cause things weren't bad enough

Believe it or not things are even worse even though the coldest nights are behind us though still getting down in the 20s. Today and the next two...35˚/28˚, 34˚/22˚, 41˚/20˚. Saturday we start warming up. Woke up to light icy rain this morning. The town sent out a text asking people to conserve water during the day and not let faucets drip or run while they make repairs to the water system. Got a text from Autumn in Austin about midnight, she's lost water. Got a text from Jade in San Antonio about 6 AM, second floor of her building had a broken pipe with water pouring down to the first floor. She lives on the third floor and thinks she still has water. Text from Robin in Houston about 10 AM, she's lost water and power again. Mikey and girlfriend Audra and their dog and Robin and her cat are in route out here to their parents' house. They have power but no water.

We still have both but we did have a water incident yesterday. We've been turning the water off at the meter at night and back on during the day which we learned later produces pressure problems for frozen pipes. So yesterday I was rinsing my plate off in the kitchen after lunch when I hear water sounds in the little bathroom. You might remember those pipes are in the attic and were frozen so while we had water in the upper house, we did not in the little bathroom. I went to check and the floor in the house studio room had water spreading out on it from where it was pouring out from under a wall in the little bathroom. Hollered at Marc to turn off the water, the house was flooding. Texted Gunnar (plumber) and started mopping up (7 or 8 gallons we think), waited a few minutes and called Rocky who came immediately, heard from Gunnar, swamped with 13 calls and for us to turn off the water. Rocky pulled the medicine cabinet out of the wall for a looksee, determined the leak was in the attic so up he went and good news was, no broken pipes, yay, but the connection from the old galvanized insulated pipes to the new uninsulated pex had come loose and he didn't have the necessary (expensive) tool to make the repair so he capped off the galvanized pipe and we had water in the rest of the house. Texted Gunnar, easy fix so he and his helper came by this morning on their way out to now over 20 calls and got the repair done. It was probably the turning the water off and on that caused the pex to come loose from the galvanized pipe, he removed the ice plug and now we have water in the little bathroom too. Don't shut the water off at night he says, just let all three faucets trickle. We weren't the only one this happened to here.

Statewide, millions of people are still without power and/or water and have been since Sunday night. People are dying from having their oxygen batteries die with no way to recharge, from carbon monoxide poisoning from sitting in their cars trying to get warm, if not dying yet being unable to get to dialysis centers that are closed anyway or get life saving drugs.

So, of course, our stupid republican senators and governor are lying and passing the blame for this catastrophe onto the Green New Deal, a policy that is not in effect, has not been voted on, has not even been sent to the floor of the House for a vote, and AOC who is sponsoring it. Also blaming the frozen windmills that provide only about 20% or less of our electricity. What they aren't telling people is that the coal and natural gas pumps and plants that we get the lion's share of our power from are also frozen up. The tin foil hat people are circulating an image from years ago in Sweden of a helicopter melting ice off a windmill passing it off as Texas.  The fact is that Texas has an independent privately owned power grid to avoid federal regulations and so we are not interconnected with any other states for power sharing and as usual, our republican policies put profit over infrastructure and the powers that be saw no reason to insulate or provide built in heaters at crucial points for cold weather while ex- Texas governor ex-energy secretary Perry is telling reporters that Texans are happy to suffer a little cold to keep regulation out of the state (I guarantee neither Perry nor any of our politicians are suffering outages). And while this weather is quite unusual, it's not the first time this has happened. In fact there was a commission after a hard winter in '79 or '80 that recommended winterizing that was never implemented. As many people have pointed out, windmills work just fine in places that get much colder than we do.

Pictures from today:

banana trees

flowering senna

ground orchids, pink angel trumpet, hibiscus, plumbago; I have no idea what it looks like under there but I'm pretty sure I lost the gardenia from what I could see through the clear plastic covering it

heritage rose

jasmine, every bud is encased in ice

pansies and violas

night blooming jasmine, ginger, leather leaf fern, fire spike, aspidistra