It’s cold outside, bonsais in the frost (12/27/2022)

I am sure that almost everyone knows by now that we have been in for some amazing weather here in the eastern two thirds of north America. We were hit by the polar vortex and what is called a bombogenesis. It was something that was predicted some time ago, I even wrote about it in a post a week ago and predicted that I might need to write my final year’s post about it. Well, here I go.

My main concern was how the greenhouse would hold up to winds approaching hurricane force and temperatures around 10 degrees Fahrenheit or around -12 degrees Celsius. I have most of my tropical trees in the greenhouse and as you can see in the photograph included with this post, I have two small heaters installed in the place. One heater of 700 watts comes on based on where I set it; while the other is 1200 and is connected to my thermostat which switches it on at 42.5 degrees (or 5.8 C). I think this is still pretty darn cold for some of my trees, and I hoped it works. Before the weather blew in, we had some freezing nights, and the greenhouse could handle it well, eventually putting the nighttime temperatures around 45 to 50 degrees.

With the cold coming in, I was nervous, and I also needed to connect our birth bath heater coil to the same outlet. I had planned to wake up every few hours that first night to make sure all went well. We went to bed at around 11 and the temperatures outside had already dropped to 15. The temperature in the greenhouse was a comfortable 55. I felt good. I woke up at 12:30 checked the temperature in the greenhouse with my remote temperature gauge and it read 29 degrees, 3 degrees below freezing. Holy shit! My trees!

I went on the deck naked (we old hippies still sleep in the nude, but boy it was cold 15 degrees being nude on our deck) to push in the ground fault interrupt that did not do it and then I figured out that it must be the breaker. Back inside I found the tripped breaker, reset it and I noticed that a light in the greenhouse came on. This is an indicator light on the extension cord showing it has power.

Now what triggered this? The only explanation I had is the coil that keeps the bird bath water from freezing. It pulls 200 watts and must have been working overtime. I went back to bed without further thinking about it, but after a brief discussion with my wife we decided that I should unplug the thing and dump the water out of the bath to prevent it from cracking.

So, out of bed and downstairs I went. I pulled on my ski parka over my nude body, slipped on some shoes and stumbled outside in the dark and cold to get the job done. Boy, that was cold on the bare legs, buttocks and elsewhere. I described it to a friend, and he wondered about any shrinkage, honestly, I had no time to think about that issue; in addition, it was way too cold for that, so let’s not go there in this post.

Once reset, within minutes the greenhouse was back above 32. I woke up two additional times that night and the temperatures hovered around 45. In the morning the outside temperature was 7.5 degrees or about -13.6 Celsius.

I am not sure if I lost any plants, time will tell. Now a few days later things still look ok, but you never know. One of the YouTube shows I watch mentioned that ficus trees in particular might not like colder temperatures, and I have at least six different ones in the greenhouse. It looks like one of my hibiscus trees is suffering as well, but I think that was from before the polar vortex.

It is now after Christmas and temperatures are supposed to warm up the next week. The day-time temperatures in the greenhouse topped 70 degrees in the sunshine today. I am pretty happy.

I expect that this will be the last post of 2022. So, folks, I hope you all have a great New Year. I am looking forward to the new year as well.

The interior of the greenhouse on December 18.  You can see the two heaters on the tile, pointing in two different directions.  The small cube is the 700 watts heater and the cream one in front is the stronger one.  I had put the tile and cinderblocks in as heat sinks in the hope to moderate the temperature swings.

Winter in the woods (2/6/2018)

It has been a cold January this year. In the newspaper this week people are complaining about their electricity bills; their heat pumps worked overtime. Our utility bills were not that bad, since we partially heat with wood and have gas heat.

The cold weather provides great opportunities to go walking out back in the woods or as we call it “the outbacks.” We had good snow (especially for our area) and we are still talking about investing in some cross country skis, but we already have so many hobbies.

Jake is ready to go for another walk in the snowy woods behind our home.  I took this picture sometime in mid-January after another snowy day.

From the looks of it, I am sure that almost all but the weakest trees in the woods behind our home will have had no problem surviving the cold spell. They are well prepared for events like this. For one, it is not that this has never happened before, temperatures around 4 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Many of the trees are well over 50 years old, so they have seen this before. Moreover, it has been cold over evolutionary time, and the parents or grandparents of these trees went through cold spells like this, survived it and were able to reproduce. In other word, “been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.” It is what Darwin called “survival of the fittest.” The plants that survived historic cold spells survived, and produced offspring and they just went through this year’s wimpy cold spell.

Another good thing was that the cold snap happened in January, just when you would expect something like this to happen. The plants were in full dormancy. It might be a different story when this happens in November, March or April. Plants prepare themself for this by dropping their leaves and raising the sugar content in the cells. By doing so, the sugar acts like an antifreeze. Water in the space outside the cells does not have any sugar and freezes. When this water freezes it draws water out of the cells lowering the freezing point of the cell content even further. A pretty nifty system. But even if the content of the cells freeze, in preparation for winter, many plants move their DNA to the center of the cell and wrap it in fat, very much like things we wrap in bubble wrap, further insulating and protecting the most important parts from freezing and sharp ice crystals.

Even the small pine saplings seem to tolerate the cold and the weight of the freshly fallen snow.

Plants that keep their leaves, like the pines, cedars and the hollys, fill their leaves with chemicals like anthocyanins and vitamin C. Anthocyanins are also known as flavonoids which act like antioxidants. They turn the leaves dark, sometimes purplelish and as we’ll see that allows plants to do some photosynthesis when it is cold. Other plants that stay green in the winter increase their vitamin C content. Vitamin C also functions as an antioxidant. Antioxidants are important in winter since the chlorophyll in leaves will keep on capturing sunlight to make sugar, but the cold temperatures has slowed the sugar making process down to a crawl. The cells are loaded with electrons (oxidants) and plants need the antioxidants anthocyanins and vitamin C to neutralize them off. If they don’t do that, plants would be in trouble (if we humans get too many oxidants we get inflammation or worse, cancer).  Anthocyanins are important for us as well, they make blueberries purple, and they are also found in grapes, strawberries, red cabbage and other colorful vegetables.  In the plant world, anthocyanins have another function as well, it makes leaves look either unpalatable (purple) to insects or to others insects the leaves look like they are dead (not green). A good way to protect yourself from bugs.

But it has finally warmed up a bit, although it is all relative (night times around freezing and day times in the 40s and 50s). It was a great weekend to go out and explore. We just walked along the trail and decided to get off the trail at one point and bushwack over to the other side. Hoping to find something new and exciting. Somehow we are never disappointed when we do that. It was interesting to start out in an area covered with leaves of beech and swamp chestnut oak trees, going over to an area that was dominated by a mixture of loblolly pine, overcup oak, white oak and some red oak. This last area had a lot of ephemeral ponds in them as well. I never really studied the difference, or why these two areas are so different; I have to put it on my to do list.

Some interesting pictures from trees.  Not sure what happened here.  Maybe a branch that fell off and scarred over, maybe a gall, whatever, it looked like a nose to us with an eye above it.  Never a boring day in the woods. 

I have not the slightest idea what happened here but it is absolutely bizarre.  It looks like there were two branched growing on top of each other which is somewhat unnatural.  the top one was really heavy and seemed to have bent down.  Crazy.    

No, Jake is not marking the tree, just turning and coming to me.  He was fascinated by the smells around this tree.  I want to bet this hole is the home for a critter and that is what he was reacting to.

Finally, this weekend I attended a writing class at my church and we had to write haikus. I had never written one in my life, but felt inspired by my walk in the woods that morning. Moreover, my regular readers know my interest in forest bathing. No it is not a masterwork, but anyway I had fun doing it. So here I go:

I walk in the woods

A spy in the house of deer

Nature bathe over me

-

I breath forest air

Therefore I am a human

Walking in the woods

Water (2/12/2016)

Walking in the woods this morning after a very cold morning I was reminded of one of the things I really try to push in my classes: 

“The importance of (clean) water!”

I tell my students that life is not possible without water and that one of the reasons is that water has these special properties.  One of these properties is that is expands when is gets colder than approximately 40 degrees Fahrenheit.  Below that temperature water becomes more buoyant (lighter) because of the expansion and rises to the top of the water column.  When temperatures drop below freezing water freezes on top and creates this insulated layer which allows fish and aquatic life to survive in lakes, ponds, rivers and oceans (and it allows my crazy Dutch country men and women to win gold medals in speed skating).  If water would freeze from the bottom up these water bodies would be lifeless because every thing wold freeze to death.  This is also one reason why NASA is so fascinated by the (water) moons of Jupiter and Saturn, because they are expected to have liquid water deep down.  There may be life up there!

After an night of frost you can see the small cracks that formed and refroze as a result of the expanding ice, creating this magnificent mosaic.

The photograph above gives a great example of it all.  There is liquid water under the ice.  Obviously after the water froze it got even colder and the expanding ice has all kinds of small cracks in it from expanding and now looks like a mosaic.  Really cool!  Although it may be quite disturbing that instead of enjoying nature, I am constantly analyzing things in nature, just like that cartoon that I saw on Facebook of how a scientist spends his vacation on a tropical island.

Click <here> to see the site where I found the cartoon and to see many more science cartoons!

Anyway, I do teach almost daily about the importance of water, about the importance of clean water and about keeping it clean through erosion and sediment control and stormwater management.

Expanding ice in wet soil causes what we call frost heaving.  These soil particles become very loose and can become erodible and end up in our stormwater.

What can you contribute to keeping our water clean?

1. Pick up your animal’s waste, especially when they do it on the road or in or near a place where it will readily enter the stormwater
2. Don't over-fertilize or apply too much pesticide to your yard
3. When you apply fertilizer or pesticide stay a few yards away from streets or your property boundary
4. When you wash your car do it on the lawn not on a paved surface, like your driveway or the road in front of your home.  Better, do it at a car wash.
5. Don’t poor waste oil or any other wastes down the storm drain
6. Minimize the bare soil in our yards and mulch

We all can contribute to clean water, and it is so important!  If we run out of water, our earth will turn into something like Mars, lifeless; without clean water who knows, but it will not be pretty.  As I teach my students:

"Filthy water cannot be washed!"

The big ephemeral pond behind our home has the same mosaic like features.  The water in these ponds is so nice and clean.

Yorktown (1/4/2014)

We have had a strange streak of freezing cold, then warm weather the last couple of days.  To those who want to argue that there is no global warming I have heard it explain that because of global warming the polar jet stream is less stable and oscillates more giving us more extreme cold days and warm day (http://www.weather.com/news/science/environment/arctic-blast-linked-global-warming-20140106).

Oh well, that argument out of the way (or started) about this picture.  It was 36 degrees (+2 Celsius) in the morning when I went for a walk and by the afternoon it was 26 (-3.3 Celsius).  Kind of amazing to see the temperature taking such a dip during the day.  It was windy as well.  I took this photo the following morning and the pattern in the ice shows how the ice did not freeze all at once; you can really see the patterns the wind made in the still partially liquid water.  Really neat to see.

 

Yorktown (12/2/2013)

Frosty foggy morning