A little rain must fall - but in January?!!!

This is the weather in Alaska today - that Houston refers to Houston, Alaska!  Usually at this time of year we have -41 degrees below zero!  Not above zero!  I didn't wear a coat today to the school - just my regular clothes like it was summer or at least early spring!



These are pussy willows budding out (thank you Alicia McRoberts for the photo post).  In January in Alaska!  Is this proof that our global warming is working?  I don't know but now is not the time to have this happen!

Remember the 10" of snow I had on the porch rail?  All gone!  The three feet of snow on the cold frame?  Only about 6 inches now!  That might not be a bad thing since I was worried about the weight on the frame, but it is worrisome that our snow is going so fast that many of my plants will soon not be covered at all.  The plants under the eaves should be okay since the snow shedding off the roof has gone on them, but the ones in the Hugelkulture beds and in the meadow and the other beds may not fare as well.

All the kids are praying for snow so they can snowmachine and play in it, but I am praying for snow so that my strawberries won't all have to be replaced!  That happened a few years ago when we didn't get snow until December - they all froze out. 

On the plus side of not having a lot of snow - I was able to get into the greenhouse and do some work.  I have decided to do some rearranging so that all the tomatoes will live in the middle during the summer so they wont create so much shade and so that they will get better cross breeze.  Im also hoping that Ill find a happy place for the cucumbers.  Ill post pictures when the plan comes together, but it was really nice to be able to get out and play in the dirt for a bit.  Made me hungry for spring!

I have planted some kitchen herbs to help get me through and use in some healthy cooking.  I was also able to harvest two perfect lemons from the lemon tree, but the lemon tree is not seeming too happy right now.  Bare twigs and looking lifeless.  Ill let you know if it makes it through!

In Alaska it really is true that April showers bring May flowers (unless those showers are snow like last year), but I don't know what January showers bring - Ill keep you posted on that as we go towards (real) spring.

Waiting for Results

I  haven't posted much lately as there has been a lot going on in my world including Christmas, New Years, a Gramma visiting, a number of hockey events and trying to inventory my current seeds and see what I need!  On top of that over the past few weeks we have had a number of things crop up that were disconcerting, distracting, and caused much distress throughout the family.   Part of the problem is that we found out all in one day that my dad had to have a colonoscopy due to unexplained bleeding, my cousin was hospitalized for pancreatitis, and my uncle was diagnosed with Stage 1 non-hodgkins lymphoma.  While waiting to hear the results of the colonoscopy (which turned out not to be something horrible and dad will be okay), it got me to thinking about waiting for results!

We have to wait for results for just about everything but in farming even hobby farming, it seems, waiting for results is way, way more exciting and way, way less stressful than waiting for results of medical tests, scholastic tests or just about anything else on the planet!  Even though the waiting in farming is often much longer than  the waiting for results in medical tests, and the end result is often failure (at least in my world), the outcome of those results is almost always satisfying in some regard. 

No matter if I have success or failure with my farm tries, I have always learned something from it -sometimes what not to do!  But sometimes I learn how to do something great - like keeping the Mandarin tree alive through an infestation of white flies and a guinea pig who tried to climb the pot to eat it! 

The best thing that I have learned from waiting on plants or really anything on the farm is that waiting for results is not always a bad thing!  It gives us time to breathe in between projects, plantings, harvesting, and snow shoveling. It gives us time to think about other things that need our time, energy and passion, and it gives us the lesson of patience.  One of the most important lessons we can learn. 

Breathe. Wait. Results!