Big snow. Big melt. Big mess.

We got our first significant snow last night, just in time for me to drive home over the Malahat from an afternoon concert in Victoria. Dark, fog, blizzard, winding mountain highway, very slippery roads. I thought it was just the Malahat, which has its own personal weather microclimate, but the heavy snow continued right into Duncan. But I had good company to keep me calm, and good tires on the car, and I made it home safely. Then I counted my blessings.

This being Lotus Land, the day after a Big Snow means a Big Melt. And a Big Clean Up. We had some tree and shrub casualties because of the weight of the wet snow. One pretty-small tree came down entirely, considerately falling right across the road instead of on an outbuilding. The largest rhododendron lost two large branches, and one big euonymous split right down the middle and will have to come down.



If you have been reading this blog for a while you may remember I have a love/hate relationship with our many euonymous shrubs. First came the hate part: they look like insects. Then came the love part: they are glorious in the fall and have pretty berries. Today we're back to the hate part: every time I shook a weighed-down branch to clear it of snow it would snap back and hit me in the face with its many twiggy frozen bits. First I tried standing in a better position and I still got whacked. Then I stood really far back and used a good kick to clear the snow and I still got whacked. Its going to take some mighty pretty berries to coax me back to loving...

With the sun out the snow is melting like crazy, falling in drops and wet clumps from all the branches overhead. Which can make for an unpleasant surprise if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time. It's quite meditative, watching it fall in the pond - the pond almost seems animated, or stocked with really adventurous fish.

The chickens were understandably hesitant to venture out into the world this morning. The old girls because they know better, and the youngsters because they've never seen snow before. Every few minutes one would wander over to the door, peer down at the white stuff, look to the left to see if there was snow in that direction, look to the right in case it was different weather over there, and then wander back into the warmth and safety of the coop

Kim stood outside the chicken door trying to coax them out with a "Where are my brave little chickie-chickies?" and finally she just shouted at them "What are ya, chicken?"

Winter garden

My commitment to growing vegetables through the winter has been a little lukewarm. Our first winter here I tried to make use of a cold frame that had been left behind by the previous owners, dragging it into the vegetable garden and using it to cover one of the raised beds where I had planted some hardy greens. There were two problems with it. First, it didn't actually fit the bed, so there was lots of overhang around the bottom edge where cold air could get in, which made the whole undertaking a bit futile. And second, it weighed a frigging ton, which made it difficult to water, weed or harvest.

Our second winter I focused on root crops, like rutabagas, carrots and beets. I learned an important lesson that year: vegetables don't actually grow once the cold weather and short days hit, they just keep. So it's important to get the seeds into the ground way earlier than you think is necessary - in my case in late June or early July) so that the roots are big enough to harvest come October or so. At that point they get mulched to protect them from a hard frost and then the ground acts like a big refrigerator: when you want a carrot you just go out and get one. I didn't really clue into all that, that year, so all I ended up with were roots so small they were barely worth peeling. Except for the rutabagas, which don't get seeded until mid July anyway. They were great, that year.

Our third winter I didn't do much at all. No explanation, I just didn't. But it meant that this year I was more determined to get things right, or at least righter. I got the carrots and beets into the ground on time, and lots of them. The hard frosts we have had, plus the visiting nibbling rabbits, have done a number on the greens...

...but underneath the mulch the roots are big and tasty. A little hairy, and with a bit more bug damage, but really good for soups and stews.

The rutabagas, on the other hand, have been a bust. They developed nice big, healthy tops (at least until a band of marauding chickens got into the garden one day and demolished them) but the roots didn't bulb the way they should have. I'm guessing it was a soil deficiency of some kind, which I'll have to sort out for next year.

Cabbage is an interesting vegetable to grow. As far as I can tell there are cabbages you plant early in the spring for eating in the summer, others that you plant later in the spring for eating in the fall, others that are hardy enough to stay in the garden and harvest through the winter, and others that stay in the garden through the winter in order to have a head start in the spring. 

This year I tried planting a crop of red cabbage to harvest through the winter but my timing was entirely wrong, and they didn't grow big enough before the cold weather hit. They probably won't be in good enough shape to make spring eating, but we'll see. 

I also planted some January King cabbages that should hold their own in the garden through the winter. They got started too late, too, but unlike any of my other winter vegetables these cabbages seem to be still growing, and are developing heads - and beautiful ones at that. (There is a lovely one at the photo at the top of the post.)

The undoubted star of this year's winter garden is the Swiss Chard. I am developing quite an affection for this plant: it's hardy, good for you and apparently indestructible. Plus it looks lovely in the sun.

I decided to give growing under cover another try this year. In August Kim and I constructed a simple hoop house with PVC pipe and zip ties...

...and then in late September when the nights started getting chilly we covered it with fabric fastened to the pipes with these clever U-clips. We never did get around to covering the whole shebang with plastic, but so far the plants underneath have forgiven us and thrived. 

I planted two kinds of kale, more chard, bok choy, spinach and our standby salad green, Bambi. I have already gone on and on about how much I love this gem lettuce, and now I have even more reason. It's December, we have had plenty of cold weather, and it still looks like this.

The bok choy doesn't look as great, thanks to the visiting bunnies. We really have to see to our perimeter defences before spring.

I could get all perfectionist about this, but I think I'll just be happy I'm at least I'm in the right ballpark. Or as my dad would say, on the right side of left, and the upside of down.

Assistant

Frankie loves Kim. She is his main mama, whereas I am clearly the okay-but-not-the-real-thing mama. He loves Kim and he loves being a chicken farmer's assistant.

Every morning when Kim wakes up she gets dressed and - even before coffee, which to me is inexplicable - she heads out to let the chickens out of the coops and see to their food and water for the day. This is the moment Frankie lives for. He waits for her whistle and her "Want to help me with the chickie-chickies?" and then he's off like a shot with her out the door.

He isn't usually allowed past The Great Divide - not because he's bad with the chickens, but because like most farm dogs he has a taste for poo. Yuck. So Kim makes him wait on the other side of the gate while she does her chicken duties.

He waits patiently for her to finish, then he escorts her back into the house where he gets to perform his second duty of the day: licking out the scrambled egg bowl.

It's a rough life, being a chicken farmer's assistant.

I can smell Part 2

I may now be officially the most annoying person on the planet, or at least in my neighbourhood, because ever since my sinus surgery all I do is go around sniffing things and saying "Wow, did you smell this?" or "Wow, that smells good!" of "Wow, that stinks!" Fortunately the people around me are happy enough for me they're cutting me some slack and haven't told me to put a clothes pin on my nose. Yet.

Here are today's favourite smells, in no particular order:

• hot chocolate
• a wet forest in the rain
• thyme plants being crushed underfoot
• rosemary leaves just stripped from the stem
• chocolate cookies baking in the oven (which goes really well with the first item on the list)
• the smoke from a fire in the wood stove, especially outside, and especially when it mingles with the second item on the list
• Frankie's fur when he comes in from outside smelling of wood smoke and wet forests
• the fennel seeds I saved this year
• the dill seeds I saved this year
• a mandarin orange, just peeled
• clean laundry
• freshly steeped green tea, the kind that has the little popped kernels of corn in it

I could go on, believe me. Is this annoying yet?

Here's a picture of Frankie having his own sniff of the seeds I dried. (My apologies for the fact the edge of the tray doesn't quite line up with the edges of the tile. How annoying...)

The song of the eggshells

One of the things a chicken farmer hates to see is a broken and eaten egg in the coop, because once a chicken develops a taste for raw egg it can be a hard habit to break.

For that reason, we don't put raw eggshells into the compost, because the chickens are our compost turners. Instead, we save up the shells until we have a big bowlful, then we bake them in the oven for 30 minutes, and finally crush them into bits and either then put them into the compost or feed them back to the chickens. (This may sound a little cannibalistic to those of you new to chickens, but it's a good way to keep calcium in the chickens' diet.)

Yesterday was eggshell baking day. And here is the song of the eggshells, right from the oven.

Popcorn

You might remember that way back last winter, as I was poring through seed catalogues in search of inspiration for my 2012 garden, I struck on pink popcorn as a way to inject a little whimsy into what was starting to feel like a ho-hum routine of planning my plantings for the year.

I didn't devote much space to my first ever corn plants, just a sunny, hot and protected spot where they would have the best possible chance at accumulating the heat units they would need to produce ears. I think I had about two dozen plants in all, most of which produced at least one ear. But the thing with popcorn is that it needs to dry on the plant, which poses a challenge on the West Coast where "fall" means "rain". Some of those ears began to grow mold before they had a chance to properly dry, which meant I ended up with about a dozen adorable little pink ears of popcorn.

I must have been waiting for the stars and moon to align in a certain way, because I didn't get around to trying it until tonight. After Googling instructions for popping corn still on the cob, I put the entire cob (minus its leaves) in a paper bag in the microwave.

Which just goes to show you shouldn't believe everything you read on the internet, because this is what happened.

Smoke was pouring out of the bag like nobody's business, but fortunately I got the whole mess out onto the verandah before the smoke detectors went off. The popcorn was so smoky it was inedible. At least there were no flames...

For my second attempt I decided to go with my head rather than Google, and I stripped the kernels off the cob first. The cobs are small, so I ended up with only a couple of tablespoons of kernels, but didn't they pop up beautifully! Startlingly white, fluffy and - miracles - actually tasting of corn.

As a food-growing experiment I judge it a success. Not a practical one - each corn plant took up a fair bit of space, and to end up with a (very) small bowl of popcorn for every two plants isn't a good yield. But it was a fun project, it kept me interested in my garden through my bout of fourth-year-blues, and it has inspired me to try growing some regular corn next year. That's good enough for me.

Berries

It's pouring today.

What else is new?

But I have found a bit of brightness and beauty: berries!

Snow berries and holly berries.

The berry-like non-berries that are really crocosmia seed pods.

The berries from the mystery shrub (could it be a kind of dogwood?) that looked like this just a short while ago...

...and after two nights of hard frost now look like this.

When I think of "berries" and "Mucky Boots" simultaneously what comes to mind are all the edible berries we grow: strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, gooseberries, red currants, blackberries, huckleberries, Saskatoon berries. They're lovely, but they're long gone, and their memory (and even their jam) isn't enough to brighten a day like today. So it's nice to know their non-edible cousins have got this late season covered.

Smell-O-Rama

I haven't wanted to write much about this because I don't imagine the world is very interested in the state of my sinuses, but I had surgery on my shnozz a couple of weeks ago. No reconstruction - just a good scraping out of my sinus cavities. And now, after about a dozen years of chronic sinus congestion, I am happy to tell you I can smell!

This is taking some getting used to.

Some things stink. It turns out Frankie has really smelly farts. (At least Kim tells me it's Frankie.) And I had forgotten the distinctive smell of an orange growing green fur in the fruit drawer.

Some things smell marvellous, like Petunia's fur when she comes in smelling of wood smoke. A t-shirt fresh from a cedar-lined drawer. Hot water hitting coffee grounds first thing in the morning. I knew this intellectually, but there's a huge difference between knowing it, and remembering it, and actually smelling it.

If it wasn't late fall, and consequently cold and miserable outside, I would be spending the day taking my nose from plant to plant, sniffing up all the smells I haven't smelled for years. But it is late fall, and the nice smelling plants are asleep for the winter, so instead I have celebrated with a Smell-O-Rama Festival in the kitchen.

French onion soup, loaded with home grown onions and garlic.



Chicken pot pie, with my first attempt at gluten-free pastry.

Roast vegetables - an entire pan full, most grown right here at Mucky Boots. Amazing - the taste, as well as the smell. Did you know that sweet potatoes, squash, beets, carrots and rutabagas all actually taste different?



Apple crumble - apples, cinnamon, butter and brown sugar baking in the oven and filling the house with their aroma.

My heart is happy, but my poor nose is feeling just a little overwhelmed. I think I overdosed on lavender yesterday when I was making sachets, and even stepping into the room where I am storing all my (naturally scented) Christmas soaps makes my head hurt. It feels like there is a direct electrical connection between my nose and my brain and I keep getting zapped. But I keep sniffing and smelling, restocking my mental catalogue of smells.

I can't wait to smell the lilacs in the spring.

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.

Old dog, first snow

Frankie may be a little too stiff to go bounding through the first snow of the year the way he used to, and the flakes may blend a little more into his ears-turned-grey. But this morning's brief snowfall was still reason for our aging guard dog to assume his favourite position on the verandah steps to keep watch over the weather.

Our sweet boy is now on anti-inflammatories, which are helping what was troubling him in his lower back, but he is showing his age in other ways: he is quite deaf now, and sleeps much of the day. The time has come when I need to be sure I'm not letting worry over what lies ahead for him interfere with the joy that is still to be had every day.

Our dude. Our handsome boy.

Little

Big eggs are awe-inspiring. Big eggs make you feel the pain of the chicken who laid them.

Big eggs make you feel like a farmer.

And then there are little eggs. Especially the little eggs produced by a pullet just beginning the laying stage of her life. Little eggs make you want to go "oooh" and "aaaah". Little eggs make you want to snuggle up the pullet who laid them. 

Little eggs make you feel like a mother.

That's why they call it a big leaf maple

Big leaf: check. Maple: check. They got this one right.

Big leaf maples are generally considered to be junk trees, at least around here. Not good for much, with a talent for volunteering themselves to grow wherever the heck they want (which is usually where you would prefer they didn't).

But there are a few folks in our neighbourhood who tap their big leaf maples like our eastern cousins do sugar maples. The resulting syrup isn't the same - my one taste of it made me think of molasses, rather than maple syrup - but still, how cool is that? It might be a good project for the winter months when not much else is happening on the home front.

The fine art of Hosta Clean Up

We have an awful lot of hostas here at Mucky Boots. Many different shades of green, several different colours of flower, in every size from small to huge. They like the damp spring and fall, they tolerate the dry heat of the summer, and they're forgiving of wildly fluctuating light levels as the sun and shade-giving trees go through their seasonal patterns.

They're a workhorse of the perennial garden - they don't require fussing or attention, and once they're established they do a pretty good job of keeping my arch-nemesis the creeping bellflower in check. They really only require input from me twice a year: in the spring, when they get divided, and in the late fall, when they get cleaned up.

And since we have so many hostas, and since I have now cleaned them all up five falls in a row, I have learned an important fact about Hosta Clean Up: timing is everything.

If you attempt Clean Up too soon, you have to work your clippers through dense stands of stems. Especially if my arthritis is acting up, it doesn't take long before my hands start to cramp. On the other hand, if you wait too long, the foliage will have disintegrated into a mass of slime that makes Clean Up a wet mess.

But if you time it just right, it's a breeze. If your timing is perfect, all you will need to do is run your hand through the limp, floppy dead leaves...



...and they will pull away from the roots with virtually no effort on your part...



 leaving only the spent flower stems to cut down.



The only potential downside is that the dry flower stems are very tough and stick-like, and if you're not paying attention you could poke yourself in the eye bending down to get the last few bits. (Does it sound like I am speaking from experience?)

There. That's my little contribution to making the world of hostas a better place.

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.