Brrr

A well-stacked woodpile warms you up, even just to see it in the field. This one's up at my brother's place in Montgomery.

Holy frosty frigidity, Batman. We're bundling through our second week of super-cold weather and although the end is in sight, it still feels pretty awful. This past week we had a couple of days of below-zero temperatures that lasted all day. It didn't get much worse than 10 below for us, but that's still pretty c-c-c-cold.

So far it's been a pretty different winter. We started out with a good amount of snow in December and early January --- different from last year's no-snow. That all melted off, though, just before this super cold snap. I don't think we had cold weather like this last year, either.

I wonder what it'll mean for the gardens come springtime. And, at this point, I'm wondering when we'll get outside comfortably again, and whether we'll finish up the winter with snow to play in.

An October Walk

In early October, we visited family in upstate New York to celebrate Oliver's birthday. We took a walk one unseasonably warm morning, just Kevin, O and I. Our meanderings had a magical feeling that reminded me of being outside as a kid, playing with sticks, leaves, puddles and mud. I took the first deep breaths I'd had in weeks. We did pick up a couple of ticks, though --- never let nature lull you into complacency.

 

Yellow brick road.

 

Ack! November!

Somehow it's November. I stumbled through the past few months in a anxiety-induced coma of sorts, but the garden grew anyway. An important lesson: Seeds and weeds often grow despite our best / worst efforts. Much of life is out of our control.

Happily, our garden continues to provide purple passion even as the sun steals away day by day. This week I picked a couple of small cabbages and some of the onions. Still to come: Brussel sprouts and spinach. I'll take it as long as I can get it.

#VPTJulyPix Squashed!

It's over-flowing-amounts-of-summer-squash time in the garden. For some reason this freaks me out. I don't like the sinking feeling I get when I know we're not keeping up with the picking of said squash, let alone the eating. I wanted to try to capture the feeling somehow in an image - and this is the result. 

More to come, but right now I've got to go pick more squash.