January 2023

 

After a frozen lake in December, the lake has been open all of January. The Trumpeter Swans have remained for longer this year than in the past. We have had seven here for several months now, and we have hopes they will like it well enough to stay.

A new house is being built at the other ends of the lake, so our little lake is changing once again.

Still winter - so I'm officially in my cooking mode. Since I view a lot of recipes, Facebook shows many in my feed, and I experiment a lot. This potato pancake recipe has become Ron's favorite breakfast. When done, they are crispy brown!

The other dominant theme in my Facebook feed is gardening. Although I have tried unsuccessfully on several occasions to start petunias from seed, this picture convinced me to try again. I ordered several specialty petunias from Baker Creek, and was excited to see them in the mail.

I was a bit dismayed when I opened the seed package and found this tiny zip lock bag with what looked like dust inside. 

The instructions said be sure soil is warm, so I dug an old heating pad out of the closet and I think I planted the seeds.  Hard to tell as they are almost microscopic and I wasn't sure I even had seeds in the pots.  After 10 days, I spotted a bit of green! YAY

If you look very closely, you can see tiny leaves - (may be chickweed?) but I'm cautiously optimistic that I actually have petunias.  They look extremely fragile, and have been this exact same size for about a week.  We'll see - but I'm glad I planted early if they grow this slow.  They should be ready for my dreamed of hanging baskets by about May (if they're actually petunias).