Weather: It's All Relative

I live in the North Georgia Mountains. At least, geographically. When I first moved here I met more people from Florida, than Georgia. One day I was getting a manicure and as the others in the salon and I were chatting I discovered we ALL were 'from Florida'. At first, the manicurist maintained she was from Georgia, but then she mentioned she was born in Plant City, FL and moved here when she was 4.

I have jokingly stated that Blairsville, GA is technically the northern most town in Florida, only Georgia thinks it belongs to them. Occasionally, I meet a 'local'; someone who was born and raised here. More often than not, when the conversation gets going, even someone who is from "Minnesota" will interject "when we lived in Florida" into the conversation. Once in a while I will discover that someone I considered a 'local' actually came from somewhere else, most often Florida. So, while I live in Georgia, sometimes it just doesn't seem that way.

I love this town. It is nestled in a beautiful part of the Appalachian Mountains. Summers get warm, but not as hot as Atlanta. Fall and Spring are lovely. We have four seasons. Snow makes an appearance, but it's not too serious. By that I simply mean we get inches, not feet. However, because we live in the south, a few inches can shut down this town as easily as 10 feet shuts down Buffalo. Maybe not. I'm not sure if anything shuts down Buffalo.

Truth be told, around here if there is snow in the mountains the people living there are stuck until it melts off. Sometimes that's in a few hours. When the weather is cold it can be several days. The 3 trucks with a plow are too busy keeping the main roads in town open to worry about anything more than a mile out of town. Salt? What is that? I'm pretty sure, Pittsburgh has cornered the market on salt. When we lived there I routinely found a bucket load of salt at every intersection. Here, we use gravel, (mixed with salt they say...).

The weather this week has separated us from Florida. The high one day was 29 degrees and that was at midnight. At 3:00 that afternoon we were sitting at 24 degrees. Then the cold front went through. The low was 9 degrees with a windchill of -1. That's right. I live in Georgia and we are expecting -1! Today the snow hit...and the town shut down. The predictions rolled in yesterday and by nightfall, schools were cancelled for today, along with everything else.

Our Winter Blizzard

Sorry Buffalo, but we here in the south, just don't put up with that stuff. We fold without a fight.

-1 is cold, but I give kudos to my daughter in Iowa. They finally decided to cancel church when the windchill was predicted to be -40!  I'm happy in the 20's. It's better than -40. But this is the one time of year I feel we separate ourselves from being a Florida town. If it ever hits -40 there we will know Hell is freezing over.

Wait! I didn't meant Florida is Hell!! I really didn't! I simply meant if it is that cold in Florida then Hell is probably freezing over too.

Preparing For the Next Stage

For the last 3 years, Larry and I have been on a quest to find our retirement home. Larry will retire next spring and as much as I love Pittsburgh, we will not remain there. We will retire in Georgia, specifically the north Georgia mountains. We will be close to Tennessee as well as North Carolina. In fact, our first focal point was Murphy, NC.

People ask us Why Georgia? The short answer is that we've traveled a lot and we've always liked the area. The longer answer gets more involved and less succinct. We've given up trying to live close to anyone. Our families are so far-flung that living near the kids was only doable if you chose one kid. But I think a lot of the answer has to do with the fact that while we've lived many places over the years, it was always dictated by where work was. This time we had a chance to choose a place just because we liked it.

Initially we were looking to see what kind of housing was available and the price range. The more we looked the more we zeroed in on what really suited us. Last fall I spent one day with our realtor. In 12 hours we drove 300 miles and looked at 10 homes, none of which worked for us. It was exhausting!

This summer we found it. It was a charming 'cabin in the woods', albeit a really nice 'cabin'! The entire house is wrapped in a large, covered porch. The house even came with a hammock, a porch swing and 4 porch rockers just beckoning us to come sit, rock, and sip a glass of iced tea. When you find what you are looking for you grab it, and we did.

While the place is lightly landscaped and has plenty of trees, I think we will be adding a couple that have a special place in our heart. There is a fenced in back yard that is just right for a little apple tree to take root. There are plenty of deer, but I think it will be well-protected. And I'm sure it will thrive once it gets out of that pot and can spread its roots.

Another tree will take root there too. When my daughter's best friend, Liz, married Tim in an outdoor ceremony in North Carolina, the wedding guests were each given a Norfolk Pine seedling as party favors. We brought our seedlings home and nurtured them. The seedlings thrived and many years later they have grown into a lovely potted tree. I think it is time to return it to the wild as it was intended.

Retirement is still several months away, but we are ready for it to arrive. When it does, this little place will be the perfect place for a pine tree, an apple tree, and us to stretch our roots, and grow.