Happy Valentines day!

Now, if only Mama N could give us some love :) Ok, if we don't lose power, I will take that as enough love, lol. Please, please let us not lose power. It sucks in the summer, but I get sort of panicky about the cold aspect in the winter.
We are under a winter storm that has some seriously nasty winds going on. Optimistically, it will start tapering off around 10 pm tonight- not optimistically, it will last till around 7 tomorrow morning. We are right on the edge between two areas under two slightly different warnings. Either way, it's supposed to be in the negatives, and with the wind chill, double digit negatives. But hey, not like February is usually nice out for us here on Growbox Hill, so whatever :)~
And sheesh, even with gusts of 25-35 mph winds, there are still some birds crazy enough to try checking out the feeders- talk about birdbrains, heheheh.

And on a sidenote.. my super awesome and loving hubby printed me off a cute little clockwork heart- presented it to me this morning. I melted. I suck, didn't get him noting or do anything cool.

Got some more seed sown in the other day. Mostly a bunch of different hardy hibiscus, with a few brussels spouts, hollyhocks, ageratum, and dianthus. Kind of weird and cool to be planting flower seed indoors instead of wintersowing it this time. It's likely sometime next week I will be bringing in the strawberry flat from the solarium too- it's 2-4 weeks of stratification before I can bring them in, and it's been a couple weeks now.
The asparagus is coming around- looks like out of 54 tubes sown, I will get somewhere around 12-15 plants by the time is all said and done. So I think they are going to be worked into a patch in the back 40 rather than trying to create a bed out front for them. But you never can tell, I might still change my mind about that by the time I need to get the seedlings in the ground. The spinach, lettuce, and garden cress are coming along as well, hopefully we will be able to eat some fresh greens in a couple weeks!
And of course, I'm just dying to sow some more seeds, but now it's time to wait a bit for that- hurry up and wait, lol.

Work is coming along pretty well. Or at least that's what I keep being told, that I'm doing well and fitting in right fine. Still haven't quite gotten travel times down pat yet, mostly due to the crappy weather. What can be a 20 minute drive in clear weather suddenly becomes a whole nother ballgame when it is a snowy shitty out. Worked my first night shift last night, and I was so not thrilled with driving in the dark crappy weather. But hey, I'll get over it.

I decided today in the efforts of making sure the family actually gets fed when I'm not here because I'm working to start making up some freezer meal kind of action. That way I can just set up a crockpot or casserole in the morning, and I know everyone will be fed while I'm gone. I thought this was already taken care of, but last night I learned this was not so. So right now I got a crockpot of bean chili burbling away, and a pot of tomato sauce on the stove, full of Italian sausage, and dried tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms. Once they are done burbling up like they should I will chill them off and bag them up for the freezer.

So, now later in the afternoon...
Made a pan of sausage and veggie baked ziti, in the freezer. A pan of creamy spinach and chicken enchiladas, in the freezer.  The bean chili was still waaaay too liquid, so I changed up the spices a smidge, added a couple cups of rice- and bam- red beans and rice chilling down in the solarium. Had two quarts of sauce leftover from making the ziti, and those are now chilled and in the fridge. Two loaves of Italian bread are in the oven baking and will get cooled, split and prepped for garlic bread and get put into the freezer.

We have been upgraded from winter storm till 7 am to blizzard till 10, winter storm till 7 am. I've had all the heaters running high all day, and had the thermostat bumped up to help "superheat" the house in case we lose power. Don't know how much good that will do if we do lose power, considering we are going subzero after dark.. but I'm keeping my fingers crossed that we won't lose power at all.
A silver lining is that the winds are so fierce the snow isn't really accumulating or drifting on the driveway. This is in part due to the fact my sister has been keeping the driveway so clear- and that's been building up barrier banks on the sides. A view out my office window down to the road right now:

So hey, happy Valentines day everyone!