Ice flows, bunnies and pea trellises

Despite five days of (relatively) lovely cycling weather last week, winter has temporarily returned with cold temperatures and new snow. The river valley is full of bunnies, gnawed branches and ice flows.

The yard is slightly less snow-bound but it still icy.

That said, the bunnies are starting to turn noticeably brown so I'm hopeful we'll shortly free from the snow pack. Parts of the front garden are almost melted out.

To keep us occupied, Jess and I built two more of the 5x5' steel conduit pea trellises that we built last year. These workers very well and seem indestructible.

I expect we'll put these in the back yard alongside the garage to give us some additional peas. My copy of Alberta home gardener has arrived so I'll spend the afternoon looking at pretty pictures and imagining the garden in three months.

Spinach seeds in the cold frames

After a lovely bike ride and then a long walk, Jess and I flipped up the cold frame glass and moved some dirt around. We could dig down about four inches in one and it was about room temperature so I decided to drop on spinach seeds in and see what happened.

Jess was in charge of planting while I worked the camera. Then we tromped around the back yard, scared some rabbits and discovered some of last autumn's garlic starting to melt out. I think this was a German hard-necked variety that put on a bit of growth before freeze up.

We're starting to get the point where enough dirt as melted out in the front yard that we are going to have bare soil very rapidly. I'm keen to see some irises start to come up while we wait for things to warm up for planting. Looks like there will be some nasty cleaning up to with leaves and needles and whatnot having blown in after our last rake of the fall.

Signs of life in the yard!

Today was a beautiful spring day--warm enough to go for a walk at lunch in shorts (and a light parka...). I ran into two coyotes out for a mid-day stroll.

The cold frames on the south side are heating up and I could get my fingers down about an inch or so today. The temperature inside was about 20C. I have a couple of packs of spinach seeds that say "plant when soil is warm enough to work." I wonder if this qualifies?

The strawberries are often the first things growing. They tend to overwinter quite well. Above you can see an immature shoot from last year coming back to life. And below is a brand new shoot poking up through the snow.

The raised beds behind the garage are often the first to thaw out. These had two solid feet of snow on them on Sunday (I stood on it to clean the eaves) and will likely be free for snow by Saturday. Still a ways to plant anything (except maybe some beet seeds).

Around the front, I found what I think is a tiny violet that has self-seeded everywhere just getting going.

I expect this will be a quiet weekend, although if the roads thaw a teeny bit more I will get my bike out. The Xmas lights are all down. I may also prune back on of my hedges--I'd like to replace it over time with raspberry and saskatoon.

Organizing the seeds

With some nicer weather and some spare time this morning, I wandered over to Apache Seeds and looked to fill in a few gaps in my seed box. While I have a fair bit of leftover corn seed, I was looking for something a bit different and settled on Hooker's Sweet Corn. I'll be growing these around back--hopefully far enough away from the corn in the front yard that that they don't cross pollinate.

In amongst one of the corn patches I'm keen to try this new squash I picked up. Looks like an immense amount of flesh and apparent stores well.

I also snagged some of these Chioggia beets--which are so much fun to grow and cut into. Not that I'm short on beet seeds--just fun to buy a few more. I also grabbed some netting so we can make a couple of more trellises for peas.

I dropped in on the wine making store while I was in the strip mall and talked about making mead. I'm not sure i need another project, but mead has a lot of appeal and I've quite liked the bottles I've sampled over the years.

Signs of spring?

Alas, no--just an early February thaw. But running water, warm weather and bunny tracks were encouraging. And then it snowed again. Oh well, the end is near. Perhaps I'll finish tuning up the bikes tomorrow to keep occupied.

All that said, I did haul out the glass for the cold frames against the south side of the house. It will be another month or so until the ground in thawed enough to bother with spinach seeds, but a warm day will thaw the soil enough that I can get a good sniff of moist earth.

In the meantime, I'm working my way through the freezer and pantry. I put the last five jars of tomatoes in to the crockpot this afternoon to make pasta sauce. Wow, they smelled good--totally worth the hassle of canning them last summer.  We're also into the last flat of apple sauce and the last few jars of crab apple jelly. Now to spend an hour reading a book about urban foraging and dandelion pesto.

Bottling some winter wine

With Jennifer away on a business trip, Jess and I spent some of last night bottling a batch of malbec we started at Christmas. 

We experimented with some different approaches to bottling. This time we racked to a primary and then using the spigot and a funnel instead of a siphon to fill the bottles. This worked quite a lot better for Jess.

We also tried out the floor corker my friend Lorna gave us. Much better than the butterfly corker we had been using! These need to sit for a couple of days to ensure the corks seal and then we'll cap and label them. Should be ready to drink come late summer!

More cheese

The unseasonable melt continues outside and some of the front garden even made a brief appearance on Saturday. i imagine more snow is on the way so I haven't rushed to get the shovel sharpened, although two of the three bikes are in the basement and tuned up for spring.

The cooler temperatures on Sunday kept us indoors for a quiet day. I finally ran down some rennet and citric acid (and Barb's Kitchen Centre) so I decided to try my luck at mozzarella.

I hauled out the candy thermometer I got for Christmas, heated the milk, curdled it and voila, we had curds. I got some advice from one of the cheese places that I shouldn't try mozzarella right away as it was too hard. It was a tiny bit more work then paneer, but hardly difficult even for a newbie.

I decided to try the stretching using heated whey (instead of the microwave) since it was there and already hot. And after a couple of submersions and stretches, we had a large ball of mozzarella.

I put it in the fridge to cool and then froze two-thirds. The rest I put into a capresse salad for dinner.

I see the wine is about ready to bottle, perhaps later this week.