This month may be almost over but
everyone in Denver and/or Colorado will probably heave a sigh of
relief when it is officially history. Most of last year was dry with few rain
or snow storms and this year is proving no different- up until very recently. I
made a trip to Home Depot on Tuesday afternoon after a fairly good overnight
snow and among the items on my list I decided to once again buy some cement to
finish up some work I did two years ago in summer. I had saved my Russian Olive
tree early in the morning with a cleverly quick trim on an overhanging branch
and I was feeling lucky- just like I should.
At this point I should remind everybody of my rule of thumb for March:
In like a lion, out like a lamb. In like a lamb, out like a lion. In Colorado this can be
taken quite literally with almost no exceptions.
As soon as I got home with new window well covers, et al the forecasts were suddenly imminent. “The weather is
changing…the weather is changing…” clucked Chicken Little, the weather
forecaster. I looked at the dry-as-a-bone and powdery dirt around the window
wells, and what I thought was pourable concrete and laughed my head off and
decided to put it off until yesterday. Big mistake.
When I started out everything had melted off and it was difficult to
tell that it had snowed the previous night. The air was chilly but that isn’t
unusual for Denver.
Our nights are cold in the middle of summer- which, by the way, make summer
mornings very pleasant. Ahem!
I had already prepped the window well for installation and while doing
so, found that I was suddenly swimming in mud. Rain! I had put my fashionable
galoshes on but decided to hold off on the second one and go in until the rain
went away. It did.
I dried out the spot that I wanted to fill in with pourable concrete. A neighbor
helped me pry open the easy open container
and discovered that it wasn’t pourable or even concrete putty. It was
completely powder with NO ROCKS ! The latter was the good part but the former
meant that I had dried out what I could’ve used and quite quickly to finish the
job I had started. (It’s just a matter of getting it completely level and
completely smooth!)
The skies started graying up again which may or may not mean rain,
especially in Denver.
My neighbor said something accidentally ominous. “It’s supposed to rain for
days you know.” I laughed and said, “In Denver
anything can happen. You know how dry it’s been.” Then we both laughed. I
decided to go ahead and try some of the powder with some leftover rainwater to
level the area and perhaps later make more to smooth it completely over.
I patched up all the little potholes and
unevenness and went inside to clean up and get to home and hearth. In less than
an hour we suddenly had one of our
rarest occurrences. Il fait pluie/neige! We’ve had combined
snow and rain in Denver
before but this was a bona fide sludge storm. I’ve never seen anything like it
anywhere! Ever. Until yesterday.
I ran out as fast as I could and covered the area with a plastic wheelbarrow
but I don’t know if it prevented anything. It was supposed to set within 30
minutes so I can only hope my patches survived. I’ll let you know, of course. I’m
basically recuperating from a fiasco so this could take awhile. March madness
is no match for March weirdness!
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