We are due for yet another cold blast the early part of this week. Temperatures may reach the 30s at night again. Is this the last cold blast of the season? Who knows.



Meanwhile, it may actually hit 82 degrees today. This is a day for the children to plant their vegetable garden, and for me to pull weeds, and for Self-Reliant Man to work on replacing the alternator in our family sedan.



Returning from a homeschool field trip this week, I ran into car trouble. In retrospect, we now realize that the alternator must have failed and the car battery ran down gradually on the way home from the field trip. We approached a McD*nald's and I noticed that the dash wasn't working right. The gauges were working intermittently. After leaving the McD*nald's we started the car and headed for home the most direct way we could. The gauges and radio were intermittent and finally shut down altogether. Then as I kept driving, the transmission started acting strange, with rough shifting. At one point, when I really wanted to get it all the way home, I realized I wasn't going to make it and pulled into a church parking lot. I called Self-Reliant Man at his office, and he showed up and figured out that I had run my battery almost all the way down; that at 97,000 miles, the alternator was due to fail. So long story short, he had me take him back to work and return home in his car. Then later during dinner at home, he charged up a car battery and we returned to our car with that battery and got the car home. Today he is looking into replacing the alternator himself.


Please note the new "Cast of Characters" in the sidebar. You will see that my husband's nickname of Self-Reliant Man is well earned.


But I began by talking about winter in Florida, even as Spring is showing its approach. But here I shall be like Ch*rles Osgo*d and leave you with some peaceful photos of our home and yard during some of the many early morning frosts we had this year.