the hardest thing

 I wanted to write a blog post about my heart cat, Bizarro Kitty (Bizzy).  Everytime I try to start it, I begin crying all over again.  Just when I think I'm ok with her passing, something else triggers a memory followed by a flood of sadness.  I know it won't always be this way, but right now, it just hurts.  I'll let the photos do the talking.  From an emaciated stray cat to a fierce barn cat to the Grande Dame of the House, she led an adventure filled life.  She's with Macy, her canine bestie, and Calypso and I are working through our loss.  It's never an easy thing.  To the 'Anonymous Person' who paid her final expenses, words are not enough to express my thanks.  I know you understood the bond I had with this little cat.  To the people who have reached out to express sympathy, send flowers, or call to check on me...thank you.  It's wonderful to know that so many share the joys and heartbreaks of our animal companions.

 2007 ~ 2025

 

 

 

First day home, 2007

with Macy ~ they were inseparable

tolerating Calypso, when she was new

"No one can truly understand the bond we form with the cats we love until they experience the loss of one."

It Feels Springish

 And just as quickly as the switch was flipped to cold, it's been flipped to hey, it's above freezing!  Not exactly beach weather, but boy howdy, snow is melting.  Though it's going to be a while yet before I can get into the hillside garden.

 

I'm happy to see the two small dogwood trees are still in good shape; they're those sticks poking through the snow just to the left of the bottom of the hay ring.  These are free range Pagoda Dogwoods, which are native to New England and are abundant on our property.  These two were found as four inch seedlings and transferred to pots to grow on. It's not a great idea to leave them like that in our climate; if the pots freeze solid, there's a chance the roots will get killed.  I generally try to bury pots in the ground over winter to insulate them, but these are extra large buckets and the thought of digging a hole for them was too much.  Hopefully the snow is enough insulation.

In the house, things are popping up like crazy.  The seeds I sowed on February 18th are doing well despite the mold issues.

 Only the globe thistle seeds that I pulled from someone's garden didn't germinate, so overall I feel like this is a win.

The gaura seeds were the worst affected by mold and the ones I gave a diluted bleach bath.  There were supposed to be 100 seeds in the package and I think I'll be lucky if I get a dozen to plant out.

 On February 23rd I sowed some aster and petunia seeds.  I used the new trays and also sowed 3 kinds of hot peppers, sweet peppers, and three kinds of tomato.  The asters and tomatoes popped right up, but the peppers are just barely breaking through the soil and the petunias are so tiny, I can barely see them.

tomatoes

aster

petunia

A word of caution...I've noticed the last few years that I've been seed starting in the house that there's a particularly sour odor that permeates the air.  My house smells really stale right now, and slightly like there's a soiled diaper lurking in a corner.  I think it's a combination of the damp soils and general lack of fresh air.  I'd start these all downstairs in the mudroom, but I love checking them every day and fussing over them, so that's not going to happen.  I recommend a clothespin to the nose if visiting.

And lastly, the strangest thing is happening with the barn roof snow.  With the warmer temperatures and the melting, the snow slides down the roof as usual, but when it hits the snow stoppers it acts like a bolt of cloth being unrolled, and begins to fold up on itself.  It's so bizarre!

(how cute are those mules, though?)

 

I don't know how much will bank up behind the stops before it melts off, but I'm hoping it all goes before the next cold snap.  As an old Yankee used to say to me, it's not melting, it's just making room for more snow.

Be Careful What You Wish For

 Well now.  February blew in with some snow.  How much?  So far this month, it's this much.

 

That's my old bathtub under all that mess!

The nice thing has been that each storm was fairly manageable; between 3 - 6 inches of snow, and most of the time very light, fluffy stuff.  That's because it's been freaking FREEZING this winter.  The last storm could have been worse; they were calling for 6-8 inches of snow followed by sleet and freezing rain.  Luckily, we avoided the freezing rain and ended up with about 2 inches of granular sleet on top of about 8 inches of snow, packing it down to about 6 inches of dense mess.  Unluckily, the storm left us with 40-60 MPH wind gusts, which made cleanup...interesting.

While my brush cutting project has been waylaid, I have been hauling manure to the mound surrounding the wildflower meadow.  Now I'm committed to that project because I don't want a stinky layer of manure outside my back door all summer.   Planting the corn out back frees up the cinder block bed for something different, and I'm thinking of planting my onions and carrots there this year, as these are companion plants.  Companion planting the right plants together can help deter pests and boost growth; in some cases the plants each rely on a different nutrient that the other produces or doesn't leech from the soil.  Mixing in certain herbs or flowers with vegetables can work as well as mixing different crops together.  

Inside, I've started some leeks from seeds I harvested from the plants that went over last year.  I had about a 50% germination rate, so I'm happy!  We don't use a lot of leeks, so growing just a dozen or more plants will give us the small harvest we want, and will free up one or two beds.  

The mescluns and arugula continue to grow, but not by leaps and bounds as it would outside.

 The lower container of spicy mesclun mix was already harvested once, so that's regrowth.

I also pulled the 60 day stratified seeds out of the fridge to sow.  To my dismay, most of my packages had begun to develop mold.  A quick trip down an internet rabbit hole has convinced me to not use the paper towel plastic bag method next year.  Apparently mold is all too common.  Some people have noted they've planted the moldy seeds and had decent germination, and others recommended a quick bath in watered down bleach (10:1), which is what I did for the worst affected. I sowed most of the seeds in the flimsy black plastic seed starting trays I normally use...you know, the ones that break apart when you try to remove the seedlings.

 I was too impatient to wait for the newer models I'd ordered. 

I'm excited to try these - they're hard plastic top and bottom, with a flexible silicone center.  In theory you should be able to push on the hard bottom and pop the seedlings out without damaging the tray.  These are also dishwasher safe, so no excuses for not sterilizing them!  I bought them on Amazon, of course, and they come in a package of six trays that fit perfectly into a standard bottom tray.  These are the smallest version, and I'm thinking if they work as well as advertised, I may invest in some larger squared ones for potting up when seedlings are ready.

 And what method do I think I'll try next year instead of the paper towel/bag?  Outdoor winter sowing.  I just need to find someone who drinks milk to give me the plastic jugs!

Safety first update

 A few posts ago, I talked about the snow stops I had installed on the barn roof, and how they performed in a small snow storm that involved a changeover to rain.  Last weekend we had a storm that left behind six inches of fluffy snow - our biggest storm this season.  I know, it's been a lackluster winter as far as snowfall.  At any rate, I was able to gauge the effectiveness of the snow stoppers a little better this time.  They don't work quite as well as I'd hoped, but I'm still glad I had them installed.

 On the hay room side of the barn I figured the non-stoppered roof snow would give way much quicker, but it appears it came down all at once, despite the guards over the hay room door. The snow definitely spread farther where it wasn't slowed by the stoppers, but it still packed down like cement despite that.

On the mule's side, it was the same thing.  The snow came off all at once and formed a packed mound in the paddock.

I've marked the second photo - the yellow indicates the area I had run the snowblower through, to open it up.  The snow from the roof landed in a mound between the blue lines; at least it blew out farther away from the barn wall than it normally would if the stoppers weren't involved.  And luckily, it wasn't a massive load of snow by the time it came down.  This just makes me think that with deeper snow loads, I shouldn't assume I'll be safe under the eaves.  I have to admit I was a little surprised the snow still came off like this.

Completely safe, on the other hand, are the greens I started earlier this month.  

I started another sowing of arugula and mesclun mix (sweet this time) about two weeks after the first sowing.  I'm completely addicted to the arugula, and can stand there picking the tiny leaves off and eating them for far too long. I don't know if they'll ever get the chance to mature at this rate.  

As January comes to a close, I have two more weeks to wait before I can sow my stratified seeds and see how they do.  I've also ordered some last minute items like seed potatoes, sweet corn seed, and more mini cucumber seeds in preparation for the garden this year.  I've been hauling manure out back to the mound, so I'm definitely going to be planting squash out there, and hopefully corn.   I'm feeling optimistic about the coming season...let's hope it lasts into spring.

What Little Progress

 It's been colder than normal in these here parts, so my plan to clear a little bit of the forest garden every day was delayed.  When it was actually above freezing, I managed a small bit of clearing behind the leaf mold cage.  

It looks ok now, but what you can't see on the ground are the bittersweet and Virginia Creeper vines snaking about the forest floor.  With the leaves, acorns, and other detritus frozen to the ground, the finer cleanup will have to wait for spring.  This doesn't look like much, but it was three hours of snipping, lopping, untangling, and in the end four manure sled loads of brush went over the hill and into the pit of Out of Sight, Out of Mind.  That's where most of my brush ends up that isn't usable in other projects.

Shout out to these gadgets - I wouldn't be without them.  I use them to pick up leaves, thick piles of grass left by the mower, waste hay in the mule paddock, and piles of small brush.  

 With so much of the brush I'm currently cutting being brambles, these make picking up the thorny cuttings much less painful.  I've used other styles that were more square shaped, but these are my favorite.  

One more session on a mild day opened up even more space.  This time I transported most of the brush to the landfill.  I mean, do I really want those bittersweet vines re-rooting in my woods?  Not really.  After cleaning it up, I was so proud of how barren it looked.

Ah, there's nothing like a fresh six inch snowfall to prove you've missed a ton of small brush.

 I'll get all the fine stuff with the wheeled trimmer when I get it back.  In the meantime, I need to get my steps in by snowblowing my driveway.

 We're back into the deep freeze for the next week, so it looks like my brush clearing endeavor has been sidelined for now.  With this new snowpack, maybe I can actually get a little ski track laid out to keep the momentum going.  Maybe.  We'll see how things play out by next weekend.

New Year, Old Me

 I haven't made any New Year resolutions; I never seem to stick to them.  This autumn I was put on blood pressure medication which made me feel like an utter failure.  I am terrible at weight loss (food is my kryptonite), so instead of vowing to diet, I decided I'm going to move more.  I'm using an old Fitbit tracker and making sure I'm at least getting the requisite 10,000 steps in, but I try to aim higher.  My average since August is 11,000+ steps per day.  I despise regimented exercise, so walking, gardening, and yard work are my motivating tools.  I was a little worried I would fall behind during winter, but so far we haven't really had a winter.

What little snow we did get in December was washed away in oddly warm temperatures with rain.  As soon as we flipped the calendar, we flipped the temperatures.  We're going to see pretty much a consistent daily pattern of mid 20sF during the day, with teens to single digits overnight for most of the month.  I'm a little more than worried about losing some of the late planted perennials if their root systems weren't well established, but we'll see how it goes.  I'm actually surprised by how much green can be found in the hillside garden and cottage beds right now.  I tried to mulch as much as I could, but I was really banking on a deep snow pack to insulate most of my beds. 

The lack of snow has given me the impetus to finally start cutting back the brush and invasive plants where my forest garden will be.  My wheeled weed wacker is currently being repaired, so I'm using loppers to work my way through the tangle of bittersweet, briars, and Autumn Olive saplings.  

So far I've managed to cut back the small area in front of the wheel barrow.  It's not as easy as you'd think, not with the ground frozen completely solid and much of the debris stuck fast to the dirt.

It's not something I'll get done in a day, but I think by plugging away at it at least a half hour each day, I should get most of it cleared in a short time.  And it gets me moving, which is my bigger goal.  

I had also started cutting back the sumac whips behind the dogwood garden in the front.  My main reason was because I absolutely love seeing the sun set the Midwinter Fire bark aglow, and the sumac behind it was a distraction.

 Although, the sun behind the fuzzy sumac whips is beautiful in its own way.

Behind the house, it's been cold enough to freeze my little water feature solid.  I never did get around to putting a flagstone path between it and the fire pit area.

Speaking of the fire pit area, I'm rethinking the wall of asters I planted along the edge.  I think I may move them elsewhere, and plant something smaller along that edge, or leave it so the granite edging can be admired.  The asters also detract from the Yellow Twig Dogwood, which needs a serious pruning and maybe a new location.  

I don't cut back the asters because I've noticed the smaller birds going for the seed heads at times, and I like to encourage foraging.  Unfortunately I forget to pinch them back and they get leggy, which means they flop when the snow comes.  Unsightly!  

One last movement inducing task this winter will be hauling my daily mule manure to the wildflower mound.  This was something I've been wanting to do for two years now, but never got around to cutting back all the weeds and grass first. Unfortunately, Reputa suffered a broken throttle cable and a failed tube in one of her tires, so she is down for the count right now.  Pushing a wheelbarrow full of fresh poo across the farm twice daily in the pitch dark will be a good way to keep the step count up. Right?  I mean...right?  *cries softly*

 

 At this point, it's pretty well beat down and I can see what I'm doing.  The goal is to cover the slope with manure, then mulch heavily, and use this area to grow either corn or squash...or both.  Add in some pole beans, and I'll have a three sisters garden.  Not a bad idea!  Now, let's see if I can actually accomplish these tasks.  Full disclosure - no breaths will be held in the coming months.