True Winter

Well, it has been over a month since I last posted, and you wouldn't guess we've had warm temperatures (comparatively warm that is) for much of that time, as the first thing on my mind both last post and this post is the freezing cold temperatures we've been experiencing! In the past month we have been busy outside, as we have had over a foot of new snow and with the temperatures hovering around and above freezing the weather has been great for daytime outdoor adventures.

The garden under a blanket of snow

Now though, with a low temperature of 4 degrees last night, we are sitting well below freezing. It helps knowing that the days are getting longer, and I definitely appreciate the longer 'afternoons' - easier to let the dogs run around in the late afternoon when it isn't dark outside at 4!

I hope you have all had a great Christmas, and are looking forward to an enjoyable New Years. This was the second year in a row that we have been able to stay at home for Christmas, and have some family come to us. We are looking forward to 2011, we have some big goals set out already for the new year!

Happy Holidays!

Winter arrives in my garden!

Well, I promised a garden update, and with the snow falling and the temperatures dipping below zero, here it is!

In the past month I managed to get most of the garden weeded and raked clean (apart from around the strawberries & onions). I also managed to get straw mulch around the strawberry plants, garlic, and onions, and leaf mulch around the raspberry plants. Last week we got a couple inches of short-lived snow, then warm temps and some sunny days melted the snow off.

I had a couple days to wonder if I should try to get into the garden and get the last of the weeding done where the carrots had come out between the strawberries and the onions, then this weekend we got a serious dump of snow, and then yesterday we had a bit more, and temperatures started to drop. At the moment we are 7 below and dropping, so temperatures are well below freezing, and this will be it for gardening for the year!

I was able to get down to the garden on the weekend shortly after the snow stopped falling to get some dirt (under the snow the ground hadn't yet frozen, which was great), and I also scraped a bit of sand up, for potting things up over the winter.

I'll try and post some pictures soon of the snowy scenes that awaited when the snow stopped on the weekend, should be a good task for this coming weekend! Have a happy Thanksgiving!

Getting started

I've been doing a lot of reading online lately, and also doing a lot of waiting for all the thoughts and ideas I've liked from what I've read to finish percolating through my brain! I started this blog because I thought, like others have before me, that I have something worth writing about, something that others might enjoy reading about. Now I just need to find the follow-through to keep on writing, and writing regularly.

With my gardening winding down for the year, I'm hoping to find time to figure out how to fit blogging into my routine, and to figure out the direction I want this blog to go in. Obviously the gardening will be central, and likely motherhood, but then I find myself coming up with all these other options: back-to-the-land-ing, small-scale farming, dogs, do-it-yourself, home renovations, naturalist-y things, etc. Then I start to feel overwhelmed, and I stop in my tracks.

What I've decided is I need to start with one or two things, and I can add on from there as time, interest, and motivation allows! Gardening it is (for now at least!).

So since I've already stated that the gardening is winding down for the year (not entirely true, there are always plants indoors, fall clean-up, and planning for next year's garden, but those can all be later topics), I should have lots of time in the coming winter months to write about gardening and get prepared for the busy summer gardening season!