October - Fall is here!

 October - feeling a lot like fall around here. We haven't had a frost, but I'm determined to keep better track of the dahlias this year, and the only way to do that is to dig them and label them while I still know which are which, so I dug dahlias this week. I put them in two of the big Costco totes with the yellow lids that I buried in a hillside in a pile of mulch that I will pile more mulch on when I'm done.

I see Anne has a few that I've never seen before so I'm going to add to my collection next year. I have a whole area on the side of the garden dedicated to flowers so I have lots of room to add more.

First rain brought first batch of Chantrelle mushrooms. Better than candy to me! When we planted 8000 Christmas trees that we let grow into a forest maze, we unintentionally created a mushroom habitat, so now we reap a special harvest in both fall and spring.

Since I'm too much of a wimp to swim in 50 degree water, I ordered a wet suit and had my first wet suit swim yesterday. Oh my! What a different experience that was! First of all they are supposed to be tight....and boy, is it tight! I got as much exercise getting into and out of it as I did swimming.   When I dove in, I popped up like a cork, as the suit is VERY buoyant...I had a hard time maneuvering as I felt like I was encased in balloons. It feels like having compression socks on my entire body. I DID stay warm...so there's that...But when I got back to the house, I needed Ron to help me get out of the suit. It's going to take some getting used to!

Gene sent me a text a couple of days ago asking if I noticed the cat and kittens in the woodshed. Yikes! Just what we need: a feral cat with a batch of kittens!  Ron immediately decided they needed food, so we gave them some fish sticks that had been hanging out in the freezer for a long time. They disappeared, but then so did the cats, and I guess I don't mind a few stray cats keeping rodents at bay. 

We're rebuilding the fence to make more of a fortress against the deer that have decimated the raspberry patch. Most of the garden has been tilled and is ready for garlic planting. We're going to Co-op today to pick up winter rye to seed the rest of the garden.

Most of our harvesting is done. The days are definitely shorter and colder, and we're ready for the winter slow down season where we do more reading and cooking.

Summer in Granite Falls

During the busiest time of year, normal tasks kind of fall by the wayside. Our daily jobs now consist of getting up at dawn, heading out to water gardens and flower beds, weed while watering, pick what needs picking, and then cook or preserve what we picked.

Garlic is harvested and drying to get ready for braiding. We use a lot of garlic, and give away a lot too. Such an amazing plant - anti-inflammatory and much used as a spice. I make my go-to winter cold and flu preventative by peeling a jar full of cloves, pouring honey over, and let them work together. At the first sign of cold symptoms, a spoonful normally sends the germs packing. 

Beets on the hugelkulture mound are about golf ball size now, and we're enjoying them nearly every day. The huge squash plant behind the beets is just now beginning to flower and set squash.

Another truckload of mulch is making its way into the gardens and orchard and flower beds. The carport behind that is full of all the trees that fell during the bomb cyclone. Ron has chopped and stacked about 15 cords of wood in the past few months.

Flowers everywhere are keeping the bees busy. Dahlias and gladiolas are just now beginning to bloom. 

My sister, Mona, and I discovered that the blackberries are already starting, so we picked a bowlful while we visited yesterday.

Within the next week, pickle season will be in full swing, as I noticed many tiny cucumbers yesterday when I watered. Beans, beets, carrots, potatoes, and zucchini are on the table every day.

This little farm keeps us busy and active, and at the end of each day, I swim halfway down the lake and back to cool off. Life is good and I love summer!

April in Washington 2025

 We had some great visits with family in April. We saw Cord, Daphne, and Martin early in the month.

And then, a quick visit to Tonasket, where we saw Tony and Tina, Sara and Kaleb, Jesse, and all six great grandchildren.

Then, back to work here at home: Me getting ready for the Granite Falls Gardeners' First Annual Plant Sale at the library in town on May 3.

The white carrier is dahlia bulbs that I dug up from their tote buried in bark. They did amazingly well, considering that I buried them in September and forgot them until this month. The hanging baskets are nearly ready to display. I'm experimenting with different plants in a couple - making them spice and herb baskets instead of flowers. Those have rosemary, lemon balm, thyme, and sage. Not sure if those are companion plants, but I thought it might be fun to have them all in one place when I'm ready for forage spices for cooking. I'm new to selling so playing it by ear. I pinched off all the flowers this weekend, hoping they'll be in full bloom by May 3.

We managed to assemble the Chinese puzzle of a carport that we're using as a woodshed. Ron has been working on the rest of the trees that fell during the bomb cyclone, putting in next winter's wood supply.

And mowing nearly the entire 10 acres we have here. We've enjoyed so many beautiful days in April.

My sister and I went out in the wilds just south of us looking for mushrooms. Sadly, no mushrooms, but we had a fun day looking.

                            And I finally decided that long hair is way too much trouble. 

Spring has Sprung!

 

Seeds, seeds, seeds. It reminds me of when I was picking strawberries when I was 14 and when I closed my eyes at night, all I could see was strawberries.  Our local Facebook garden club was gifted two banker boxes full of seeds. They were in a total jumble, and four of us spent several hours sorting them over the past few days. Just when I thought we were totally done, as I had the original troche of seeds neatly sorted with the excess bagged in gallon ziplocs, Dale, our donator, stopped by with several more ziplocs of flower seeds. We plan to give them away at the plant sale, and then hope someone will be willing to take the balance to further distribute them.

I have five vendors signed up for the sale May 3 at the library in town. Somehow, I went from being mildly interested in selling some hanging baskets, to becoming the main organizer. I can commit to one day a year for my gardening buddies. Doing the Farmer's Market in town every Sunday is way beyond my ambition level.

So now, looking forward to our first 70 degree and sunny day this year, I have a treasure trove of seeds to spread around my world.

Happy Spring!!

At least winter waited to arrive until February. January was cold and clear with hardly any precipitation of any kind. Not a single flake of snow until February 1.

 

As it got colder and stayed cold every night, the lake began to freeze. The visiting swans looked like they were hibernating. Open water remained for part of the lake for our entire cold spell, so they are still hanging around. They're so huge, they dwarf the Canadian geese.

One of my favorite plants is Hellebore...here it is blooming in the snow. In winter, I need some color. Even though the snow is beautiful in many ways, it does tend to turn our world black and white.

The big maple tree was lovely for the first day. The snow quickly fell off as every day managed to get above freezing. 

Inside, I'm getting started on my garden, so my kitchen table is pretty much fully planted. I traded my friend Lisa a bucket of honey for a big heat mat, so hopefully this year I'll get a head start on the garden.

December 2024

 We are gratefully enjoying the last quarter of the year where winter hasn't arrived yet! It looks like we'll get through December without snow for the first time in a long time! My "memories of this day" on Facebook are all featuring snow and ice.  

The sunrises have been spectacular. The Trumpeter swans are back and hundreds of Canadian geese have stopped by for a day or two on their journey South. So far, none have opted to stay, so we're grateful for that also. The humming birds are going through a container of juice about every 3 or 4 days, and all the little tweety birds are going through a canister of birdseed every week too. 

I've been cooking - mostly cookies - but some interesting other things also. I remind myself of the mother in "Prince of Tides" trying all the exotic recipes on a meat and potatoes kind of husband. The spinach souffle was a definite "No" for Ron, and he wasn't very enthusiastic about the sausage filled dates either. 

So today, ham and scalloped potatoes and green beans for a more traditional kind of Christmas meal. Sending wishes for happiness and success for everyone in the new year and a warm and merry Christmas!

October/November 2024

 I seem to be fully into my cooking/baking season around here! Not much gardening left, and it's cooled off to where I can use the oven without worrying about not having A/C. So I've been spending my on line time with my mushroom identification groups, looking at recipes, and finding new books to read. It's a process...changing from my outdoor living program to indoor living.

First time making eclairs - and I've heard since that you can start with puff pastry....but no, I love doing things the hard way! This recipe starts with water, salt, and butter in a sauce pan, adding flour, making a dough that you knead eggs into.  The recipe called for piping this dough into 4" rectangles. I just put blobs on parchment paper, and they puffed up nicely. Then it called for piping whipped cream into them...I did pipe that in as there wasn't really a way to do otherwise. Then the chocolate mixture was to be piped on top.  I just spread this. They were truly delectable, but a royal pain to make.

Other culinary adventures - chicken noodle soup with homemade noodles, chicken pot pie using the last of the garden vegetables, and lasagne using homemade pasta, Soupa Toscana (copycat Olive Garden variety) and multiple types of cookies.

Then the outside chores began again as a "bomb cyclone" hit us hard. We were without power for 3 and a half days. A gust must have zeroed in on our lakeshore, because all three kayaks were swept off the bank and into the water. Even the big rowboat was moved several feet. 

All the deck chairs were thrown about, 

three roof panels were ripped off the greenhouse, 

and we have no fewer than a dozen trees all over our 10 acres that were uprooted. Many were quite large, but all managed to miss all our buildings! 

The night of the storm, we lay awake for hours listening to pine and fir cones (that sounded like boulders) hitting our metal roof and thumps and bumps that sounded like trees falling.  In the morning, in addition to the downed trees, branches and tree debris littered everything. We'll be cleaning up for a long time, but the happy news is our power is back, and we have about a year's worth of firewood on the ground.

We do have a generator, which made living through this power outage a lot more tolerable than in the past. And in retrieving the boats, I managed to get in a "polar plunge". Not on purpose, but not too cold either. It was such a nice day that I was already thinking I might take a plunge.