Category Archives: Weather

Banana Blueberry Orange Smoothie Summer

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Last summer was so hot! We had 70+ days with temperatures above 100 degrees. And the drought! Our normal average rainfall amount is around 32 inches. Last year we had 11 inches of rain. We’ve had 18 inches of rain already this year. We are desperately hoping that the 18 inches recorded so far are not all that we are getting for the year. We had a mild winter, a warm spring and we are suspicious of the upcoming summer, thinking that it might be a replay of last year’s.

With the extreme heat and drought of last summer in mind, I have a plan: I’m going to blend my way through the upcoming summer. Smoothies and easy soups are on my supper menu. I treated myself to a Vitamix machine. (It was demonstration and sample day at the store and everything the Vitamix demonstrator made was really good!)

The first recipe I conquered was the Banana Blueberry Orange smoothie. It’s really cool and refreshing; definitely a keeper. To balance my diet, my next recipe was the Potato and Spinach soup that can be prepared mostly in the Vitamix; you just have to bake (or nuke) the potatoes first. There are only five ingredients in the soup (my kind of recipe), so how hard can it be?

Well, I don’t know how hard it can be in reference to an upper limit of “hard,” but I know that this recipe is making me work. I think the potatoes I use are too big and they overpower the soup. At least that’s what I think happened on my first two efforts. This recipe makes a lot of soup: seven cups. The instructions say that you can cut it in half, but I didn’t notice that until after I made the soup saw how much there was. (Really? I’m supposed to read all the instructions first?)

I was hoping to have success with one recipe before moving onto another one. However, if I keep this structure, it may turn into a Banana Blueberry Orange smoothie summer.

Summer Is Nigh

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I removed the smidgens of the winter-evaporated ice in the ice cube trays, washed and refilled the trays. Summer temperatures are nigh upon us.

Here’s an entry about ice cube trays that I posted on July 4, 2010 on my old blog.


I was making lunch one day, kale and avocado salad. (I must explain, here, that the recipe calls for 1/2 avocado. Note to the world: there is no such thing as 1/2 avocado. There is only a whole avocado and it’s for me. There may well be two halves to an avocado, but they are eaten at the same time. There is no “later” for any avocado in my house.)

I was looking for a bowl big enough for all the chopped kale. And remember, I’m one who can use up most of the kitchen items in making a sandwich. This kale and entire-avocado salad (who cares what the recipe says) needed a bowl bigger than I usually use, so I started looking around in the cabinets.

You’d think that because it’s my kitchen that I’d know where everything is. Okay, well, I do now. Probably. Anyway, the bowl I was looking for was in the second cabinet I looked in, so that search didn’t take too long.

But in the first cabinet, where I thought the bowl was (and I’m thinking it used to be there, until I-don’t-know-when), I found some ice cube trays.

Ten ice cube trays.

I have two robin’s-egg blue trays with the square cubes, two white trays also with the square cubes, five light blue trays with oval cubes and one blue tray for miniature ice cubes.

The light blue trays each have 12 ice cube holders. The robin’s-egg blue, as well as the white trays, have 14 holders. The miniature tray has 60 holders. The two white trays in the freezer with square cubes have 14 each. That makes 12 ice cube trays, total. (Excuse me while I do math now.)

I’m pretty sure that’s 204 ice cubes, in one shape or another.

I have no idea how I ended up with so many ice cube trays. We’ve had only one refrigerator at this house. Wedding gifts, maybe, from friends and family who worry about global warming?

The Two Budas

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When I started this blog, I added the weather widget for Buda, Texas, as that’s where I hang out a lot, usually at B&B Quilting and Gifts. When I checked the weather on my iPhone, I noticed it brought up Buda, Texas and Buda, Illinois. What a coincidence! Another town called Buda.

Around these here parts (Texas), we pronounce it “BEEYOU-duh.” You can tease the tourists and your out-of-town family members if you tell them it’s “Boo-DAY” or even “BOO-duh” (as in Buddha). There’s a couple of theories as to how Buda, Texas got its name but I’m not sure if any one theory is accepted as definitive.

Then I wondered about Buda, Illinois. How is it pronounced there? How did it get its name? Looking it up on the Internet, I found that both Budas have a Wikipedia page. The Buda, Texas page mentions the regionally famous Wiener Dog Races. The Wikipedia page for Buda, Illinois doesn’t mention any such sport.

I briefly considered randomly phoning people in Buda, Illinois and asking if they knew how the town got their name and it is pronounced. I decided against it, probably for the better. Instead, I added that weather widget to my blog as a nod to our northern sister city (lower right side of the blog).

Hello, Buda, Illinois!

It’s a lot colder there. And I won’t be surprised that in the summer, it’s a lot hotter here.

Water Over Road

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Road sign: Watch for water on road

Looks like the word "water" was added on after the sign was printed

I thought this sign was funny. We’re in a zillion-year drought and this sign sits on the side of the road, rain-free day after rain-free day. I had a draft blog post in my mind, already. I was going to write something along the lines of “the only way I would see water on this road is if someone dumped their water jug on it and I happened by before it evaporated.” Oh, yes, it was going to be funny.

Water flowing over driveway

My driveway is under there, somewhere

Three days after I took that photo, it rained. We got 7.36 inches in about 5 hours. I couldn’t get a photo of that sign with water over the road because I couldn’t get out to drive there. In that 5-hour downpour, our ponds went from bone dry to overflowing. My driveway was under water — flowing water — and I wasn’t about to risk having my vehicle get swept away. How embarrassing that would have been to explain to a tow truck driver that I needed my turned-on-its-side vehicle extracted from a mud pile a few yards away from my driveway. Instead, I waited four hours after the rain stopped before deciding the water level was low enough and that it was flowing slow enough for me to drive across safely.

Road closed due to water damage

So close, yet so far

That rain also eroded the sides of the culvert that was under the road, some yards from the end of our driveway. The county workers came and blocked off the road. I figured this out just as they were removing the barriers from their trucks and putting them across the road. I was about 25 yards from my driveway, but I couldn’t get there from where I was. I turned around and took the back way in, adding about three miles to my route.

With the road blocked, I had to leave a few minutes earlier in the mornings in order to take the back way to get to work. The county replaced the two old culverts with four new ones and opened the road late Friday afternoon. That was nice.