QCD17

I was working outside in the metrowest area and heard the tornado reports on the radio so I called it a day. By the time I got back to the office in Framingham the lighting was picking up. We were living in Scituate, MA at the time and that evening was the most intense lighting I've ever seen, by a mile. It was the only time I've ever been nervous about lighting while inside a house. Funny story about '53...both of my parents grew up in Holden and my poor grandmother raced down to Indian Lake in Worcester to grab my aunt and uncle at some point immediately before/after the storm. Then the transmission in her car goes and the only gear that works is reverse, so she has to drive the whole way back to Holden in reverse with all the chaos around her.

I was past the 2-week point on my 2nd dose as of Friday but I still wore a mask when I went into the store yesterday. I know I didn't need it on. But we have two small kids at home that won't be getting vaxxed any time soon. Are my kids going to be "fine" if they get Covid,? Probably. Am I likely to spread it to them now that I'm vaxxed? Most likely not. Nothing is ever certain. Personally, I don't find the masks anymore bothersome than socks when shopping. My kids wear them 6 hours a day at school every day and they don't complain and they haven't been sick since before the pandemic. My poor 5 year old hasn't been sick since her "brain dump" at age 3, and she doesn't even remember what it's like. Do you know how many times they came home with the cold or flu or stomach bug before the pandemic? Probably every other month. So it's not so much "conditioning" for me as knowing that wearing a mask works and it's hard to just rip off the bandaid and jump back in the pool all at once. I would continue to wear a mask in stores if it meant never having to deal with any virus again, but that would also mean my kids having to wear a mask at school, and never going into a restaurant or entertainment venue without a mask. At some point we'll start doing those things again, but I'm not chomping at the bit to do them, as there are plenty of outdoor options now that the weather is nicer.

As a long-time lurker in this forum, I always enjoyed James' posts and will certainly miss them. For me, weather is all about hope and experience. We hope to experience certain types of weather, be it a major storm or a perfect day. Sometimes the hoping is just as much fun as actually witnessing it, and James truly embodied hope. I"m glad he got his twister in '19 but I wish he had gotten a few more big storms under his belt before he passed. I think it's appropriate that we hope for big storms to hit the cape in his memory, although my family on the cape will certainly disagree with me. Rest in Peace James.

Same here. It's been nonstop, multiple strikes at once for the past 10 minutes, and this is after the main rain pushed through.

From what I've heard through various interviews, the videos released so far are the least intriguing ones they have. There are others where these things are like 50 feet from the cockpit of the jet. They've recorded them doing 90 degree turns at thousands of miles per hour, which is essentially impossible. Going through the ocean at the same speed as through air as if they are the same environment. It's crazy technology, whatever it is.

Very nice. I need to check out Fisher's Island sometime. I'm a fan of their lemonade.

I'd be shocked if I had Covid, but who knows. I've been tested for it multiple times for travel, and was always negative. I know quite a few people that have had similar reactions to the Moderna shot that didn't have Covid before (that they know of). I just assumed my immune system went into hibernation without having any viruses to defend itself against for the past year. I never had a cold or flu or anything. Neither did my wife or kids. Normally I'm getting at least 1 or 2 colds a year and the flu every few years.

After my first Moderna shot I came down with wicked chills/fever after about 36 hours. Really severe, like the worst flu I've ever had. Then a splitting headache the following day and then it just disappeared later that night. On my second shot (Friday morning) I had somewhat milder chills/fever, but they started about 10 hours after the shot, and then the same headache/hangover feeling yesterday morning. I took some Tylenol yesterday and that really helped. With both shots I really couldn't sleep at all. My mind would just race. My arm was very sore after the first shot, but I had been cleaning out our garage all day, and I think that contributed to it. I got the second shot in my other arm and it's really not that bad this morning.

Got my second shot today. I didn't even get a sticker. The guy next to me was saying we should have driven to Ohio.

My wife and I disagree on this, but I learned most of my current job skills from my employer, not from school. So for me, college seems like a huge waste of money, but it got me a BS that helped to get me hired. But had I just gotten that same first job out of high school I'd like to think I'd still be in roughly the same position now, minus the 4-year age difference and level of maturity that comes with attending college.

Wow, I didn't realize this was being done. From what I'm reading, it looks like some ash trees create chemicals that are toxic to the EAB larvae, making them more resistant. Now I guess we just have to wait for some large-scale growers to stock nurseries and arbor groups with this resistant stock.

Yes, our showed up here in NE CT within the last week. I just put out the feeder this morning and three of them resumed their dive-bombing battles from the fall. Still waiting for the orioles to show up. I have the grape jelly waiting for them. Also had the wood thrush start singing a few days ago, which is one of my favorite sounds of all time.

That's exactly it. I"m not looking to die with a huge bank account that I can pass on to our kids, but I'm hoping to be able to "retire" before I die. And by retire I mean taking up a small job or paying hobby that I enjoy and that gives me spending money but also allows me more than an ample amount of time to enjoy life every day. The flip side is that I don't want to live forever either, and end up being a burden to my kids.

The housing market is stupid crazy right now. I feel bad any buyer that is overpaying now and is going to be forced into selling in 5 years when everyone realizes how much people overpayed. My in-laws bought a house on the cape in 2014 for around $320K and just sold for $500k cash. They've done ZERO work to the house and I would argue it's in worse condition now than when they bought it. They had bought a condo in Florida so they have a place to stay. The house isn't worth $400k, in my opinion, and I'm guessing the market is going to correct at some point. I have plenty of friends that bought at the peak before the 2008 market crashed that had to write checks to get out of their houses when they needed to move/upgrade years later. I have to think this is going to happen again.

Snuck in my first 9 holes yesterday afternoon, although I've been to the range a lot this spring. There is an old saying in fishing that if you catch a fish on your first cast it's going to bring about bad luck. Well...I birdied the first hole and things promptly went downhill from there. Had two drives land in wet bunkers, one of which was a bunker on the WRONG fairway (somehow managed bogey on that hole). Had a nice 4-putt on a short par 4 after almost driving the green. A real dumpster fire 49 to start the season.

I'm still amazed that scientists were able to release a fungus in Boston in 1910/1911 and then upstate NY in 1985/86 and it spread across the entire region by itself to keep them in check. If only we had that for the emerald ash borers. I'm losing ash trees left and right all of a sudden. I was hoping that attracting a healthy population of woodpeckers would help, but it's made no difference.

Any remaining chances for freezing nightime temps south of the pike, or are we out of the woods early this season? My apple trees aren't going to make it through next week's warmth without flowering.

I hear you! It would take me 40 minutes to walk across the yard because I would inevitably stop and pull out a weed and then two, and then two buckets later I would forget what I had come outside for. But I will say that the combo of grass and clover has helped to keep a lot of the broadleaf stuff from coming up. The dandelions aren't native and they spread like crazy, so I understand why people hate them, but they are fairly short lived here and I try and mow them aggressively while they are flowering before they go to seed. Having 40 or 50 in a smaller lawn can look bad, I totally get it. But having several thousand over a large area actually looks nice after a dark and muddy winter. We do have a LOT of bees once it's all in bloom, though, but we haven't been stung. But definitely something to consider if anyone is allergic.

I've mostly applied it in areas where the existing lawn had lost the battle to crabgrass and larger weeds, so I raked out as much of the weeds/crabgrass as possible, which also loosened up the soil a bit, and then just spread clover seed by hand in the spring after the last frost and kept it wet. It germinated pretty quickly - usually faster than grass seed, as I did put some grass down in the really bare spots so that it was just pure clover. It seems that it won't do much the first year but by the second year it really fills in nicely. Areas I seeded last spring have come up with nice clover so far this spring. I also seeded a few spots last fall with grass/clover mixes where I had removed some shrubs and a small gazebo and they got a bit burned out during a dry spell but the clover looks like it is doing fine now, so I think you can do both spring and fall with no problem. Top dressing on existing lawn might be tricky unless you can really dethatch or rake it out a bit to expose some soil. In the past I've filled in spots with peat moss, and then sprinkled seed on top of it and watered it. The peat moss will give it an immediate area to root in and hold water better than just putting it on the dirt. But if you're doing a large area this is going to be a pain in the ass!

I used to be on board with having a perfect green lawn, and I also worked for several residential irrigation companies for about 6 seasons, so it was my job to maintain beautiful lawns for hundreds of other people as well. When we moved to our current house a few years ago, I realized that the 3 acres of lawn I had inherited was going to be too much work to treat/maintain. We are also on a well and we have small kids and chickens, so it seemed like a good idea to not start pumping chemicals into the ground, but I absolutely hated the amount of weeds everywhere. As I've done more research, I now firmly believe that a perfect lawn that is weed free and a vibrant green mix of KBG/Fescue/Rye/etc s actually a toxic wasteland that is not great for the local environment. The amount of chemicals that have to be dumped onto them to maintain them and the fact that those chemicals don't just evaporate but stay in the ground or are taken up by nature is alarming when you think of how many lawns there are in the US. Not to mention how destructive it is to actually make those chemicals in the first place, like what we are seeing with the huge leak at the abandoned phosphate plant down in Tampa. Water demands are constant, and you are essentially offering zero nutritional value to nature. Even your grass clippings are filled with chemicals and shouldn't be used for mulch, but instead left to rot in the corner of your yard and leach chemicals. There was an interesting article I came across that said farmers/gardeners used to cherish a good mixture of clover in their lawns. Clover is nitrogen fixing and when mixed with grass seed it will provide a good supply of nitrogen into the soil for the grass. It also tolerates heat and drought better than grass, chokes out weeds, and provides food for pollinators. But in the 1940's (or sometime around then), the big chemical companies couldn't figure out how to make a weed killer that didn't also kill clover, so they simply labeled clover as a weed and here we are today. I have since started mixing in dutch white clover around the yard and it has done very well. I don't put down lime, I rarely water except for maybe one or two weeks in August if areas get burned out around the house. Zero chemicals. The lawn is greening up great right now. In about a week or two the lawn will be a sea of dandelions, and it will look amazing and the bees will be extremely happy. Then those will get mowed down and I'll let the grass grow on the high side (3.5-4") to choke out some of the weeds for a few weeks. The clover will then start blossoming out and I'll start cutting it back closer to 2.5-3" through summer. Large sections of the lawn have been seeded with wildflowers and will be uncut until the fall. This also cuts down on areas I have to mow, as it currently takes me 2 hours on my 61" zero turn at full speed to cut everything, and that's before I break out the trimmer for edges/walls. I know what I'm doing is not for everyone, as there is still a strong mindset about what a lawn is expected to look like, as well as "curb appeal" of a house. But I think more people will start to move away from the traditional lawn as we keep seeing more drought/pollution issues. But if you're on the fence, I would highly recommend giving it a try in a section of your lawn and seeing what happens.

I hope he comes out of it okay. I'd like to see him and Phil battle it out on the Senior tour for the next 20 years. Even with a limp he can probably keep it interesting on the course.

Flakes just started here about 10 minutes ago. 31.6

Between 8" and 9" here, based on some measurements around the yard and driveway this morning. There was a top layer of wet snow, so I wonder if that compacted things a bit. I'm not complaining.

We hit up Bromley this weekend and the conditions Saturday were really great. That 14" or so they got the previous weekend combined with a steady 2-6" of fluff for multiple days last week really improved things. They dropped the ropes on Havoc, which is one of my favorite runs there and it was awesome.

Was I wrong to uninstall this past weekend? I should have known that would guarantee a grincher.