Come on February!!

January 31...

Come on February! Well, maybe not so much, considering we are supposed to be getting in a snow storm tonight that could dump 5-12 inches on us by the close of tomorrow, lol. Some snow is good, but I can't risk getting snowed in because I start my new job on Monday.

Today I was bustling again. I got out a 48 cell flat, and seeded up 24 each of White Soul and Yellow Wonder strawberries to stratify in the solarium for the next couple weeks. My Pinetree order came in yesterday, and I had just the right amount of seed to do 24 cells of each. They are white and yellow alpine strawberries, and require 2-4 weeks of stratification before germination. So instead of leaving the seed in the fridge, I figured why not just pot them up now since I have the flat, and the solarium is still cold enough for it- and if the solarium gets too warm, I can always move the flat outside since it has a dome. I'm hoping by June first I have a heap of little strawberry plants to put out somewhere in the yard- haven't quite settled in on where yet, but I have months to figure that one out, lol.

I'm starting to come to the conclusion that I may have been premature in putting out all three mini greenhouses- I might need to reconfigure everything and bring one of them back inside so I have a bit of heat insurance in the solarium- in just a couple short weeks it will be time to start up peppers, tomatoes, and since I don't have the upstairs anymore to set them up I might be scrambling to figure out what to do.

A few hours today was spent getting out to the resale shops again. I only had one cardigan in navy blue that fit over my workshirts, so I needed to get a couple more in the other allowed colors. Since the last Saturday of the month is Goodwills half off day, I risked the crowds, and glad I did. I ended up getting 7 sweaters, a pink thermal shirt, two turtlenecks, two oxford shirts, and a stealable spring jacket- for 20 bucks, instead of 65. A big bonus was while heading back from Paw Paw, I hit a thrift shop that was giving stuff away for free today because it was their last day open in that location- they are moving to another location and wanted to clear out as much as they could. So three of my sweaters and the coat were free :) Two of the shirts were new, and a few of the sweaters were high end retail tags, so I have to wonder just how much I really saved over retail today. Best part is, I don't need to shop for any more work clothes for a goodly while now.

Since we got the boys this weekend, I'm making meatloaf with tater tots, mixed veggies, and rolls for dinner tonight, yum.

February 1...

Snow, snow, more snow.. and did I mention snow? It started around midnight, and has been coming on ever since, and is supposed to keep coming on for hours yet. I think so far we likely have gotten around 4-6 inches. But on the bright side it's powder, so not too bad to move it. Started out this morning with one of the boys and shoveled out the front porch and got access to the racks. Unstrapped one and brought it inside, it's now sitting snug as can be in front of the dining room windows.
Took the covers off the lettuce, garden cress, and spinach. At this point the covers are more likely to cause rot and dampening off than they are to do propagation good. Not a hell of a lot of spinach sprouted, but it is pretty old seed, so I can't complain. The lettuce is looking a bit thin too, but I can deal with that- once I get some good true leaves going on I will do a second sowing in the same container.
Soaked the Mary Washington asparagus last night, and today I set up 54 TP tubes of seeds amongst three containers. Those are now sitting on the rack in front of the window. And I got two pots of 7 pot super hot pepper sown- dang, those things take 160-180 days for maturity verses all the rest of my peppers that span 70-95 days.

And an unexpected nice today.. My sister was out shoveling the end of the driveway since the blower wouldn't start, and the neighbor across the street came over with his tractor plow and plowed our driveway for us! How nice is that, right? She and he chatted, made friends and he said if the snow gets deep, just knock on their door and they will plow us out. Guess who is getting cookies baked for them, right?

Happy Imbolc!!

Woot for the coming of the end of winter, you bet your ass I will be burning candles tonight :)

Unfortunately, I didn't get to go to work for my first real day today. Yep, the driveway was clear, especially because my sister was out at 6:30 making sure of it. But when I walked out, I stood in the middle of our unplowed road and damn near cried. I could leave the garage, but not get off the property! Fortunately, work was really understanding about it, and just scheduled me on for another day.

So today I baked up a lot of cookies. I made salted carmel and windmills, and bagged those up along with a jar each of strawberry jam, methley plum jam, caviar, and mixed hot pepper rings- and sis and I took them over to the neighbors. He was just about to get the tractor out to push them out then come do our drive, but it was already done. He seemed pleased with the goodies and told us next time it snows, he will come on over :) Nice that we have seemed to have made some new friends after all this time. Kind of makes me extra look forward to work- I'm tired of knowing no one out here.

With pretty much all the rest of the shoveling done, I took the time to shovel out the wintersown racks and a path out to the bird feeders. The birdies were well pleased to get the seed feeder refilled and a fresh suet cake. They are pretty slow on the bird bread, I think it might be because the stuff is frozen, lol.