Month: March 2022

It is coming

Spring really seems to be trying to win the battle with winter with a series of mild days and nights not reaching down to freezing. The mini ground greenhouse was checked in daylight and opened so as not to overheat in yesterday’s bright sun and mild temperatures and not everything had failed as feared. It was watered and given the afternoon sun as the open sides face west. The spinach that overwintered is okay, the Komatsuma looked a little weary but will probably perk back up, most of the lettuces took a hit. One looks okay, one may recover, the others are toast but the sprouts indoors are thriving and will be planted out in a couple of weeks.

The tiny daffodils in the garden were mostly picked prior to the freeze and are producing new buds, the full sized daffodils had yet to bloom prior to the freeze and are just now showing buds. The Daylily and Iris greens that had emerged seem to have fared okay and fortunately, the Forsythia, Lilacs, and fruit trees had not yet bloomed here on the mountain like they have in town. You can see cherry trees, forsythia, and spring flowers all over town and some of them took a hit.

With the stress of the world news, more spinning and knitting is being done to calm my mind. Two designs are being done for hats for the Museum gift store, one easy to design, the other should be, but the paper plan so far is not satisfying me. The spinning took a turn as the new spindle that hubby gave me for our anniversary had a shaft failure. The 2022 version of this spindle has a slimmer, longer shaft and the very thin neck that provides a place for the half hitch broke off. A new shaft has been ordered, but it required a spindle change until the new one comes.

Additionally, as the stress is causing sleep disruption, some social media has been logged out of for days and is not missed. Perhaps it will leave forever. One was kept only to keep up with kids and events from a couple of groups, but the kids send pictures via text or Instagram or Google share and the groups email as well as posting on social media. The walks have been more vigorous as stress relief and to calm the mind.

We have rainy days for the next several, but it looks like walks can be scheduled around the rain. The spinning group challenges are still being met as they do not incur stress, but rather alleviate it. This month there is a word of the day and it is to be represented in a picture, with or without discussion including the current spindle spin. The word a few days ago was Achievement and this is the representation.

Taken at the beginning of our daily walk in front of the map of the Huckleberry trail. We have missed fewer that a small handful of days all winter, regardless of the cold, walking avoiding icy trails, walking in snow flurries and a few rain sprinkles. Not all have been pleasant, not all at the pace we like to keep, but persistence, thus Achievement. Today’s word is Peace, much needed right now, and this is my peace.

Our beautiful retirement farm and the garden and animal chores it brings. We all need Peace right now.

Oh, how fickle

Spring in the mountains is a fickle affair. Spring time one day, winter the next, then back to spring.

This was preceded by a 63f day, the snowy day, it fell to 14f, climbed to upper 40’s and windy yesterday and back into the 60’s today.

I checked the greenhouse tonight, I fear the greens didn’t survive 14f. It was too dark to see for sure, but it looked like most were burned off. The tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, spinach, and Komatsuma have sprouted indoors, but nothing has been sown under the greenhouse yet, just the transplants that were overwintered or planted out there a few weeks ago.

To confuse the schedule, as pasta was on the menu a couple nights ago, one of the bags of tomatoes was brought up and cooked down, run through the mill, and 4 pints of tomato sauce canned.

Not the usual time of year for canning, but the 8 gallons of tomatoes in the freezer need to be made stable. Tonight, a second 2 gallon bag was brought up and a few handfuls were thawed enough to skin, chop, and add to a pot of chili that was being prepared. The next rainy day, the remaining gallons will be cooked down and canned. Not as many tomatoes are being planted this year, but enough to add more to the shelves.

The spring flowers on our walk were recovering today, but the pussy willow that had begun to bloom are all burned and browned. Some of the catkins hadn’t opened yet, so hopefully they will open in the next couple of weeks.

The switch to daylight savings time means nothing to the chicken flock, but throws our senior bodies into disarray, bodies that disagree with the clock as they adjust.

In the midst of the storm on Saturday, our internet quit. Our router was 9 years old and after a cell phone chatline with tech support and a phone call from the local technician in our little rural coop phone service, we have DSL, we drove down and picked up a new router/modem programmed for us. It still didn’t work and no technicians are available on Sunday. They came out this morning and really couldn’t figure out why, but changed the filter on the line coming in the house and managed to get us back on. A couple hours later, it failed again and Son1 spent an hour on the phone with me troubleshooting. Thanks to him, we are back on again.

New Adventures

We walk for fitness and health daily, both too old to jog or run, and most days it is on one of two section of the Huckleberry Rails to Trails path that are fairly level. This path follows the old Huckleberry rail from the Library in Blacksburg to the Rec Center in Christiansburg, about 7 miles. A couple of years ago, it was extended from where it passes under the main highway bypass in the opposite direction from Christiansburg into and through the Heritage Community Park and Nature Area. We have wandered around in that park many times prior to the extension of the Huckleberry and have walked from a parking area in the park back toward Blacksburg a several times, but have never gone to the other parking area in the park, a mile farther away.

Today is cool and partly cloudy again, but calm wind and for variety, we drove down to the lower parking lot and started our walk at that terminus of the Huckleberry Trail, a very isolated area, but very pretty. The walk we did from the terminus to the road the trail crosses is a little over a mile, almost entirely uphill. Once we reached the road, we turned around and walked it back down to the car.

The first couple hundred yards are downhill to a creek and after crossing the bridge over the creek, there were at least a dozen small trees all gnawed down by beaver. We did not see any animals, just the remaining trunks mostly devoid of branches and couldn’t see where their dam was built, though there was evidence just beyond this of overwash of the trail from the rain night before last, so it must be just a bit upstream from the bridge.

It is a pretty section, probably will be prettier when the trees and shrubs leaf out. You can see the old silos from the Heritage Park section we used to walk. And this pretty glade of pines with a thick layer of needles below.

Though there are many benches to rest on and several picnic shelters near the two parking areas, this glade would be a great place to bring a picnic on a warm sunny day.

It took us several years to explore this end of the trail, but I’m glad we did as it gives us two other sections to walk.

When the weather warms up consistently, we will add back in the hike up in the Conservancy that we also love.