Someone's having fun with the clean up

Welcome spring

Today the CBC was telling us that Canadians all across the country would be greeting the arrival of spring with rotten weather. According to a climatologist with Environment Canada, "If we sent out search parties for spring, we would not find hide nor hair of it. Everyone is in misery, and everyone has a cross to bear." The article went on to say that "every region would be either windy, rainy, wet, snowy, drifty, blowy or there will be a big snow dump to clean up."

Well hello to you, too, Spring.

We got the windy part. Yesterday was wet, with a drenching steady downpour, but the sun came out this morning and then this afternoon it started to blow. Man, did it blow. We don't often get enough wind in our little protected river valley to move the trees, but they were dancing today. At one point I looked out the window to see a shower of twigs and branches blowing down from the sky - a shower that went on, and on, and on.

When it was over our property was covered with tree debris. Little branches...



...big branches...



...and lots and lots o' branches.

It will be a lovely afternoon's work raking all that crap up. But it beats shovelling snow.

Sunshine

Not only has it forgotten to rain for days and days, the sun has been shining. 

Is there anyone else in my neighbourhood who is as gobsmacked as me? Winters here are usually wet, wet, wet and gloomy, gloomy, gloomy. If that weren't bad enough, apparently our December tied for the fewest hours of sunshine on record for our area.

Mother Nature seems to be working overtime to make up for it, because it has been sunny and clear day after day. Crispy cold, with the temperature dipping below freezing every night and staying within a couple of degrees of that during the day. But with the sun shining, who cares? It makes me want to move to Alberta, the land of big skies and winter sunshine.

Everyone and everything is enjoying the sun, from the chickens to the vegetables to the bulbs starting to think about sprouting.

 The freezing temperatures every night have been hard on the greens still hanging on in the garden, but man, are those greens tough. This chard had no protection from the snow we had through December, but just look at it basking in the sunshine, gearing up for its spring resurrection.

The big surprise, though, has been the Bambi lettuce. I know I've gone on and on about how much I like this gem lettuce, and I've also written about how well it survived the first of the cold weather. But even after two weeks of freezing night time temperatures, with only a flimsy row cover for protection, look how well it's doing. Remember, this is lettuce we're talking about!

Most of the rest of the garden isn't looking so hot. I was a bit lackadaisical about my fall clean-up this year so there is a lot of work waiting for me once everything unfreezes. 

But as long as the sun keeps shining, who cares?

Drought and small pleasures

Drought? On Vancouver Island in January? Believe it or not, we haven't had any rain (or snow, for that matter) in eight days. Impossible.

That's Item Number One on today's list of fascinating news from Mucky Boots. Here's Item Number Two.

Yes, chocolate pudding. Newsworthy chocolate pudding. Newsworthy because I am back on my anti-arthritis can't eat anything fun diet: no gluten, no dairy, no eggs, no caffeine, as little of any kind of sugar as I can manage. Which means small pleasures seem hard to come by. Until this, that is.

Quinoa Revolution is the second cookbook produced by the sister team of Patricia Green and Carolyn Hemming. Their first book, Quinoa 365, has been a favourite of mine, so it was an easy decision to add the second book to my cookbook collection. 

To celebrate my new purchase I decided to make Cafe Mocha Pudding. I don't want to violate any copyright laws, but since I'm giving them a free plug maybe the authors won't mind, so here's the gist of the recipe.

Cook 1/2 cup quinoa in three times as much coffee (decaf, if you prefer). Since this is more liquid than is normally used, the result is very soft, almost mushy quinoa. Put it in a blender with 1/2 cup milk (I used almond milk), 1/3 cup cocoa, 1/2 tsp vanilla and as much of any kind of sweetener as you would like (they suggest 1/3 cup sugar, but I used a small glug of maple syrup instead). Then blitz the heck out of it for 2-3 minutes, until it is very smooth.

The authors then suggest refrigerating it for an hour or two before eating, but I found the looser texture right out of the blender a bit more pleasant than after it had set up, at which point it was pretty stiff. Either way, it was delicious, legal, and definitely a pleasure. As you can tell from this photo.

Just think of the flavour variations that are possible with this technique: I could cook the quinoa in chai tea instead of coffee. Or green tea. Or any flavour of tea. Or lemon-spiked water. Or orange juice. Or berry juice. Or almond milk with a vanilla pod.

Yum. That's all I can say, just yum.

Miniature garden

It rains a lot here on Vancouver Island. Less than it does on the lower mainland (Vancouver, in other words), but during the late fall and winter a day with some sunshine is something to be celebrated.

Needless to say this can get a little depressing, but every once in a while I am reminded of the gifts a climate like ours can bring. Like this miniature moss garden, on the wooden disk at the top of a set of wind chimes. (Click on the photo to get a closer look.) Beautiful and perfect and miniature. Worth a little rain.

More snow

Oh, man...more snow.

When I got up I had no idea it was snowing because it was still dark outside. Until Frankie came in from his 90 second trip to pee and he looked like this.

Can I tell you how frustrated I am with our local weather reporting? You know, the same reporting that didn't predict the blizzard I was caught in on Sunday night. I have been trying for days to find out what the weather today is going to be like. We're planning a trip into Victoria to have dinner with friends, and I don't want a repeat of Sunday's adventure. Well, on Sunday the forecast for today was rain. On Monday it said we would have snow today. Yesterday it said we would have no precipitation today. Now it says it's raining - at this very minute it's raining. You know what? It's not raining!

I think I have an attitude problem...

Reading in the dark

We had our first power outage of the winter season last night. It didn't last long - only about an hour - but it was a good reminder that we need to be stocking up on batteries and candles, not to mention making sure we know where the matches are.

The biggest inconvenience was our CO2 detector, which started chirping at about 100 decibels as soon as the power went  - and we could not figure out how to shut it up. We read the instructions and followed them carefully, to no avail. Of course we thought about simply removing the batteries, but that required a screwdriver we were too lazy to go out to the workshop in the pouring rain and dark to get. So we buried the thing beneath a stack of towels in the laundry room, shut the door, and let it chirp.

I wasn't worried about water - we still have some stocked from our water adventures a few weeks ago. And a fire had been burning all day in the wood stove, thanks to Kim the Lumberjack, so we had plenty of warmth. There would be time to sort things out in the morning, in the light, if it came to that. My laissez-faire attitude was probably influenced by the fact that I'm just back from sinus surgery in Vancouver (not entirely pleasant, but enough about that) and wasn't feeling very ambitious about power outage problem solving. But the one thing that absolutely had to get sorted out was how to keep reading, in spite of the dark.

We don't have any oil lamps - I don't have any experience with them, and I confess they make me a little nervous, especially with animals in the house. So our first anti-dark measure was to light candles. Fortunately our friend Linda loves candles, and loves gifting her friends with them, so we had more than enough to give us light to see by. But not to read by, unless we were willing to hunker down over the flames.

So we gathered up all the assorted battery-powered lighting devices we have accumulated since we've been here and power outages have become a more regular fact of life.

My preference has always been the headlight on a stretchy band, even though Kim laughs at me every time I put it on. It's perfect when I need to be moving around doing things, but it's not at the best downward angle for reading. And need I say it's not the most comfortable thing for someone with a sinus headache?



Kim's first choice was the light she uses on her music stand, and I have to agree it's pretty much perfect. The gooseneck allows it to be angled just so, and the light is really bright. The only disadvantage is that the clip is quite heavy, and it can be tiring to keep your book upright.

We also have a hook-over-your ear reading light, but its batteries were dead. Finally I scrounged through both bedside table drawers and found the nifty little lights we picked up at Home Depot, of all places. They are small and very light, and clip onto the arms of your eyeglasses. Plus, they swivel so you can choose the perfect angle for reading.

By the time we had that all sorted out we got about ten minutes of reading in before the lights came back on again. So we kept them off for a while, just for the pleasure of reading in the dark.

Water, inside and out

It seems like only yesterday I was complaining about how dry the garden was, and already we're getting tired of the rain. Drizzles, deluges, steady soaking downpours. But compared with everyone in Sandy's path it's nothing, so maybe I will merely say it has been raining every day. We're a little soggy, the chickens are a little muddy, but the garden is happy. That's the outside part of this post.



Which leaves the inside part. That story began on Tuesday evening when I came home and realized there was water dripping from a light fixture in the family room. Within minutes a long line of damp began to materialize along a seam in the drywall ceiling.

We turned off the water to the house, turned off the power to the family room, moved anything in danger of being dripped on to safer locations, and then began to search for the cause of the leak. Three days later, we still have no idea.

The insurance adjuster has come, the restoration company appraiser has come, the ceiling has been opened, water has been run and pipes inspected, and we are still clueless. So we're going to live with holes in the ceiling over the weekend, using water in the house as we normally would, and (strangely) hope for another leak to tell us what the problem is.



In other words, first there was water, then too much water, then no water, then water, and now we're hoping for too much water again.

It was interesting living without water for a couple of days. That's overstating it, because we could still get water from a tap at the pump house. We used our big emergency water supply jugs and a wheelbarrow to schlep enough water into the house to let us flush an occasional toilet, wash our hands and faces, and perform basic cooking in the kitchen. So it was an emergency preparedness test-run-with-training-wheels kind of experience, but even so, it was enough to convince me that we need to increase the volume we put aside for real emergencies.

It's also interesting living in a construction zone again. It made me think of my wise friend Jean, who, when I was crowing about painting The Last Wall, commented "The thing about painting is that you aren't EVER finished!

Oh, Jean, I wish I had paid more attention.

Dry

We haven't had any significant rain for months. People think of southern Vancouver Island as being wet, wet, wet, and it is (usually) through the winter. But our summers are traditionally hot and dry, and this particular summer doesn't seem to be ending when it comes to the "dry" part.

It has been so dry people are worrying about the state of their wells and aquifers, and some communities that haven't ever been to Stage 3 water restrictions are now on Stage 4, which means no outdoor watering of any kind for any reason. It has been so dry there are concerns that our local river, the Cowichan River, doesn't have enough water for the returning salmon to make it upstream for spawning, so volunteers are hand-carrying salmon in crates up the river.

But now - now there is this.

(Thanks, www.weathernetwork.com.)

If you can't quite read it, don't worry, The important part is the row of weather symbols along the top. Can you see it? Rain! Three days of rain, beginning on Friday.

Of course forecasts and reality are sometimes different things, but the regular appearance of the rain icon over the next fourteen days is giving me hope. I'll let you know what happens.

Now I just have to find my umbrella.

That's why they call 'em snowdrops

Monday, 6:00 p.m. Kim comes in from putting the chickens to bed after a beautiful sunny day that saw us working outside in our shirtsleeves.

Monday, 6:30 p.m. We leave the house for our choir/orchestra rehearsal only to find an inch of wet snow on the ground and more falling so thickly we have trouble seeing the road as we drive.

I think it was those fleeting thoughts I had as I edged the raspberry beds that afternoon, that maybe, just maybe, spring had finally arrived. I should know better than to tempt the Weather Goddess that way.

This morning the sun is shining again and the snow is melting as fast as it came. That's spring in the Cowichan Valley for you.

Looking on the bright side

Dark Side:

• Kim and I are sick. Cough, cough.
• It's raining. No, it's pouring.

Bright Side:

• It's not snowing.

The rain overnight and through the morning has left the path by the pond flooded, and the chickens are wet and miserable, huddling in the coop or underneath the overhang, trying to keep dry.

But in the greenhouse my little seedlings are warm and dry, thanks to my trusty heat mats, and now they're well lit, too, thanks to my new acquisition: a grow light!

Grow lights are pretty expensive to buy, so I've resisted the temptation until now. February is the month for starting onion seedlings in these parts, but the sun isn't getting high enough in the sky yet to adequately light the greenhouse for the minimum six hours per day. So I decided to bite the bullet, and bought one light to see if it would make a difference.

Kim mounted it to scrap piece of cedar and then hung it on chains so I can adjust the height as the seedlings grow. And that's exactly what they're doing - my leek, shallot, and red, yellow and green onion seedlings are noticeably happier, and the hardy greens I seeded this week (mizuna and pac choi) came up in two days. And I'm happier, too: this grow light, pricey though it was, has made me feel like a grown-up gardener.

In contrast, the other thing that is making me smile in the greenhouse today cost all of $1.95. It's a cap that turns a soda bottle (or in our case, a spring water bottle) into a watering can, gentle enough for the most fragile of plants.

Seedlings need to stay moist, which means daily watering when they're on heat mats. Most gardening manuals suggest misting them, because anything much more forceful than that can break or dislodge a tender new shoot. But have you ever tried misting 8 or 10 trays of pots and soil blocks? It's a good way to invoke carpal tunnel syndrome. So the last time I was in the garden supply store I looked at fancy watering cans with special heads designed to shower tender plants like the most gentle of rain showers. The problem? The price tag: over $40. So I gave up that idea, went to the checkout to pay for the package of cream-coloured nasturtium seeds I hadn't been able to resist, and there in a bucket by the cash register were these caps. I bought two.

They work like a charm. If you just hold the bottle upside down the shower of water is so soft you can hardly feel it, and if you need a more substantial stream all you need to do is squeeze the bottle a little.

A product that works better and costs less. Definitely something for the bright side.

Winter

We have been having a strange winter (although I hesitate to use that word since none of the winters we have had here at Mucky Boots have fit the usual pattern): more sun than usual, and colder than usual. And almost no snow, which I attributed to the fact Kim and I finally got snow tires for our car.

And then, this week - snow!

It came in a few acts: four inches of soft, beautiful powder one day (unlike our usual sodden, heavy, wet snow) another eight or so two days later, then a brief flirtation with freezing rain that laid down a slick coating on top of it all. And now it's dissolving in a steady rain that is making a muddy, sloppy mess out of everything.

The best part of the week was the lifting from my shoulders of the huge weight of worry (and before you worry, please remember that worrying about anything and everything is a specialty of mine) when I realized what an enormous difference our new snow tires make. That horrible hill we need to drive up in order to get to the main road that has been the scene of more than one slow-motion icy ballet as we struggled up only to slide back down again? Hah! No problem: I drove straight up easy as pie. The drifts in the driveway that would have had us digging and pushing and swearing and pushing again? No problem: I just drove right through them.

And then there was the joy of watching Frankie in the snow. This may be his twelfth winter, but any sign of senior doggy dignity gets lost the instant his paws touch snow. It almost makes me wish for more snow.

Almost.

Hello snow

Yes, the snow that last week was forecast to arrive tomorrow, then this week was forecast not to come at all, has arrived today. So much for forecasts. In fact, according to the weather network, right now it is 8 degrees and raining outside. Our thermometer is reading 0 degrees and I'm pretty sure that white stuff falling from the sky is not rain. That's a micro climate for you.

And if I'm not happy about this, the chickens seem entertained. Most of our flock have never seen snow before, and they're not sure what to make of it. Some, like the pullet in the photo above, are happy to explore . . .

. . . while others seem just as happy to watch it all from their dry spot under the verandah.

Goodbye sun

Usually we're knee-deep in puddles and mud by this time of year, but for some reason the weather has been really lovely: lots of bright sunshine which has more than made up for the colder than normal temperatures.

But today I looked at the weather forecast online and this is what I saw.

Saturday: rain.

Sunday: rain.

Tuesday: rain.

Wednesday: rain.

Thursday . . . Thursday . . .

I can't even bear to write it.

Snow.

Can you hear me shrieking from where you are?

Rain and sorrow

According to our local weather station, the last time we had any appreciable rain was June 2, when 6.3 mm fell from the sky. That's about a quarter of an inch for those of you who still think that way. Bottom line: it has been dry, dry, dry. That sums up Southern Vancouver Island weather right there: first it is wet, wet, wet and then it is dry, dry, dry.

Finally, today it is raining. The forecast has been predicting it for a few days - at first it said rain Monday and Tuesday but now it's saying rain today only. Even a little is a welcome relief. When I was at the grocery store yesterday the chatter in the line-up was about the impending precipitation, spoken in a way that reminded me of children on Christmas Eve - all happy anticipation. I don't think anyone will be feeling that way come November when we're back to the wet, wet, wet, but for now a lot of people in my neighbourhood are looking happily out their rain-streaked windows.

On a completely different and uncharacteristically political note, we are so sad to hear that Jack Layton died today. For those of you reading from other parts of the world, he was the leader of the federal New Democratic Party who led his party to their best showing ever in the election in the spring, forming the official opposition for the first time. In the best tradition of the New Democrats, he was a person of integrity, honour, vision and action, with deeply held views on social justice. I remember him from my days living in Toronto, when he was the city councillor who came out to Gay Pride Marches in the days before they became a tourist attraction, when such an appearance usually meant political suicide. He wasn't gay himself - he was just deeply, deeply committed to creating a fairer and more just world. I am sad for his family and for the loss of the difference he would have continued to make to our country.

Hanging out

I haven't been talking very much about my vegetable garden (at least I don't think I have - have I?) but it has been poking along. Not in the actual garden. Oh, no - we have to stop having spontaneous hail storms and snow flurries (yes, there was one of those the other day) and the temperature needs to be a bit more consistent before I'll trust my precious seedlings to the ground.

But inside the cozy plastic protection of the greenhouse, warmed by more heat mats than I care to admit, spring is skipping along blithely. The tomato seedlings are too tall for the tray's dome covers, so I have had to rig up an indoor poly tunnel to cover them at night, when the temperature still approaches freezing.

The hardy greens - the chard, arugula, mizuna, spinach and bok choy - have been weaned off the heat mats and the covers at night, and are waiting patiently for me to resolve my trust issues with Mother Nature so they can finally go outside to live out their veggie destiny.

The cabbages will join them - my lovely cabbages. I grew them for the first time last year, and fell in love with the young plants. They look so fresh, so sprightly, so edible.

They're all just hanging out. Waiting.

I hate snow

Warning: this post is one long, annoying, self-pitying rant.

To begin with, I need to establish my snow credibility. I grew up on the prairies. I began driving in Calgary, and learned so well how to pump the brakes on ice that I have had to avoid cars with ABS ever since. I spent more years driving in Ontario, in more blizzards, and on more ice.

But here's the thing. Ten years ago I moved to southern Vancouver Island. And now - now, I hate the snow. I really, really hate the snow.

I should be more specific. If I didn't have to worry about going anywhere, I would be fine with the snow. It's pretty. It makes everything so much brighter than our usual winter-cloudy-grey. Frankie likes to play in it. It can be an adventure.

But there are three things that make driving in that lovely snow a huge pain:

(1) Our snow really is different than the prairie snow I grew up with. Really. It's very wet, and the temperature is always around freezing, so the weight of a car turns it instantly to ice. I learned that the hard way my first snow storm here - same car, same tires and same driver as had just gone through an Ontario winter, but there I was, sliding and turning down a hill in a slow motion auto ballet.

(2) We live in the country and don't have a 4-wheel drive. Country roads aren't plowed as often and don't get as much traffic, so they're usually in a lot worse shape than city roads. And we don't have a 4-wheel drive. I'm starting to think a 4-wheel drive should come with every rural property. After the big snows we had in January we borrowed my dad's 4-wheel drive, and it didn't snow again. Until we returned it a week ago. It has snowed almost every day since.

(3) We live at the bottom of a big hill. Lovely for coming down, but impossible to get up until it has been plowed or the snow melts. It's actually worse than that: from the end of our driveway we have to go up a not-so-steep hill, then make a right-angled turn and go up a long, steep hill. There's no flat bit to get up enough momentum to make it to the top. The best we can do is open our gate, gun it down the driveway and up the first hill, carefully gauge how much to slow down for the corner (skidding out and oncoming traffic being the two chief dangers) without losing so much hard-won momentum that we don't make it to the top of the hill.

Have I mentioned that I hate snow?

For example, here was my day. We woke up to about 3 inches that had made no appearance in our local weather forecasts, so I didn't have a chance to prepare by parking the car at the top of the hill rather than the bottom. And sure enough I had an appointment I had to get out for. So I dragged Kim out of bed (it takes two to drive the car up the hill: one to drive and one to watch for oncoming traffic) and we tried, but couldn't get the car even halfway up the hill before it came to a halt and started sliding back down. But the sun was out, so two hours later I tried it again and made it. I thought that would be my snow experience for the day, but this afternoon during a tutoring session I looked out the window and saw nothing but a wall of blowing white. 5 minutes later it was clear. 20 minutes later I passed through another blizzard on the way to my next session. 20 minutes after that it was raining. By the time I left it was snowing again, but by the time I got back into town it was raining. Then snowing. Then the sky was clear. Then I drove to choir rehearsal and 7 minutes down the highway I was driving through a blizzard so dense I couldn't see the road, so I turned around and came back home. At home the sky was clear and I could see the stars.

I hate the snow.

I really, really need the spring.

Oh, brother

More snow.

This may not seem unusual to those of you in other parts of the world, because in most people's heads Canada = Snow, right? But we live on southern Vancouver Island, otherwise known as Lotus Land. We're supposed to be safe from the normal trials and tribulations of winter - yes, we get a fair amount of rain through the darker months, but that's not so bad.

When we first moved to Victoria from Toronto, it happened to snow in about November. Not much - a couple of inches. So we got out the snow shovel and tackled the long driveway, wondering why our neighbours weren't doing the same, but were looking at us with puzzled curiosity. About 6 hours later we found out why: the snow had all melted.

That has been our usual experience with snow here. We get a couple of snowfalls each winter, nothing to write home about by most people's standards, and it melts quick enough that the common approach to dealing with it is to sit by the fire with a cup of tea until it melts.

Well, someone changed the rules and forgot to tell us. Our first winter here at Mucky Boots saw record snowfalls - impressive amounts even by prairie standards. It was tough, because the guy installing our flooring kept getting stuck, and it made commuting a bit hairy. But we took some consolation in the fact that it was really, really unusual.

[The snow was this high that winter. We shovelled and shovelled and then we made friends with Bruce the Backhoe Guy.]

But here we are, two winters later, and we keep getting snow. Snow and more snow. It's not as bad as the first winter, because it warms up enough between dumps that it eventually melts and we get to start fresh with the next snowfall. But it's still a pain and I can't help feeling a little...cheated.

It snowed again last night, about 18 inches. Deep enough that this morning Frankie had to make bounding antelope leaps to get from Point A to Point B. Deep enough that it won't be melting anytime soon, so I spent a good long while trying to shovel out the driveway. Deep enough that I had to concede defeat and go inside to cancel all my tutoring sessions for the day. Deep enough Kim had to shovel out the normally protected chicken run just to get into the coop to take care of the chickies. Deep enough the chickies are sensibly opting for indoor recess today.

I have learned there is a snowfall hazard unique to living in the middle of a forest: the avalanches of snow that happen when a big tree sheds its snow load. I learned that lesson the hard way this morning. I'm still drying out.