Garden planning

Garden planning, a photo by scatterville on Flickr.

What do you do when your expecting 8 more inches of snow on top of your already over two feet of snow?

Plan your garden.

We have a very small yard with the bulk of the back yard a large slope of rocks. This makes planning very tricky.

I was quite pleased that our initial planning involved almost everyone in the family.
So far we have two apple trees, a peach tree, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries. Then we have the 2 veggie beds with tomatoes, lettuce, peas, carrots, broccoli, and a few more.

This year will totally be a learning experience. I can not find anywhere true growing days. I have found 123 days but I believe most of these are with highs of 40. Not anywhere warm enough for tomatoes.

I will never forget the year we planted a huge tomato bed when we lived in the mountains of Wyoming. The locals chuckled, and I could not figure why. Then when I had the most beautiful green tomatoes about 3 to 4 inches across it snowed over a foot. It never stopped snowing for 9 months.

I'm going for very short season tomatoes started early, and then put in the wall of waters. We'll see how that goes.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soulemama

Brrr...{things to do to stay warm}

January is in full swing.  Around here that means lots of snow.  We feel we are finally getting the snow we were promised and are now wondering things like:

• how much snow is too much on the mudroom roof?
• how are we going to get the roof snow rake out of the shed that is snowed shut?

We are expecting another 8 inches tomorrow.  I love snow.  That's a good thing right?

My daughter surprised me this week by asking me how to knit again.  She has been watching me knit this scarf.
She loves the texture of it and the idea of making her own things since I take so long to knit around here.

I have taught her before last winter but she only did a few very small things.  This time a quick 10 minutes of showing and she was off.  She already has 18 inches done on her scarf and the great thing is she has something to do to keep busy when she is bored.

Snow and More Snow and new Fridge!

Yes!  More snow!  I love snow.  Not so much when it's brown and melting.  Totally in love with it when it's coming down.  Especially big fat snowflakes!  We got over 18 inches a few days ago and today we have gotten another four so far.

Unfortunately this means the snowmobilers are out in full force.  They are perfectly fine in the day, I know they love to play in snow as much as I do, but from midnight on?  Please, go to bed people!  Snowmobile in the morning!  Really?  You need to out on the trails this late?  For those of you who do not have snowmobiles in your area it sounds like a pack of motorcycles, or a pack of leaf blowers, only they don't move on from your neighborhood because the trail goes around town.  So they just drive around and around or so it sounds.  All night.  I mean it, all night!



Now for fun.  We got a new fridge yesterday!  It was really hard to pick out "the one!"  We are planning out our remodel this summer and we know we need to fit it in a small opening.  Less then 36 inches.  It will also be up against a wall which means the door won't fully open.  That meant that side by sides were out.  My love dislikes top freezers so we went this this one.  I had no idea online that this thing was so TALL!  Seriously.  My daughter and I had a conversation today with the door open.  "This thing is really big!"  "Yes it is!"  "Can we even reach the top shelf?" "Not really." "But the veggies are right in your face and pretty." "Yuck"

knitting and math

I may have hit upon something.  We homeschool and that involves me sitting with two boys for long periods of time to oversee their math. Our daughter is very self directed in math and often does it when she first wakes up in the morning.  Anyway, these long periods of me waiting for boys to finish math can be maddening! Really!  Today I broke out my knitting that I started yesterday and instead of just stewing silently, I knit.  So much better. From now on, math time will be knitting time.

You can find the pattern at Ravelry here:
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/krtek

Snowshoes for the family

After trying snowboarding last week, and the adults being quite bruised up, we are switching gears to snowshoes. Much less falling down hopefully because I don't think my bum can handle more of that! Now we are just waiting patiently for more snow to fall so that we can go walking in the woods. It has been such a warm dry winter so far. We did manage a 2 foot snow last week but it all melted yesterday. Luckily here it is always snowing, so this morning we woke up to 2 inches. Not enough to snowshoe though.

New Paint

It's amazing how a new color can change a whole room's feeling. How you can go from loathing a room to suddenly feeling alive and inspired a day later in the same space. Our studio is quickly becoming this way. We hit upon the perfect color and I wanted to convey how in awe I am of how you can feel in a room.



More pictures to come!

This was the before color but it really looks better in the picture then it was. It was a ugly mustard color.

SNOW!

We finally got a good snow. We have been so warm and dry this winter that I am beginning to think they exaggerate being the 3rd snowiest place in the US! We did get a good one finally but the winds were howling at 50 mph so it was really thin in some places and big drifts in others. Here's nice drift outside our house.



The average snowfall here in Jan. is 65". We'll see how that goes.

New Years

Happy New Years! I hope everyone has a year full of love and joy!