The O-Zone

Mishkin has reached the old age of fifteen, which is getting up there. And he’s done it without learning a thing.

All the pepper seeds germinated except for one pot with purple jalapenos. I replanted the seeds for that yesterday. And now we wait some more.

Tomatoes, basil and cucumbers are all up and looking good for babies! The pepper seeds have yet to make an appearance. I need to stop giving them a hard time for being lazy. I’ve been told negativity will stunt their growth.

See? Lazy pepper seeds!! Lazy!!

This afternoon we’re going to plant peas, lettuce and swiss chard in the garden. Then we’ll wait until the end of April and plant the onions, and then we have to wait until the end of May to transplant our seedlings and plant the other things that need to wait for no danger of frost. It may still snow overnight here for another six weeks.

No hummingbirds yet. Tree Swallows are gathering nesting materials for the box on the garden fence. So far nobody is admiring the two nest boxes we relocated. We’ve been seeing Wild Turkeys in their silly season with the males all completely puffed up and trying to impress the ladies. And lots of deer in the yard, but no fawns yet. That’s another couple of months away before the fawns show up.

Saturday we went for a walk by the creek.

None of the deciduous trees or brush have leaves yet, and so the area under the heavy trees seems brighter than usual. And it was a little easier to walk around. We still need to do some trail clearing by the creek. Since there won’t be cattle running around making a mess, we’re going to be more inclined to do that sort of work by the creek this year.

Wouldn’t it be neat to build a little suspension bridge over the creek, between the large trees on either side?

It’s really wet on the left side of the picture. The ground was almost marshy. There are two seeps of water running down the hill, making it very wet and mushy. This was as far as we went down the creek, as a result. We’ll need to wait until the ground dries before we proceed further. We have another couple hundred yards of creek to explore on the new property.

It’s not enough flow to make it qualify as a spring. It’s just ground water from the melting snows and seasonal.

It was hard to move around in a few places. This was another really marshy bit from the seeps up the hill.

It’s so nice by the creek. The water is really loud at the moment without leaves to soften the sound. No birds singing yet. The Pacific Wrens aren’t back yet. Soon, though.

Our first seedlings for the year.

Today we’re going to plant our seed potatoes and relocate a couple of nest boxes for other future babies to utilize.

Have to love April 1st pranks. Mother Nature apparently adores them. We had to run some errands on Saturday so off to town we go.

Fortunately like most April 1st jokes this was short-lived and the snow and ice had mostly melted by the time we headed back home.

So we did our chores in town and drove out to Mud Lake to see what waterfowl spring migrants might be hanging around.

A pair of Canada Geese were sitting on the snow covered ice and we could imagine their conversation.

There were some Red-winged Blackbirds singing their lovely song, but otherwise there was nobody home and bird watching was not all that exciting. It looks like we need to wait at least another two weeks before we bother driving up here again.

The next day the weather was so much nicer. The clouds had gone away and the bright sunshine got all sorts of little birds excited around our house.

They were so chummy, cuddling up.

Both pairs did eventually fly away to go back to the Kettle River with their friends and relatives. Mountain Bluebirds were also around the yard, all swooping around and chattering about the price of real estate and wondering about mortgage rates, and neighborhood amenities. The swallows are back again today, hanging around the fence. So much fun watching them!

Next year we might even be able to pick a few stalks from this new plant. Yay!

The Josta Berry plants will get up a head of steam this year and we might even see a few berries. Most of the other fruit bushes are showing tiny leaf buds but no green. Soon, though, they will also all spring into action and transform the garden from mostly brown to lots of green.

Some of our herb plants are showing new leaves. When things warm up a bit more we’ll be able to remove the old dry stems and leaves and spruce things up in our two herb beds.

Our new potatoes should be arriving this week, as well as onion sets. And we can plant peas and lettuce at the same time. Gardening is going to get fun in the immediate future.

The first day of spring and we saw a Tree Swallow perching on our garden fence, a Violet Green Swallow buzzing around the yard, and a Say’s Phoebe as well. And since then nary a sign of any migrant bird species. That will be changing this next week most likely. We are about three weeks away from hummingbirds!!

So February went zipping past and most of March has followed. And what happened in the last eight weeks? Snow. Lots and lots of snow. Mostly I didn’t take pictures of it because what I really wanted to do is go wandering around on our new property. But all the snow was a hindrance to that activity.

We woke up to several inches of light fluffy snow covering trees and fences.

The bare ground which had been peeping out next to the house and under trees was back to being covered with whiteness. We had a few hours of semi-sunny skies and then it started up again.

So February was over and spring was beginning to seem possible. And it snowed again and again during March. More snow is predicted in this next week, but it won’t stick around because we’ve seen temperatures in the high 50’s this week. It feels amazing!

But in the meantime, more snow pictures to share.

The sun feels like it has so much more warmth and the ground is getting bare. Finally we were able to walk around on our new property, staying out of the snow drifts and avoiding puddles of ice cold water sitting on the frozen ground.

While we were walking around we saw signs of Elk, tracks included. That’s cool! I have a desire to plant some alfalfa all over the place to give deer and elk something yummy to eat. Maybe we’ll do that. We have lots of other things to plant first.

This is looking towards the creek from on top of the ridge above the hillside. There are some neat plants including some elderberry bushes, bitter cherries, Ponderosa pine trees, birch, and other deciduous bushes which we can’t identify yet because they have no leaves yet.

The snow on this side of the property is still pretty thick, and so frozen that walking around on top of it was quite feasible.

Since our first visit to our new acreage we’ve gone on a couple of other walks. Yesterday we walked down an easement ‘road’ which is nothing more than a tires track as far as we could before being stopped by snow. It’s about a half a mile round trip to that point. The track goes almost all the way to the creek where the community water well is situated. We don’t know where that is quite yet, but this will be a really neat long walk right out our front door and we will definitely have to remember to take our binocs with us for birdwatching. We saw an old nest from last year in the top of one of the bitter cherry trees. They are so pretty right now. The tips of the branches are a brilliant red color.

See the ground out the window? No snow!!!!

It made me laugh how much he was enjoying this sunshine on his head and fur.

We tried something new and scary this month. We trimmed Oro’s beak for the first time. It was a stressful experience for us, but not so much for the bird. He wasn’t scared. Pissed off, definitely, but not really upset once it was over. We have more work to do with his beak but it’s not as daunting as concept now as it was the first time.

More experimenting with our bread machine. We made a sourdough loaf. This is a white flour loaf. We’ll make a whole wheat loaf next, we think, going off on our own and seeing if we can create our own recipe.

Yesterday on our walk we saw the first Buttercups of the season. They are sparse at the moment but pretty soon they will be everywhere! A surer sign of spring than even returning migrant birdies. Yay!!

We planted a rhubarb plant and heard that our new batch of strawberry plants are being shipped this next week. I found our old planting spreadsheets from up White Mountain and now we have an idea when we can get away with planting peas and lettuce, and starting our pepper and tomato plants, and possibly some melons. We haven’t decided if we want to try melons again. We may need to put up some hoops covered with plastic to give them a better start and we don’t have the ingredients for doing that. Gardening is definitely in our immediate future.

This year is going to go by so very fast, I can already tell. I’m just hoping I didn’t miss an entire year!

We are thinking about gardening and looking at seed catalogs online. We’re going to limit the varieties of things to plant this year, and just plant things we tend to use the most. It’s a good theory anyway. We’ll get to start planting some things as soon as the snow is gone and the ground can be worked. And the hummingbirds will be back in around two and a half months from now. Wow! Hard to fathom when it’s all white outside with nary a flower to be seen.

It’s been pretty cold and snowy and foggy. Lots and lots of fog the past couple of weeks.

We had an unexpected visitor at the very end of December, a local public utilities employee stopped by to discuss power to the property to the east that we can see in the above picture. Seemed that the land was for sale and some people were interested in purchasing it and were doing some of their due diligence in finding out availability of power before opting to purchase the land.

So we purchased the property ourselves, instead, and we can keep our view to the edge of our world when it’s foggy, and beyond when it’s not.

Kind of exciting to think we have 14.4 acres to run around on now. We still have to wait until the snow is melted before we can go exploring.

Also we made a loaf of gluten free raisin and cinnamon bread. It was delicious and is almost gone. We will need to make another loaf of that soon, with more cinnamon in it this time.

The cake was good and is long gone. It was something I made near the end of December.

The pie won’t last long either. Gluten free pie crust is a pain but we finally found a good flour (GFJules) and a recipe that doesn’t result is too much cussing when I’m making it.

So, in short, nothing happened during the month of January. Most likely this trend will continue until the snow melts. I will go make some sweet rolls since the kitchen is clean again.

The last two months have gone by so fast, and not that much happened around here. I think it’s because winter showed up on November 4th and unlike other years when we got an early snowfall, this one didn’t melt yet.

Ok, so that’s not so bad. We can handle six inches of snow with our eyes closed. (Best way to watch weather you don’t want to see is with your eyes closed).

Then it snowed again, another six inches to go with the snowfall that hadn’t melted the previous few days. Hmmmm. The weather might be trying to tell us something.

On November 9th we had a good foot of snow on the ground. Since then we’ve had at least another twelve inches of snow, but not at once. So we’ve only had to have the driveway plowed twice so far this winter. Our Outback doesn’t mind a foot of snow but any more than that and some of their nanny devices start yelling at us, saying we’re going to hit something solid which in this case is only a bazillion snowflakes all piled up.

The doe has figured out that if she stands up really tall she can stick her nose into the feeder and scoop up the seeds with her tongue. Her baby watches very intently when she does this; she’s definitely teaching him bad tricks but he’s not tall enough yet. The doe with twins hasn’t figured out this trick yet. Yay!

So since we’re seeing so much snow and cold weather the past couple of months, mainly we’ve been entertaining ourselves inside the house. I’ve been knitting; Dan has been arguing with his various computers and has decided to get a new laptop because arguing with inanimate objects never works well.

And we bought ourselves a present, a bread maker. Gotta love Amazon.com!!

It’s so easy to use this thing. Quite enamored of it!

So this is a fun toy.

We don’t see that many sunsets because mountains and trees block our view to the west, but sunrises we do see. Winter seems to give us the best sunrises, maybe because we are awake to see them as the sun rises pretty late in the morning.

Yesterday I blocked the blue shawl I made earlier this year, before the white one actually. I’m not sure why I didn’t block this earlier; I was just in knitting mode apparently.

I was standing on a step ladder, my usual mode of getting up in the air. See the bread machine is in its new home on the counter. Tomorrow I will be able to unpin this and I can move on to new projects. Itsy bitsy knitting projects, and drawing/painting, are the things I have on my mind. Dan cleaned off the kitchen table yesterday so I have a place to draw.

Mishkin is going to be 15 years old in a few months. Doesn’t he look like a regal senior citizen kitty? He is now sacked out in our bed, snuggled under the down comforter. We won’t see him again for hours.

We did have some excitement last week on Saturday morning when we woke up to a frozen water pipe in the crawl space, but it wasn’t broken after all and we did find somebody to come thaw it out and be ready to replace it should it have been broken. That was a stressful several days.

Almost the Winter Solstice! Below zero temperatures are predicted.

So today I decided to look at things from a cat’s eye view.

Mish has a routine (one of many) where he gets up from his morning/afternoon nap and the first thing he does is want to take another nap while I serve as a cat bed. He gets annoyed if the computer is in my lap where he belongs. Cats are very good at giving humans dirty looks. 🙂

Anyway yesterday I was doing my physical therapy exercises on the floor when Mishkin awoke from the first long nap of the day. He stretched, walked across the TV stand, halted in front of Dan’s computer screen so he could be admired momentarily, and then went to the couch where he looked for me. He looked confused when I wasn’t immediately visible and sitting where I belong when he gets up from First Nap.

I’m assuming he could see me on the floor… but maybe not.

After looking around a bit and not seeing me, aka the cat bed, he suddenly spied me on the floor 18 inches away from the couch. You could just see him say to himself, “Well there she is!” and he sauntered over to me, purring loudly, and climbed on top of my lap and proceeded to try to take his second nap. It didn’t work well because I was doing other things besides sitting still. But from his perspective it all worked fine until it came time for me to do bridge exercises at which point his cat bed dumped him off. How rude!

No freezing weather yet! Amazing.

Having too many tomatoes is a good problem to have! We picked tomatoes today, and have at least this many tomatoes still remaining on the plants for later harvesting.

The tomatoes are so delicious! Yesterday I fixed this. It does need freshly picked tomatoes so grocery store tomatoes will not work.

Fresh tomato & basil pasta

4 to 6 ripe tomatoes, chopped
5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons lemon juice, freshly squeezed
1/3 cup basil leaves, stems removed, chopped
Salt, to taste
Freshly ground black pepper, to taste

1 pound spaghetti, or linguine or fettuccine pasta

1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Gather the ingredients.

Place tomatoes, olive oil, lemon juice, and fresh basil in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Mix gently and set aside to marinate. Then fix some pasta and drain when it is all cooked, and immediately stir in the marinated tomatoes with the hot pasta, and add the grated cheese (or skip the cheese and add it to individual bowls). So easy! I had some cold today for lunch and it’s a totally delicious cold salad.

I will need to make some sauce out of all the Roma tomatoes, and either freeze it or can it. I haven’t decided which to do. Or I could make some salsa. I have a lot of onions to harvest and way more peppers which will need to be taken care of soon.

We had company a week ago and I got inspired to do some baking.

I thought I was carried away with baking but since none of the above are left, evidently not. 🙂

I’ll need to bake some more things this week. All the sweet rolls are gone from the freezer so I guess I’ll do those first.