Protect your plants with the coming cold snaps with these tips from the Dallas Arboretum.
From the Dallas Arboretum
With freezing weather approaching, it is important to take precautions to ensure your plants are protected from extreme weather conditions. Following a few simple steps prescribed by Dave Forehand, Dallas Arboretum vice president of gardens, will enable your plants to survive the sometimes-harsh North Texas cold spells.
A Texas National Guardsman carries a residents from her home during flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey (Photo courtesy U.S. Department of Defense).
As the rest of the state watched helplessly as first Hurricane Harvey’s winds, then water, wreaked havoc on the coast of Texas and Houston, something else began circulating — a warning about a change to state law regarding weather-related claims on homeowners insurance.
House Bill 1744 was signed into law May 27 by Gov. Greg Abbott. Billed as tort-reform legislation that would reduce the opportunity for insurance fraud, some now say the law may very well get its first stress test in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.
I ran and snapped a quick pic of the Phillips house tonight — not too icy — but I will try to get a better one when the weather clears. Beautiful multi-color stone home, built by Ryan Osborne. And as usual, I stand corrected. (If I had a dollar…) The Phillips bought the home from Osborne so they are the first family to live in the house. It has a kind of U-shape, the garage on the left, and that structure on the right is actually a guest house. No kidding. When they bought the house, they had the builder put the guest house out front at their request, and despite a few objections from the neighborhood. (Neighborhoods!) Why did they want the guest house here?¬† It was where Phillips mother-in-law was going to live. (What a great son-in-law to go to all that trouble.) Anyhow, she ended up not liking it after all, and moved to a nearby retirement home instead. But you know what, I think it makes guests feel extra special to have the guest house in the front, not back, of the property.
What do you think?
OK, it is really cold in Texas tonight. 20 degrees right now. Supposed to go down to 14. It is my opinion that most homes in Texas are not built for this kind of weather unless they have basements and theromopane windows. Home with old single pane windows are frozen over. I had a pier and beam home because I thought that would be warmer, now I have a pier-ed slab. Both, it seems, are cold. So informal poll: which is warmer in winter, the slab or pier and beam home?
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