For Leah, for whom the flowers grow

Breathe Easy

Amazingly enough, there was no snow damage on the farm. The 2 x 4 braces worked! We got around 8 inches on the farm and it is a beautiful sight. The roads have been
treacherous though, and it took two attempts in our 4wheel drive truck to make it over to our farm. Things in our greenhouse were drying out fast so I'm glad we made it when we did. We are thrilled to see the bells of ireland are germinating; we haven't had these germinate since '06.
You can see the new shed that Stuart and Gerard put together. This is going to be a much-needed tool shed located close to our cultivation fields. We are now ready to debut the inside of our second hoophouse. We are still in shock that it hasn't been planted yet, but the weather has been rough this winter. Extremely wet and very cold. So perhaps in March and April we will have loads of veggies??? Since we've been snowed in, Stuart and I have played a million games of ping-pong for our cardiovascular workouts and strength training. Gotta get ready for the season somehow, right? I am thrilled to announce the fact that I won my first (and as of yet, only) game against my husband. I have now entered the realm of lightning speed reflexes, ace serves, line shots, and everlasting rallies. Watch out brother Ben, you are next.

Bracing for the storm

We put these support beams up yesterday in the hopes they will keep our greenhouse and hoophouses from caving in from the weight of the snow. We are crossing our fingers and trying to breathe right until we make our way back to the farm to see what has happened.

In the meantime, we are snowed in and roaming the web. If you are a flower lover, you MUST check out these hellebores. Something to drool over. I was thinking I'd get into clematis, but maybe hellebores are the way to go.....I've heard it can be hard to hydrate clematis and that hellebores have droopy heads. Hmmmm.

Also, here is the kitchen design we've found that we like the most. We would probably make a different backsplash tile design, different colors.

I think there's something on my nose.....

Meet my new baby

She is a calla lily. Her potential is big. She is going to be pale pink, like the touch of dawn or like the faint blush of a young girl when she sees her lover-to-be. Ethereal and fleeting. Soft.

The tubers, on the other hand, are solid and heavy and convincing. I can do this, right? It is time to try my hand at these. My fear becomes my courage, and voila, there is a small bag of them at the door. Wish me luck.

The tulips are looking good so far, with healthy roots pushing through. I can't wait to see the colors! I think they are only a couple weeks out. We're hoping they will bloom for valentine's day, but we shall see.

Midnight Mouse Massacre

The devastation continues.
Our losses: ten trays of spinach, rummaged through right before they germinated, several trays of onions, one tulip bit off right at the base and left to wither.....
Their losses: nineteen members in the past week have gone down, twelve just yesterday. We put one of their heads on a toothpick right outside the door as a warning.
Our strategy: brilliant idea to glue food to the numerous (20+) traps so any movement whatsoever and an instant SNAP!!!! mouse breaks neck, keeps face of agony for photo id. We put out the dead in an open field for an easy sighting by a bird of prey, thus befriending bird of prey.
Their strategy: to mate like crazy fools, creating an uncontrollable population; to poop in the deepest recesses of the greenhouse to draw their kin in to decimate our seeding trays; and to befriend our dog Clover whose great great great great grandfather on her mother's side was a mouse as you can tell every now and then by looking closely in her eyes.
Wish us luck this next week. We reseeded all the spinach trays, so game on miceys.

Off to market they go...

The first few bunches of our anemones are off to market! The flowers all took a pretty serious hit with the cold weather over the past few weeks. Probably hundreds of stem losses. I hope they bounce back and are in fine form for Valentine's Day. We are also sending arugula, lettuce mix, radishes and spinach to market today. Next week, maybe the broccoli raab will be ready?

Tin time

Almost done. The middle strip is missing because we need to put in the wood stove pipe which we do not yet have.

We ordered our windows and doors today. And Friday is going to be 60F. Life is good.

Hibernating

We have now decided to skip two Sat. markets due to sub-freezing temperatures. It now feels like everything in our hoophouse has been grown solely for our own personal consumption and pleasure. The effect of the cold weather on our salad greens has been delightful; the taste is subtly enhanced, as if all the freezing and thawing has added a coat of delicate fortitude, barely noticed but as an afterthought.

I decided to save this bunch of anemones, albeit begrudgingly. 40 of our 80 ft of this beauty are producing deformed flowers; I'm not sure if it is the freezing temps or if the fertilizers are all wrong, or if the stock was bad, etc. It has made me want to turn my back to them though, when perhaps what they need is a little love. I will say it is a treat to have some color on the table when it is 24F outside.

All this morning I've been drooling over Japanese apricot trees. A winter bloomer, they would be quite the addition to both our landscaping on the farm as well as to our winter cuts. I'm feeling drawn to them as i am to tree peonies. They both seem to border on the exotic, an added dimension to their beauty. After our house is done, I think we'll finally be able to enter the world of perennials and woody cuts, a much awaited and anticipated step in our farm's development.
I can't resist showing off a few new self-bestowed gift items I can't wait to wear, and the lovely polish pottery piece my wonderful husband got me for Christmas. (I have a slight fetish for polish pottery) Very exciting.

Ransom's Fl. rehearsal dinner arrangements

We cut over half of the material from the neighborhood, and a lot of that from Stuart's parents yard. It was fun getting to know the flora, with bougainvillea being a definite favorite.