on cold nights -
but the drain pipes under the house (like all old southern houses
this one was built on stilts for passive air-conditioning) had frozen,
the sink had filled and run over, and the floor was all ice.  In the
more than 50 yearsI have lived in the Hudson Valley, I have never
had anything like that happen.  We have had occasional problems
with power outages, but we have a small generator that gives us heat
and water.  Even on the coldest nights we are snug and warm.

I'm glad you enjoy the South, but I would never ever want to live
there again. However, I am a bit bored with this winter.  It started
early and just goes on and on.  Today is sunny and a bit milder -
38 degrees - but it it predicted to go down to 6 degrees tonight, and
then more snow mixed with freezing rain on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Enough already!
Auralie


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE GARDENCHAT


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To sign-off this list, send email to majordomo@hort.net with the
message text UNSUBSCRIBE GARDENCHAT
Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index