outdoors

Seeds Ordered

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I did it. I ordered my seeds yesterday.  A commitment has been made.  Now all that’s left is the layout.

My favorite gardens have been potagers.  They are functional and beautiful.  They are interesting enough so I want to weed them and keep them clean (alright, sorta weeded and clean).  One of the real reasons I love potagers so much is the look on Russell’s face when he sees it.  He’s a straight row kind of guy and he always looks at my garden with scepticism.  It makes me laugh. My garden has rows, just not all rows.  I like things to have a certain whimsy about them yet be functional at the same time.  I always plant things for the birds, bees and butterflies.  I like color. Consequently I plant things that other people don’t.  I love Scarlet Runner Beans.  They are beautiful to grow.  Hummingbirds and butterflies love them.  I love picking the beans at the end of the season and marveling at their bright purple and pink spots. I can’t say that I like eating them so I plant them with another pole bean that I will eat and put up.

Each year I look through my past garden plans to see where the potatoes or tomatoes were planted in the past few years so I can rotate them around.  The potatoes are always planted in rows because of the ease in hilling but I plant the tomatoes in all different configurations.  This year I may plant blocks or circles of separate varieties instead of  in rows.  I also will be planting fewer varieties, but maybe more yellows. My new seed for the year will be Tom Thumb popcorn.  I always try something totally different.  Corn isn’t a do or die for me so when I plant it I do it totally out of curiosity.  I figure it’ll probably turn into fodder for raccoons but you don’t know until you try.

Things to remember this year is to add a lot of compost before I till.  Stake the tomatoes early (so they don’t get away from me).  Get more caution tape for fencing – yes, works better than anything I’ve found although it isn’t all that pretty. Sharpen the weeding tools.

Best of all I will be cleaning off the Adirondack chairs in preparation for relaxing and enjoying the view.

A Whole Different World

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When I got up this morning this is what I saw looking out of an upstairs bedroom window.  Pictures sometimes don’t do justice to the reality.  It was stunningly beautiful out (and quite warm as well).

 

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I took another photo from the living room window – the snow bank is what is up over the windows.  I didn’t think we were going to see that this year, I was wrong.  It will be months before I can go out the patio door.

 

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It was so nice out that I decided to put on the snowshoes and walk down to the back forty before I left to go back to Enfield.  I swear Chester intentionally photo bombs every picture I take.  He’s like that, it’s all about him.

 

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This is the second time this winter I’ve seen this.  I always count those days as special because the beauty is extraordinary.  These are also the days that are so peaceful and quiet.  Nothing but bird song.  The songs are changing now.  It’s beginning to sound like spring even with all of this snow the birds are coming back.

 

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Looking back at the outbuildings the snow makes everything look so clean, fresh.

 

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We all enjoyed our little trek out back, breathing the fresh air and listening to the birds.  I got into my car and by the time I’d reached Route 2 in Charlemont the world had changed.  It looked more like spring there, with much less snow.  By the time I got to Enfield it was a whole different world.  Nothing but mud and puddles.  This time of year it amazes me the difference in two places that are really not that far away from each other.  This is when I remember that the growing season in Enfield starts 3 weeks earlier than it does in Rowe.  As much as I like spring I have to say I’ll take a snowy morning like this morning’s any day.

Snow Day

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Today, while everyone had a miserable rainy day, we had another day of snow.  I had come up to be here when they changed the internet from satellite to DSL.  I went to bed after 11:30 last night and was seeing the moon peaking through clouds.  This morning there was about 6 inches on the ground at 7 a.m.  Verizon showed up about 9 and did a cursory drive through then called about a half hour later to say everything was all set.  I spent the next 4 hours trying to get it all to work.  It is now so I will stop complaining.

The snow is very heavy and wet.  Jay came to plow and had a difficult time moving it much of anywhere.  I shoveled a little and played with the dogs.  Chester was excited about the snow but now so much about how wet he got while he was in it.  The wind is really picking up now and it’s still coming down.

I have a nice fire going in the fireplace and think I may pour myself a glass of wine.  Then I will do a little rug hooking or read a good book.  There’s a lot to be said for a snow day.

 

Bitter, Bitter Cold

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I have to admit I took this photograph a few weeks ago when there was less snow and was warm enough to walk out to the back forty.  This past weekend it was so cold the farthest I ventured was the doorway of the shed.  There is still a lot of snow with a crust of ice on the top of it so I wasn’t that interested in snowshoeing.  The dogs didn’t even stay outdoors for long.  Chester made his usual rounds to see what was up with his peeps on either side of us but he spent most of his time in front of the fireplace.

Yesterday the wind was howling and it got up to 17 degrees.  Mid afternoon with the wind chill is was -4.  By last night they were saying -18.  There’s a big difference between having the temperature below zero on a still, cloudless evening and when it’s there because you are having 30 mile per hour winds.  I rather like those still evenings with the snow crunching beneath your feet and it’s so quiet you can hear your electric meter running.  With yesterday’s wind you couldn’t cover up enough.

This is when I start thinking “enough”, I’m ready for spring.  The seed order will be placed this week and I will plot out the garden on graph paper (a few more times).  Sometimes just thinking about the garden makes it feel like spring is almost here!

Hello Old Friends

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130210 Snowshoe

 

Yes, by now everyone has heard about the snow in the northeast.  We left for Rowe in the morning on Friday after finding someone to clear our driveway in Enfield after that fateful event.  It snowed, it was a blizzard but waking up on Saturday morning with the wind still blowing and it being in the mid teens in temperature we stayed inside next to a fire.  Reports began to come in from the daughters – one in Enfield, one in Boston about the amount of snow and their cars being buried or nearly invisible.  They had their shovels and food, hadn’t lost power, were working their way through the mess with everyone else around them.  What they had in southern and eastern MA and CT was not really what we had in Rowe.  We had a good snowstorm – anywhere from 15 to 18 inches of white, fluffy snow, what they had was monumental.  The problems in those urban areas were compounded by an inability of the cities and states to handle the amount of snow they received.  I can tell you there are a lot of trucks today with blown transmissions that failed the task of plowing out streets, parking lots and driveways.

Sunday morning the winds had died and the temperature rose to a balmy 30 degrees.  We decided to get the snowshoes out.  We use beautiful vintage models made in Maine in years gone by.  The problem was that my leather bindings had broken beyond repair over 2 years ago.  I had scoured the internet and found someone out west that made bindings for these in neoprene.  They’d been kicking around the house for almost 2 years since there really hadn’t been enough snow to take them out (or I was too lazy to rebind them).  I was also a little skeptical that they would be as good as the old ones and was really contemplating dusting off the old leather working skills to just make another pair.  The weather was just too nice to watch Bill snowshoe away and sit in the house so I dug those neoprene bindings out.  What a chore that turned out to be.  The instructions were vague at best.  I’m pretty good at reverse engineering something but none of the new straps were marked so I had to guess.  Fitting my boots into the bindings on a table was a lot easier than doing it in the snow and finally we were ready to go.

Chester went with us, the little dogs stayed behind.  We have learned from experience that if you take them out in deep snow with snowshoes all they do is walk on the backs of your shoes, not fun or funny. So Sophie spent the entire time we were gone looking out the window from the back of the chair at a snow bank barking – she couldn’t even see us.  Chester took this opportunity to bring a tennis ball and played an extended game of fetch.  Extended because he continually lost that ball in the snow and would take forever to find it.

It was nice to walk out to the wood lot, a place we have difficulty getting to in other seasons due to beaver activity.  It was so quiet and beautiful out there.  The only noise was an occasional crow or chickadee with the sound of the snow beneath our shoes.

This is winter as it should be, outdoors, quiet.  And those new bindings?  Spectacular!

130210 Bill and Chester (1)

Quiet Beauty

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It seems as if it snows every day in Rowe.  Last night we had maybe a half an inch of light, fluffy snow.  It settles on the trees and shrubs and waits for a breeze to come along and blow it to the ground.  There is such quiet beauty here.  The sun came up this morning competing with the low clouds shrouding everything in a pink glow, wonderful.

Equine Dreams

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720601 Jo with Hilliers on Jingles

 

For starters I can’t believe I’m actually putting this photograph on a post but I think it’s the only one I have of me and Jingles.  I think it’s one of maybe three that I have of that horse at all.  Before the age of digital photography you had to pay for each image you took. Not only that but it was more of a project.  Buy the film, expose the film, bring it to have it processed, wait a week or more, pick it up, throw half of them away . . . you get the idea.  My mother wasn’t the most sentimental of people and she was also quite frugal – photographs were not really in the budget (except for those school pictures, ugh). This photograph I believe was actually taken by Eunice Hillier at their house on Ford Hill Rd.  Her youngest John and Sarah are on the horse’s back.  As memory serves this must have been around 1968 or so.  I was 12 or 13 I think.

When my daughters were little we would spend weekends and summers in Rowe and I would tell them stories about the animals we had when I was growing up.  About the horses, cows, sheep, goats, pigs – everything except a dog.  They never believed me.  They would play in the back forty never knowing the number of animals that had happily grazed it for the years that I was growing up there.  In their minds I think it was just impossible to picture their mother with animals they only saw at Forest Park zoo.

I often dream about having another horse, I have a couple of friends that still have them but we are all more realistic these days.  We are much more aware of our physical limitations when it comes to riding.  I think back on the number of times I’ve fallen (or been thrown) from a horse and understand that if I took that kind of fall today I would likely end up with a hospital stay rather than walking it off like a teenager.  I thought maybe a small draft would be good but when I’m more rational in my thinking I know that having a horse is a distant memory.  Still that nagging desire to have something from the equine family is still there.  It probably never goes away.   Hmmmm, maybe a donkey or two.  Something that will be happy grazing the back forty and I can scratch its ears on a daily basis.

Chasing Balls in the Snow

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There is a lot of snow in Rowe, even with the January thaw we’ve been having.  Chester has had to retool his tennis ball games because of it.  His new game is to hunt for the ball once it disappears into the snowy white unknown.  When we toss the ball he keeps his eyes on where he thinks it’s going to land and runs out to find it.

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He will root around in the snow until he comes up with the ball.

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Then he gleefully returns it and waits for the next toss.  He never tires of this game.  I’ve seen him go outdoors by himself with a tennis ball, drop it into a snowbank and dig and dig until he “finds” it. If he loses a ball he will stay out looking for it for hours and will not take a new ball.  You throw him another one and he ignores it.

Bill may have changed the game a little for him yesterday by accident.  He was tossing the ball  and with his last toss it landed in the snow on top of the garage roof.  Chester looked for that ball for a good 3 hours.  Bill tried the substitution but it was a no go.  That dog actually came into the house to warm up and went out again to look for that ball.  Poor Chester.  It looks like an OCD to me.

Poor Sophie

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When Sophie is in Rowe the only thing she wants to do is go outside.  It doesn’t matter what the weather, if someone is outdoors she wants to be there.  When Chester is out there without her she sits on the back of the chair so she can see what he’s doing and what she might be missing. And cries.

The Reclamation Project

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For the past five years we have been working to reclaim some of what was once pasture in the back of the house.  My father always referred to it as the back forty and the name has stuck.  The above photo is a panoramic taken last year at the end of burn season.  We have been picking a spot to clear and burn every winter and work towards that when there isn’t a lot of snow.

This photo is directed towards the back forty and was taken in 2007.  It was completely overgrown with ash, cherry and grapevines.  With the help of family and friends we have been working on restoring a view from the lawn.

In 2009 we achieved an opening and I was thrilled to sit in the adirondack chairs and get a glimpse of the back pasture.  We continued to clear and burn.  Finally in 2011 this was the view we had.

The project continues.  We have reached the stone wall to the south and also to the north although they need to be cleared of smaller trees and bittersweet, a project in itself, as well as freshening up the stonewalls where the stones have fallen to the ground.  At some point we would like to see Adams Mountain again as they once could.

View of Adams Mountain from the back forty taken about 1885.