"When lilies of the valley bloom, it's time to plant pumpkins and squash" - So the weather has warmed up and it's time for full on gardening!

We make garden space available to our renters, and they have their gardens planted too. You can see the raspberries fully leafed out and starting blooming on the left, the garlic of the right separating the two renter gardens. Gene has mostly potatoes, cabbage, and onions planted. Gabriel has tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers.  I have some of all of these, along with parsnips, carrots, garlic, squash, pumpkin, beets, broccoli, and more.  With good weather, we should all be eating fresh veggies before long.

The heather and candy tuft we planted on the bank in front of the house are getting bigger and prettier every year.  The iris are budding and should be in full bloom soon.

I cleaned all the empty pots and extra stuff out of the greenhouse, and you can see in the corner on the right where I have been burrowing under the foundation. We have power that we can extend to the greenhouse now. Most of the trench can be dug with the excavator, but I've managed to get a 3' by about 6' trench in the area where the excavator is too large to reach. I managed to get under the foundation, so I'm ready for Ron to finish the job.

Meanwhile, Ron has split 7 cords of firewood, and leveled the building site. 

And I've begun my swimming season! These are the days we've been waiting for!

A Rainy and Cold April

 

In spite of rain nearly every day, we have also had sun breaks nearly every day. I think it will go on record as the coldest April ever. So the morel mushrooms that normally appear around the first of the month, are a couple of weeks late. I've been finding them in the bark I spread around the raspberry plants. 

In spite of dreary weather, everything is blooming, so it feels like Spring even on cool rainy days. The cherry tree has more blooms than ever, so I'm hoping we can beat the birds to a few cherries this year!

If you look closely, you can see the peas I planted in February on the fence line.  Both onions and garlic are also doing well.

The tilled area on both sides of the garlic is for our renters' gardens. It's fun to see others get excited about growing their own vegetables.

The tiller is back on the tractor, and everything is tilled and ready for planting. The raspberries are looking good, and I have corn planted in the hoop house in the middle.

It hasn't been all about gardening and rain and mushroom gathering around here this month. We painted the big garage during some breaks in the weather.

As soon as we get some dry weather (predicted for later this week!) we'll get back working on the site of our new tool shed/picnic pavilion site.  We're still hoping to get that building done this year.

I've also been preparing to host a plant exchange for the Granite Falls Gardener's club on May 6.  Some of the more invasive plants I have in abundance are desired by some members, so I've been potting up starts of such things as lemon balm, comfrey, raspberries, peppermint, spearmint, rhubarb, sage, and a few seed started annuals.

This afternoon, I'll plant pumpkins in the compost area where I've been throwing weeds I pluck from other sites in the garden. I'm hoping the pumpkin plants will shade out all the volunteer comfrey, grass, trailing buttercup, and other weeds before they find new places to root.

Our normal last day we can expect frost is May 1, so it should be safe to plant everything now. Hoping to have that done today.

Roller coasting through March 2023

 Spring is always a bit of a roller coaster ride weather wise. This March has definitely been doing that to us! The last day of February brought us about a half inch of snow and it was cold enough that it stuck around in the shady parts of the garden for several days. 

But things are starting to bloom, and leaves are emerging on nearly everything that has leaves. We have had several 60 degree plus days, and fortunately experienced a couple of those when Tony came over to rebuild another deck for us. And help us with the power for a new building.

When we bought this place in 1985, we did serious improvements/replacements. However, that was 37 years ago, and we are in a new improvement/replacement cycle. 

One of our projects this year is building a new tool shed, and we needed a new power supply as every power source we have is maxed out.  So first step was clearing a path for the new line, (more logging!) then having PUD come out and put in a new pole.  

So nice to have a son who can do anything! He first set the meter for the new PUD service, then climbed the VERY SCARY pole to route wire up a conduit to where the PUD can connect and bring it live.

Ron is getting very good with the new hoe, as he levels the site for the new building.

Since the garden water line is close to where we put in power and leveled for the building, I witched the line to be sure we didn't destroy it by accidentally digging it up.

Once the deck was done, we spent the next two days painting the whole guest house. Here's Ron finishing the last side. Big job as everything around here is on a hill of some sort.

Now we're ready to start the new building project. I still have a beautiful sunny day today to finish moving my table garden to the greenhouse. But we're kind of looking forward to a weather change later this week where we can rest up before starting, but April looks to be busy too!

 

Well, SNOW (the worst curse word I can think of!) Here we are on the last day of February once again looking out at snow. At least this time the ice on the lake isn't advancing, and the ground under the new snow is wet. It can't last long - at least that's what we keep telling ourselves.

We spent most of February working on our latest project. We took out about 60' of OLD grape vines that were totally entangled in the hog wire, electric, and chicken wire fence that bordered the driveway. Our plan is to relocate the fence on more of a diagonal to the driveway, and build a small tool shed to house the tractor and golf cart with a picnic pavilion on the lake side. 

When we have gatherings here, we always need more space, so a covered area with picnic tables, surrounded by flowers and fruit trees is the current plan. Of course, to do this properly, we need power, so we've had more logging, more cleanup, more work to prepare a pathway for the PUD to bring power to the site. I've always wanted to have power at the greenhouse, so that should help there also.

Meanwhile, I have multiple plants growing on my kitchen table, just waiting for a better environment to grow properly.

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).

New Year Project

 

When we put in this fence line last year, it was intended to give the deer a sense of boundary. To make life easier for both the deer and me, I planted raspberry starts all along the fence line. This attempt to bribe the deer to eat from "their" raspberries and leave mine alone didn't work at all.  Since this line got overrun with weeds, they preferred the nicely trimmed main raspberry patch, and I ended up picking the berries buried in the weeds.  So, this is what it looked like after a year of neglect. Opportunistic weeds like grass, Alder trees, comfrey, foxglove, creeping buttercup, and many more had developed a very hard sod/weed base all along the fence.  The only wire I had put on the fence was a single line of wire to kind of trellis the raspberries.  I really can't stand weeds, so I began clearing the weeds off this fence line and creating a new area adjacent to the main garden for another Hugelkultur mound. We are going to put a more serious fence outside the mound. This side of the garden is the main entry point for deer, raccoons, rabbits, etc. and I'm hoping a better fence will solve some of the problems of critters in the garden.

I began working on clearing the weeds about a month ago. Weather only allowed me to work on it periodically. I realized quickly that I would need a lot more mulch to complete the project, so I ordered another 15 yards of mulch.

I should finish the fence line weeding today, and then I can start on the fun project of installing the actual fence line on the other side of the new garden area.  I'm trying to transition the garden into more of a raspberry thing - I know raspberries do well no matter the weather so why fight to grow more exotic plants that may only do well in a "tomato" year? I may have to open a U-Pick for raspberries. 

I'm also trying to transition to more of a mulch covered food forest and less of a row crop tilled garden.

Oh, December - 2022

 

Well, this isn't a black and white photo!

The ice is advancing, and the days are short and dark - not my favorite time of year. But as the saying goes, "If you don't find joy in the snow, you will have less joy, but the same amount of snow."

The lake is full of water fowl this year.  Two more swans joined the five that have been on the lake for several weeks now.  All the geese and swans have been feeding on the water weeds, and we have hopes they can seriously make a dent in the weeds. We're also hoping they can still find open water as the bitter cold continues for a couple of more days.  By Christmas, we should be back to 50 degrees, but it was 12 degrees this morning. (December 22)

Thanks to our big logging project last month, we have plenty of wood and we are staying warm and cozy.  I've been baking and we've both been reading a lot.  I signed us back up for Netflix, and we binge watched Ozark.  It's definitely our down time!