In Which Our Parsley Returns from Beyond the Grave

Don't you wish all those rocks were in your garden? I do.

We've had a really mild winter—less than ten inches of snow and an average temperature of 40°F—and the garden is loving it. Right now we have parsley, swiss chard, bok choy, kale, and lettuce that have slowly been doing their thing since the fall. Temperatures are supposed to be in the mid-50°s for the next week, so perhaps we'll be eating salads by next weekend.

My Favorite Room

While the weather tries to make up it mind, Meg and I are forced to spend the better part of our days indoors. If we're not in the kitchen, we're in the library. This wasn't planned, it just kind of happened. Since we both majored in English, we have accumulated a shit load of books (there's another couple book cases around the corner). Subsequently, we needed a place to store them and when they were all put together, voila, a library was born. 

Al Fuego

What do you do on a 40° February night after you've spent the day finally cleaning the remaining crap from around the garden?


You gather everything into a big pile.


And you burn it.

And you get some beers and you set the camera's shutter speed real slow.


And you take some trippy photos.

Still Growing

While the garden layout is being planned and garlic is still sleeping, believe it or not, we still have some veggies growing in the garden. As last year's garden petered out, we planted some more carrots and parsnips to share a covered bed with the already established chard.

With the worst of our winter over (it barely came at all), we still have a little green going on under the row covers. Granted, the life under the cover is only a small amount of half-assed root veggies, but we should be able to harvest enough to soupify some of our bean crop. We also have some thyme, sage, and chard to throw in the pot, which should make for a hearty bowl of backyard goodness.

Strange Winter

For a few hours on Thursday we were reminded that it is in fact winter in southeast Pennsylvania. It started snowing sometime around three in the afternoon with a few little flakes and by four o'clock the flakes were fat and fluffy, laying a bright blanket on the Philadelphia area.

This top photo was taken by Meg WHILE SHE WAS DRIVING to the train station to pick me up. I love the blueness snow brings to dusk.

This next one I took when I went to check on the chickens. This is the apple tree we adopted. You can see with the assistance of the snow how out of control those center spikes are.

The snow that gathers on the netting of their pen is why I went to check on them. I think its gorgeous when the snow sticks like this, but I also know that too much could be bad. The peak is pretty secure, but there have been a lot of hawks around and I wouldn't want to risk losing the chickens' cover. All it took was a couple shakes and all the snow fell through.

This was only the second snow we've received this year and like the others it was short lived. I went outside around seven o'clock to get something from the Jeep and the snow had changed to rain. By morning all that was left were patches of slush.

Warmer Weather Approaches

Apparently the area where Meg and I live will be in for some unusually warm weather this weekend. I learned this while talking to Steveo outside, freezing our asses off, this afternoon. While conversing about the family, food, and drink of the holidays, he said that he heard on the weather station that we will be expecting Saturday to hit 50°F and the days to follow will get steadily warmer.

Meg and I agreed that we would be fools not to take advantage of the heat wave and get some much needed work done outside. As we've said in earlier posts, we inherited more leaves that need composting attention and the shredded leaves in the chicken pen are ready to be gathered. Before any of this can go on we need to make room for it all.

We decided that the best place for some new compost bins would be on the northern end of the garden. This is actually where we kept our cache of composting leaves last year before we shoveled it out and stored it for next spring. I don't want to say to much about it until we see how it plans to turn out.

What we're intending to do is make two 3'x3' bins on the left side of the fence (top photo) and a third 3'x3' bin on the right. The reason for the spacing is because we are going to make a second gate in the middle so we can access that part of the garden more easily for watering and what have you. The building of the bins shouldn't take too long, but the leaf swapping may take a few hours. Like I said, I'm not to sure how it will go until we get to it, but hopefully by the weekend we'll have five compost bins going.

The Big Melt

Yesterday's ice with today's sun made for quite a spectacle in our backyard. I really don't have much to say about the photos other than I was in complete awe of the scenes nature provided. The photos were taken at two separate times this morning; the first was a bit before 9:00 while everything was still good and frosty, and the second was around 11:00, which is when the sun finally breaks above the tops of the trees. During the second round everything was melting, which made for a strange scene. I say strange because the sky was clear and the sun was bright, but under the canopy of the trees it was pouring. I tell ya, I just don't get people who stay cooped up when the most amazing things are going on right outside their front door.

Without a Net

There's a bit of a sparkle out there today. Everything is covered in ice and hunched beneath the weight. The feeling of panic from a lot of folks is inescapable. I guess there are tree limbs falling, power lines breaking, and roads getting slick, but it still looks pretty just the same.

The weight of the ice was the first winter test for the new chicken pen. As I said in an earlier post, we gave the ladies a canopy made out of netting used to cover fruit trees. Another alternative is deer fencing as you can see at Fast Grow the Weeds. We went with the fruit tree stuff because it's tough as nails and there was an abandoned section of it in the lower shed. There's nothing wrong with a little harmless pillaging.

By the way, if you're smart about your materials you can do some impressive things for a modest price. The total amount we spent on coop, pen, and chickens came out to a smidge less than $200.

Back to the ice. So, the amount of ice we got here is pretty average for an ice storm in our area. As you can see there is a noticeable increase of sag, but the bamboo supports are holding up well.

It snowed; now we can eat.

Last year we made a big batch of squash soup and froze some for the winter. It was our first foray into saving food. We were excited about it, and in order to keep ourselves from eating all of the soup in September we made a rule that we couldn't eat any of it until we got snow. However, we forgot to take into consideration the fact that southeastern Pennsylvania winters are crap in terms of snow and didn't get to eat any soup until sometime in February. And even that was kind of a stretch, since I was the only one who saw the snow: four individual flakes that fell as I was waiting at a traffic light on my way home from work. In retrospect, it could have been ashes from someone a few cars up holding their cigarette out the window. Either way, we ate the soup and it was totally worth the wait.

We instituted the snow rule again this year, but lucky for us we didn't have to wait as long or fabricate reports of snowfall. Earlier this week we got a respectable (for early December) inch and a half, which was topped off yesterday by a couple snow showers. So this evening we made the inaugural trip to the freezer and came up with some beautiful, delicious, 100% homemade pasta sauce.


We cooked it with frozen seafood and some cream, and it smelled so stinking good–tasted that way, too.


Pasta, bread, wine, and a seed catalogue. Yum.

Cold, but not quite winter.

This morning we got our first winter-ish precipitation in the form of freezing rain. Total accumulations were about 1/32 of an inch, but we decided to take some pictures for posterity, anyway. Below are some of the last green things remaining in the yard: some of next spring's irises, and Steveo's eucalyptus.



You can actually see some of the icy stuff in front of the irises. Wonder if we'll get a snow day tomorrow?

It's Winter Now

Kelly and I went to refill the chickens' water at 5:00 and they had already gone in to roost for the night. Now it's not even 7, yet it's been pitch dark out for nearly an hour.

When do we turn the clocks forward, again?