Floral wonder

We had a HUGE dinner of just salad last night. It is getting mighty cold, so up came all the greenery that was still hanging on out in the gardens (I had it under some Reemay) and into the kitchen it went. Slight frost damage, but otherwise, yum.

Today, though? Today? VERY cold out there. That snow is gone, as I mentioned...but now it is a crackling 28*. I went to the garden after feeding those chilly chickens this morning, and was surprised by the blooms I found. Calendula is quite amazing. Though after today, it will be gone, too. (Big sigh.)

Winter slinks in, slinks back

Penny loves the snow

It was quite beautiful, looking out the steamy kitchen window on Thanksgiving day, watching those fluffy snowflakes fall. I knew it was coming. It was Lake Effect snow: a rather common occurrence around here. I was surprised, on moving here and practicing architecture, that the requirements for roof members (structures) weren't more stringent: our average winter will see something like 70-80" of snowfall. But the reason they're not so tough? The stuff melts. Quickly.

And so it is, looking outside today: I knew the ground wasn't frozen yet, and that 5" of snow didn't have a chance to stick around. The chickens and guineas are happy. They see their precious grass again, and they've found their dirt-bath dirt. About every half hour I am scared witless by ice crashing from the house roof onto the porch roofs (metal roofs on all both expedite and amplify this effect).

I step outside and look toward the back of the property, looking northeast. The leaves have finally fallen off the trees, and the world is still white, at least for a little while. I hear the roof dripping, and I smell...I smell nearly nothing, just that great outdoor fresh-air smell. No vegetative funk, no burning leaves, just the winter air. I can just hear the sound of the lake's waves crashing, but I need to strain to hear it.

This snow will go. We'll get one more grass cutting/leaf pickup done, probably within two weeks, and then we'll steady ourselves for winter in earnest, when the snow comes and stays.

And if I grow to miss that smell of vegetation, I will just need to step into the greenhouse to smell it again.

First snow

Pauline and the guineas, unhappy with the white stuff
First snow for the new chickens and guineas. The guineas were not pleased, and spent half the morning voicing their complaints.

First snow means of course first snow man

And the first snow means I can still get my gardening jones fixed, as it was toasty and warm in here. I need to compose a sonnet, describing my love of this greenhouse.

On the winddown to autumn

It feels mighty strange to sit here on the front porch at 9:30 at night in late October, windows all open, and see that my trusty computer temperature gauge says it's 72* outside. That, my friends, is beyond weird. In all rights the windows should be closed and I should have a comfy blanket warming my lap, and a hot tea at my side.

This weather is sapping my normal need to hurry the hell up to get the garden put away for the frost. (Frost?) Instead, I putter as usual, or, rather, as I usually putter in August, but noticing instead how things that abhor August's heat are really putting on quite a show with their fleshy abandon: the nasturtiums, fennel, broccoli, and salad fixings are all positively Rubenesque, in their own photosynthetical way. We had a scraping of 39* in early September, but since then, well, it does not feel like October 21st.

I have, however, begun the process of plant tagging. I make notes, furtively, in my planner according to a plant's variety. As a succession planter, it makes no sense at all to list things according to plant date and harvest date: these terms are quite meaningless if your greening motto is No Dirt Left Exposed. My notes instead have listed that more new pests have emerged, yet some others remained (mercifully) missing. It was a good year for some things, a bad year for others. In other words, it was a normal year, except for its duration.

I learn more every year. This helps me immensely as I am a person who dislikes a plateau in her understanding of anything. I instead love the uphill slog that is, say, anything new (to you). So this greenhouse should be an amusing diversion. It hums along, nicely, its four of six beds seeded with new things, its unmade seventh and eighth bed at least partially newly made. Today I concentrated on keeping the greenhouse's enemies out, building the putative moat and drawbridge which is buried hardware cloth on the outside of buried 2x8 planks...all to keep the voles out. Voles love them some tender plants, especially in the throes of winter.

So I sit here and think, wondering what my next task should be, wondering if I have put enough applesauce by to feed us, wondering if this is the week to roast some pumpkins, wondering, well, as usual, wondering a bit ahead. Ahem. Even if it is warm, the country life is a good life to live. Even if my Metro card still has four rides on it....

Swiss chard

Even if the trees don't cooperate, the Swiss chard will give you a great shot of color.

Autumn is treading very lightly on our little world here. It appears that this year's leaf display will again be very muted. (My indicators are the sassafras: in a good year, these rhizomatous trees will go through the whole hot range of the spectrum. This year, they've slowly slipped into the rusty-plummy range.) The veg garden is still going nuts (the peppers, eggplants and tomatoes have all hit a second wind), and the recent rain has helped the long-neglected perennial beds.

Chard! I am the only person in the house who adores it. It sure is a sight to behold in the garden, though. Last night, I made a stew in which the chard was a key feature. Rich stews and hot bread are a seasonal favorite. (Thanks, Kelly, for the chard reminder.)

Chickpeas and Chard with cilantro and cumin
From Deborah Madison's Vegetarian Suppers
2T olive oil
1/2 t ground cumin or more to taste
1 large onion, finely minced
2 t tomato paste
sea salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
pinch of saffron threads
14 chard leaves and stems
2 garlic cloves
2 15-oz cans chickpeas or 3 cups home-cooked, with some cooking liquid
1 c cilantro leaves
1/4 c parsley leaves

1. Heat 1T+1t of olive oil in a wide skillet; add onion and saffron and cook over med. heat, stirring occasionally, 12-15 mins. Meanwhile, pound garlic and 1/2 t salt with the cilantro and parsley to make a rough paste. When the onions are golden and soft, add the paste to the pan along with the tomato paste and work it in with the onions.
2. Slice the chard leaves off their stems. Put them in a wide pot with 2 cups of water and cook, covered, until wilted and tender, about 5 minutes. Set the leaves aside and reserve the cooking water.
3. Chop the chard stems into dice and drop them into the reserved chard water. Simmer until tender, about 10 minutes, and turn off the heat.
4. Add the chickpeas to the onion with their liquid or 1 cup water or stock. Coarsely chop the chard and add it as well. Simmer for 10 minutes, then add the stems. Taste for salt and pepper. Serve with the remaining oil drizzled over it all.

Stepping down

Bloody Beatrice, Bonnie and the guineas out on patrol

Seasonal transition is fairly gradual here. I would think it is because we're zone 6-7 and are surrounded by zone 5, but really, it's just Lake Michigan.

I loved Minnesota, but it really didn't seem like too long a time between Air Conditioning Season and Heating Season. There was no gradual step-down; it was fairly quick. (And spring, I swear, took FOREVER!!!) But I am a great season-denier. And now I live in a place that supports this crazy tendency of mine. The leaves here have had the good sense to not shock me out of my revelry: they, on the extreme side, have turned yellow-green. Only on the drive to school do I see a few heraldic (panicky) sumac and maples who've gone over to the red end of the spectrum.

Today, though, it's 10:00 and it's 48*. I think my denial will not last long! Especially now that it is cider season.

Weather

Hot chickens in a hot coop at dusk

"What's that noise?" our daughter asks us, eyes wide, about a week ago. "It's raining!" we say.

This summer will go down in memory as one marked by what it wasn't: it wasn't hot, it wasn't raining, it wasn't humid. The middle one, the rain, was certainly missed. August, though, has seen to it to make up for the deficits of May, June and July, wetness-wise. We are now swamped.

With this rain has come humidity. Like most "coastal" areas, we tend to be buffered from extremes in anything, except snow, here; it is usually cooler and less humid in the warm months and warmer and more moist in the cold ones. I am very curious about what global warming is doing to our area, though. Is all this rapid rain a part of that picture? And all that lack of rain earlier this summer?

For many reasons, our window air conditioners are still sitting on their shelves in the garage. One big reason is we installed a whole-house fan when we moved in: what a miraculous device. It exhausts the hot air completely out of the house when we turn it on. It doesn't, of course, "condition" the air by dropping its relative humidity. But it does certainly work, especially in this temperate summer. And its meager consumption of electricity, compared to the a/c units, helps ease our minds that we're at least not contributing, overmuch, to these wild swings in weather.

But this humidity! Makes me reconsider all that canning I'd planned to do this week!

Eating Over the Sink Season has Begun

But Mama I Want One: this little hand snuck into the picture.

These are Paul's Pride white peaches. They're the first to come on the scene, though admittedly "the scene" usually starts a couple of weeks from now. We've had a lot of hot, dry weather, so the plants and trees are stressed. I thought this worked to my advantage when I canned some strawberry jam a couple of weeks ago: the berries were small and VERY fruity, making some beautiful ruby-colored stuff. And I guess I am not complaining overmuch that Peach Season has begun in earnest. These white ones are great to can, too. Better get the pots out...

Arrrgh

Nothing confounds a gardener more than 3 days of vacation and 3 days of predicted rain.

Let's just say the laundry is done, the house and the potting shed are now spotless, and there's a lot of bread that's been made. But I have another day and a half left!!

Time for a dip

Small frog hugging the barley straw

We just had two days of record high temperatures. And, like most places this spring it seems, there has been no rain. I wanted to tell this frog "Move over," as dang it was hot even for me, and I usually can handle a high mercury reading.

My husband's wish came true and we got both a lot of rain last night and a blast of cool air moving through today.

The frogs I am sure really do not care.

I (heart) Lake Effect

Red Russian kale in bloom (buzz buzz)

So the weather has flipped. By this I mean that big lake a mile west of us is doing its thing: it's insulating us. It has flipped in that now it is just plain cool. The two NPR stations I listen to are in towns about an hour south and east of us and now they announce things like highs in the 80s "but cooler by the lake," meaning we'll maybe see 70. (Winter's converse is it is inevitably 10-20 degrees warmer here.)

What does this mean, besides a drawn-out tulip season? My garden is POKY. I still haven't harvested a salad of means out of it yet. Sniff. But it is coming!

Mothering the garden

Straw panic

There was a threat of frost, or at least really low temperatures, last night. I hurriedly spread a bale of straw over the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants, and then spent the night worrying about everything else out there. (It only got down to 45*.)

Ah. I will be happily spending the day out there, attending to many tasks and creating new gardens. I hope all the rest of you moms out there have as lovely a day ahead of you!

Too hot for them?

It's been a good year for tulips around here. (Should be, considering how many hundreds I planted last fall.)

But this article really depressed me this morning.

A good day to be young

The plum tree is blooming. All is right in this world.

It was a big day for the babies of this household yesterday. The baby chicks, who are now rather young pullets, are now in with the big girls in their coop at night. I think they had an okay night, though the little ones can't quite fly up to the top roost yet. And I looked at the forecast and found that overnight lows for the foreseeable future would be in the mid-40s, so I started hardening off all those seedling babies. As they had lived in the unheated front porch for the majority of their existence, this new chilliness would not be too hard on them. All that light, rain, and wind, though, will be a bit of a shock. I will still be dragging the peppers/eggplants (one flat) and the cardoons, artichokes, sea kale and angelica in for the nights. Those tomatoes, though, need to get used to it. Tough love!

I plan on doing some planting this weekend, mainly of more salad stuff and a second round of peas/favas. And POTATOES. How could I forget.

Oh, and the other baby was in pig heaven yesterday when she got home from school. The whole field on the side of our house was filled with dandelions...it's the only time of year I think they're pretty, frankly. There were grape hyacinths that had naturalized too. So I have a very large very complementary vaseful in front of me today.

But the calendar says...

Another frozen thing

I certainly hope that Spring plans to make at least a brief visit to Southwest Michigan this year.

Woe the snow

Out the living room window at 8 this morning

Argh. The chickens don't want to come out of their coop. All the bulb flowers are flattened. And me? I have a doctor's appointment. (I'm one of those people who sees a doctor only when I am at death's door.)

Happy hatch day to the girls

We've been chicken owners for a year now. Boy, are they funny. I'm so glad we have them.

We just got back from a trip to the other side of the state. That zone thing must mean something, because the trees are budding out here yet life was still mostly dormant out the windscreen. Here, the magnolias are blooming. The woods all of a sudden has a dimension to it that indicates distance. The monochromacy of winter and summer don't show this distance; it's only the transition seasons of spring and fall where you can tell the short and the long. I feel hemmed in in the summer, and rather exposed in the winter because of it. Early spring feels pretty okay, though!

That happened fast

Morning coffee in the garden

All of a sudden, it's gardening season. Peas, favas and beets in the ground; tomatoes, brassicas, alliums, salad stuff and flowers started in the house and the garage.

I've taken on the school's garden, too, as a project (in case I suppose I thought I wouldn't have enough to do in my own).

It is now just so amazing how little time I have during the day. I'd rather the cooking not suffer, and I have grown used to a clean house. What is going to give? Probably sleep, I am thinking...

Morris Heading Collards

I did a walk-through (in boots) in the veg garden this morning. Lots to look at, some to eat.

It will be very warm today; we could break records for March 13th. About a half-hour drive away from the lake it is supposed to be 75* or so; here, thanks to the insulating power of that body of water, it might reach the upper 60s. The windows are open and the heat is off. The frogs are out, the snow is melting, the ground stinks of death and life. Ah, veg stink. I missed it!

Pak choy and radicchio

Thaw!

Crocus

Ah, what promise the first big warmup of spring.

1. Unplug the de-icer on the pond
2. Plug in the pond pump
3. Unplug the heated dogbowl in the chicken coop
4. Pull up all the throw rugs in the basement in case there's a flood (I don't like walking on cold concrete so I put cotton rugs down)
5. Make sure the gutters are clear


then
6. Watch the chicks. This is a great way to spend your time. Better than meditation: you just sit and watch them doing their chick-y business, scratching, pecking, flapping their wings, sleeping...