Short story to save myself from too much embarrassment: I didn't lock the back door. It blew open in the night. The kitchen froze. The basil plant and an orchid died from ice in its roots.
Poor basil.
The green thumb runs in my family and I usually can't kill a plant if I try. So, this is a major household loss, ya'll.
The pipes didn't freeze (which, I didn't even think about as a possibility, believe it or not) luckily.
I was thinking afterwards - after I'd re-heated the house by noon and partially gotten over my shame for being absentminded - about my porch in Oakland. The door was old and didn't shut well. Oftentimes it would blow open in the night. Even on the coldest of nights when it would get into the low 40s, it just didn't really matter. Because it was a balcony porch I didn't worry too much about being broken into.
Silly me, still thinking like a Californian.
2 comments:
Oh no! I can't believe it. They were so healthy and fragrant when I was there. I can't comprehend how one night of cold did this. Then again, I'm in California, so of course this is a strange act of nature I cannot grasp!
We never checked on the actual temperature that night but it was below zero, certainly. The tile was like ice.
Remember the tragic orchid deaths during my roadtrip? I learned that it snows and freezes in Colorado in May/June and I lost half of my beauties to the cold overnight.
Orchids don't camp and orchids don't tolerate the arctic.
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