Snow Day, Snow Play

Ice coating the coral bark maple and ample wood still piled high to keep us warm.  This was yesterday before the second round of snow passed by.

It's been lovely.  All whiteness and glitter.  

I know there were many that got caught out in their cars or lost power and I feel sorry for them. I was happy to get back home just as the flakes started to fly on Wednesday afternoon. We filled lots of water jugs and the bathtub too, but thankfully never lost our power.   We just hunkered down and did not go out again until this morning.   

Today the sun was bright and it was warmer and I said to David "we gotta get out there before it melts"  So we pulled on our long johns and coats, grabbed the sled and went out to explore and play. 

It was a happy valentines day to laugh and play in the snow together.  Here we are having just made several successful sled runs, the best of the day.  Nothing like rolling off the sled and sprawling in the snow to take you back to your childhood.  

The bare branches reached up above us into the clear blue sky.

I did have a close call on this too steep hill when I crashed face first into the brambles.  Fortunately, other than a few thorns in my forehead and ears, ouch, I was unscathed.  We're both complaining of a bit of soreness under the ribs from riding double decker.  Not as flexible as we were in our youth, but still determined to get out there and have some fun!

Its been a treat to be able to just be home, working on this and that, plenty of food in the house and not worry about having to go anywhere.

Tomorrow I am heading to the coast with my brother Chris to try and see the snowy owls on Ocracoke, hopefully the weather will cooperate.  It will be an adventure no matter what, always is with him.

Lucky New Year

Lucky New Years Day Dinner

This is the classic meal for New Years Day.  The collards represent paper money, the black-eyed peas the coins. We rounded it out with a sweet potato and a beautiful corn pone baked in the cast-iron skillet.  Tasty and healthy.  Plus, the peas, collards, onions and sweet potatoes all came from our garden.

2013 was a very good year. I hope that 2014 will be even better.

Looking back at my goals for 2013, I actually managed to achieve the big things I had set out to do.  I completed my certificate in Environmental Education. I completed the Playful Pedagogy training at the NC Zoo.  I kept working with community gardens and rounded out a good year at the Growing Healthy Kids garden in Carrboro.

My favorite work was with several child care centers doing outdoor learning and nature education.  I expanded my skills in that area of work and continued a solid relationship with Spanish for Fun.  In 2014, I will be launching my new business; Playful Nature Consulting.  I'm excited and already have classes and workshops lined up over the next few months.  Be watching here for more on the new business, I'm working on the website now and hope to have it launched sometime in January.

That is one of the reasons I've been absent from this page.  Very busy lining up new work and getting things rolling.  But also I've been trying to get my life re-organized and ready to go for the new year.

David built this carefully crafted, beautiful and very functional library style ladder for my birthday.  It has been awesome and helped me use the space on top of my closet for storage of things I don't need to get to that often.  Once I got things up top (like 15 boxes of photographs, the family memorabilia) I was able to rearrange the inside of the closet for things I use a lot like office supplies and my EE materials.

I spent Thanksgiving changing my office from this:

 

Into a space I can actually work in again!  So progress is happening and I'm looking forward to the future.

And here's hoping our lucky dinner tonight will keep some green rolling into the coffers in 2014!

I wish you all a very happy new year, thanks for reading.

Foxey Persuasion

It's taken him a year, but I think she's slowly succumbing to his charms.

Surprising Autumn Blooms

Loropetalum

I was pleased to find some flowers blooming in the yard today that I hadn't really expected to see this late in the season.  This loropetalum puts on a huge show in spring and is now in bloom again. Not quite as full as the springtime display, but bright and lively all the same.

This brilliant red quince was a surprise as quince usually bloom in late winter.  I was impressed by this one when it bloomed multiple times last winter and spring.  It has been looking not well, losing leaves in the late summer and I was afraid it might not survive.  If this flower is any indication, the shrub may rally yet.

I hope it will.  

I also spied a flourish of flowers on the jackmanii clematis and one lone zinnia that somehow manged to dodge the frost.  You just never know what you might find if you look around.

Birthday Extravaganza

 Sunny Peppers!

Yes, the peppers continue to ripen and survive despite cold nights.  It's amazing what a sheet of remay row cover can do to preserve and protect.  I'm not sure about this week with lows forecast in the mid 20's it could be the end, but it's been a great run.  We have loads of peppers now that I need to cut up for the freezer because I don't think we will be able to eat them all up.

I've had a wonderful birthday week with multiple celebrations in honor of turning, as someone said "double nickles".  There have been cards and calls, gifts and dinners and a general festive air all around.

I baked this gorgeous snapper from the local fishmonger on my birthday eve. Along side crispy roasted potatoes, the last of the garden beans and a salad of just picked red bibb lettuce, a nice french white Bordeaux, that was some living brother.  And we polished the night off with a flour-less chocolate torte that I baked for myself as I'd been having a hankering.

On my actual birthday Nov 8th, David went out to Prairie Ridge with me to help band birds. It was another cool sunny day and we had a big time capturing kinglets and many sparrows in the nets and putting the bands on their tiny legs before measuring, weighing and releasing them to fly on about their day.

That night we enjoyed a super dinner at Mateo Tapas Bar in Durham where we sampled 9 different plates and a fair amount of wine.

Yesterday I spent the day at the NC Community Garden Partners Annual meeting.  I am on the education committee and so was on the planning committee for this event.  I think it was a big success, we had over 100 people from across the state taking part in workshops and presentations.  People seemed to be learning lots and networking too, always good.  Our theme this year was sustainability of gardens, not on the ecological level but on the management, business, funding, longevity level. It is great to see the community garden movement growing in North Carolina and so many people interested in getting gardens started and in keeping them going strong.

Best of all- I won the raffle of this gorgeous community garden quilt!  It represents raised beds, pathways and veggies growing, and has a few chickens clucking through it as well.  Colorful and fun.  I couldn't believe it.

And so, I enter my 55th year feeling very celebrated, loved and lucky indeed.

Returning to Normal

I was trying to catch a flock of crows flying over.  You can see one- a blur, but love the red oak leaves set against that blue, blue sky.

What a day.

I am finally feeling the fog lift from having that tooth pulled.  I took a good brisk walk down along the creek, soaking in the fall colors and bright sky.  Came back home and worked in the garden for a couple of hours, weeding and tidying up in the veg patch.  Finished cleaning up the asparagus beds.  It always looks so much nicer when that's done.

Pulled down Jacks beanstalk, now dry and dead.  Pruners and scissors, cutting and pulling the twisted vines where they had climbed, wrapping themselves around the fence wire up, up, up.  Put away the posts, fence, piled the vines into the wheelbarrow for compost.

It was chilly and I kept my purple sweatshirt on the whole time, feeling snugly.  Pulled chickweed and oxalis from between the young carrots.  The soil was cold and I was glad for my good gloves.

Kept a fire going in the stove all day too.

 

sweet gum leaf  - like burgundy leather

The autumn has truly arrived and with it colorful trees, breezy clear days with leaves swirling by.  I am ready for this shift.

Also glad for the time change, to wake before 7 with some sunlight.  And at the end of the day to come inside and hunker down for long evenings of comfort food suppers and books.

Happy, Scary Halloween

Here I am in my own special Halloween costume.

Fresh back from the oral surgeon yesterday.  There I had a second molar, #30 removed, goodbye number thirty, and an implant anchor drilled into my jaw bone. Lets hear it for sedation, I was semi-conscious but didn't feel a thing.  Love this spiffy wimple holding an ice pack against my jaw to reduce the swelling. 

Armed with antibiotics, pain killers, ice packs and special peroxide mouth rinse, hoping that I will heal well over the next few days and in some period of time, can't remember how long we have to wait, I will have a new faux #30 installed.  The trials and tribulations of aging.  All I can say is I am glad to have some money set aside for such things and don't have to go around with a rotten tooth or a hole in my mouth forever. The surgeon says the second molars do 90% of the chewing, kind of a key tooth, I wouldn't want to live without.

Otherwise life is moving along.  I was happy to get my 60 cloves of garlic in the ground last week, to be 60 heads for next year. 

Discovered this cluster of hardy cyclamen popping up out of the leaf litter last week that made me want to plant loads more. What a nice surprise, those delicate pink petals sweeping up to the sky.

The first frost finally came on the night of October 18. That prompted the digging of the sweet potatoes.  About 5 gallons are currently curing under the bed.  Much smaller than last years beasts, but that's alright, I actually prefer the smaller ones to roast whole into sweet nuggets that can be eaten skin and all.  We covered up the peppers because they are still loaded wth big green fruits that I want to ripen and also the green beans, so we are still harvesting from those.

The fall crops seem happy and the frost slowed down the caterpillars a bit for which I am grateful.  So now we move into meals with many greens; lettuce, tatsoi, kale, collards and eventually I hope some cabbages and broccoli, despite their late planting.

Another cool thing recently was Leonard Bergey and his beautiful team of Percheron horses who came over to plow one of the pastures up on the creamery.  Such gorgeous animals and Leonard is masterful with the gentle giants, he is a whisperer for sure.

OK- off to a bowl of soup prepared by my handsome nurse David.  (Please forgive any percocet induced misspelling or poor grammar within this post.)