Welcoming pots

Notice the fabulous glazed pots in front of my house in the header? They are about 4 feet tall and a have a beautiful copper glaze that sparkles when the sun shines on it. The 3 pots were perfect to hide the view under the house. In the header photo you can see them planted with lettuce for the winter.
Well, last year the cows were grazing around the house. Yes, we have a herd of about 6 to 8 cows and calves and they are the lawn crew. But they are clumsy and they ran into one of our gorgeous pots and broke it. My heart broke with it. The remaining 2 pots just aren't quite right and I haven't been able to find a replacement for the broken pot.
We keep trying different plantings in the pots. Here is the newest look: upright yews with Marengo ivy trailing out the sides. We will plant some flowering annual in the center when the weather warms up a little.

You can see our dog Annie on the porch. A rescue with bad arthritis and coarse hair, but a sweetie.

I love Swiss Chard

I have grown Swiss chard for several years as a cool season ornamental plant. It is lovely planted with pansies and curled parsley in a winter flower bed. Up until this winter it survived the cold without too much damage. This year the extended cold that followed a spell of very warm weather burned it badly.

I never cooked much with chard. I included it in salads, the bright green leaves and colorful stems of Bright Lights or the dark maroon leaves and burgundy stems of Ruby Red chard added great color to a salad. But last year as we were working on our Spring cookbook at Blue Moon Gardens, I tried several recipes for cooked chard and loved them! So now I plant lots of chard in my garden and hope to try new recipes this spring.

About our cookbooks - Sharon (my business partner for 25 years) and Kendel (the only man working at Blue Moon) and I have been compiling, cooking, changing and editing recipes for a series of cookbooks about cooking in season. We have broken them down into four editions for each of the growing seasons with recipes for fruits and vegetables available fresh in those months. They are titled Harvest of Seasons: A Guide to Grwing and Cooking in Harmony with Nature. We have finished Spring and Fall editions and are finishing up Summer now. The Winter volume should be available this fall.

Spring vegetable gardening

We finally got our spring garden planted. We started 2 weeks ago planting onion starts, potato slips and seeds for kale, lettuce, carrots, beets and turnips and Swiss chard (a new favorite). Then came the cold spell. We had snow once, ice another time and several days of continuous below-freezing temps (very unusual for us). I hope my new little seeds hunkered down and didn't try to sprout until this week when the temperatures are in the 60s and 70s. The fluctuating temps are common for this time of year.

Here's my garden last week covered with frost. You can get an idea about how big it is - about 40 x 100 feet. Are we nuts? During the spring and early summer it is a lot of work, but last year I missed the fall garden season due to lots of rain, and I really missed it.

Last weekend I finished the first round of planting sowing snap peas, parsnips (new to me, I just wanted to try them) and our favorite, spinach. I will do another planting of spinach, lettuce and carrots in a couple of weeks. Anything extra we have we give to non-gardening friends or take to the local food bank. They like getting fresh produce.

A Winter Walk in the Woods

Last weekend James and I toured our property, most of the 80+ acres we live on. We were checking the fences and seeing what was going on. Unlike our neighbors, we have kept most of our property untouched; it is still wooded. So this time of year is a great time to walk about in our woods. The underbrush is dormant so it is easy to get around and the bare trees and ground give a good view of the amazing textures and structure hidden at other, more verdant times of year.

Look at the fabulous peeling bark on these birch trees. They not only have great texture but beautiful coral and silver color as well.

Here is a rattan vine (I think) that grows all over the woods here, often in this twisted growth pattern. this piece was attached to the ground at either end.  The grapevine below is enormous. It starts on the lower right hand side of the photo, does a couple of arches, each about 3 feet tall and 6 feet long, then branches into 2 vines. One end goes straight up in the center of the photo and climbs over 30 feet into the nearby tree.  Amazing sight.

Country Life

I love living in the country. It is not a life for everyone.
Any kind of shopping is far away. Just running to the store for a missing ingredient can take up to an hour. I don't look on this as a terrible inconvenience; I think it makes me a more inventive cook.
There are other issues to country life - no trash pickup, slow internet connection, wild animals eating your garden, your flowers and sometimes, even your pets. There are no zoning restrictions so when your neighbors pile their yard with junk or shoot guns early on Sunday morning you just have to live with it.
But to me the tranquility and beauty of country life far outweighs these minor nuisances. When I awake in the mornings I look out my windows to see the sun rising through the trees. The view out any window of my house is not another house, but the woods. I have no window coverings because I have no close neighbors. I rarely hear traffic, only the melancholy cry of a distant train whistle or the eerie howl of the local coyotes.

Today while the wind blows arctic cold outside and tiny snow flakes swirl through the air, I sit inside and watch many kinds of birds outside the windows and feed the fire that warms me, my cats and my dog. I am grateful for my wonderful life.