Erin's land journal

It rained yesterday, and the night before that. It's been a good soaking rain, the kind we rarely get these days. This is the May long weekend and the previous couple long weekends folks have cancelled their quad parties in the bush because it's been so dry that sparks or the heat of the vehicle could start fires (I still do not know what a "poker ride" is, though I have suspicions). This year things may have been cancelled for rain, though we definitely had sunny periods, but the spate of fires that comes immediately after this weekend seems unlikely to materialize.

The ground had been almost too try to till in my clay soil, even a month or two before last frost date. I had been picking away at it, a hundred or two hundred square feet at a time, and had done a first pass on the pig winter field (which needs a better name) and the upper field, and was just starting on the back field that has snowmelt running down over it for weeks when the snow first disappears. This will make my second pass much easier.

I'd got some pre-started brassica greens in the ground, then the other day put out the broccoli and kale, and yesterday planted some peas finally. We're still dipping below zero some nights -- never the nights when it rains -- and there are tiny delicate skims of ice on the water in containers on those mornings if I get out there early enough.

Yesterday before the rain I planted three heartnut and three buartnut by the fence in the back field to see if the juglone they produce (when they're a little bigger) will suppress the aspen from coming across the fence from the neighbour's place.

When Josh was here we drove into Alberta and picked up some excellent hardy plums and apples, which we planted. The apples are leafed out now, they went into the orchard (mostly on siberian rootstock) and the plums look to be following suit shortly.

Those bulbs I planted last fall have been coming up -- no peonies yet, but squill, daffodils, muscari, etc. They aren't so much coming up en masse, as makes sense for the first year, but there's a nice long season of them. A couple test daffodils in the orchard have not yet been eaten by geese, which is excellent news.

Many of the bulbs were planted in little clumps around the baby apple seedlings I put in last fall. Not all of those survived but many did.

I'm hauling my peppers and tomatoes onto the deck everyday for hardening off, and festooning the livingroom with them every night. Yesterday when I brought them in the were wet with rainwater.

I also put some beaked hazel in, and an order of hardy roses from corn hill. I have a bundle of hazelbert waiting to go in as well, but those last dead spruce trees from the winter field were felled right onto the spot I want them to go and apparently chainsawing destroys my body.

Wheelbarrowing in moderation and tilling seem ok for the hour of activity per day though, so I've been doing those, bringing up the chicken compost to the fields. The tiller is so good because it's rear tine so it pulls itself along and I have the handles to lean on as I walk behind. I'm being as kind to it as I know how, checking the fluids regularly, but haven't yet brought myself to change the oil. It's still starting well.

The front yard has been mostly fenced off from the geese, except for a trio who keep getting out, laying an egg in the dog house which Thea then eats or cherishes, and asking to be let back in at the gate. They are keeping my grass down somewhat so that's fine.

I hired the neighbour a couple down to chop up the fallen south fenceline aspens and burn the tops for me. He did an excellent job, was great company, and I now feel more comfortable about the fuel load by my house and more comfortable in the neighbourhood. I need to cover that south bank with compost and chips and plant into it -- I already put two little leaf lindens but want to add some elm, ash, and oak plus a shrub layer of some kind, likely usask cherries and currants. that's the same slope my clove currant is thriving on and my haskaps do well on too, and it gets more heat than anything else in the area. Maybe some wild plum or plum seedlings to?

A semilocal (Edmonton) vocational high school was doing a scionwood sale as a fundraiser so I ordered some sticks of apple and plum. Its in the fridge (I have a (small) seed fridge now given me by a friend) while I figure out rootstocks. A friend locally has a bunch of apple suckers, someone else in a cold climate has been successfully grafting apple onto *wild saskatoons*, someone was having a sale on wild plums, I have some plums that the tops died off and they're just mustang rootstock, plus there's topworking on existing plum trees. So I have some options, I'm just limited to an hour or, if I'm lucky, two, per day.

The whole thing makes me happy but it makes be even more of a recluse because leaving the house takes up two days worth of activity and I would rather be gardening. Pottery is on hold. Disability paperwork is mostly settled. Most other things can wait.

A hundred tomato varieties-ish this year. Normally I would list them out for you (and myself in posterity) but making lists is hard and I'd rather be gardening. There are roughly three categories: "early hardy reds" "fancy trial tomatoes" and "my own crosses in F2 and F3".

Eightyish hot pepper varieties too, spanning all the major species except chinense. I do love those plants, they grow so differently from tomatoes. They'd rather err on the side of dry than wet. They flower and leaf so prettily. A colorado and the mystery athens peppers overwintered in the house and are doing great now too.

I also picked up a kaffir lime for indoors, which makes my house smell truly amazing, and some baby figlets are on order, because um. I guess I'm letting myself do what I want.

Yesterday I planted runner beans, marigolds, nasturtiums, woad, and chickpeas indoors to go out when the seedlings are big enough to make a visible row in the garden (difficulty of a bit weedy garden is that direct seeding plants I'm not intimately familiar with takes a lot of concentration to ID, not that I can;t ID nasturtium and runner beans). Runner beans are supposed to be happier in slightly cooler weather than standard phasesolus and I feel able to provide them support this year.

There are several projects that need doing, fencing and deconstructing excess pig buildings and making a woodshed and putting in some proper gates, but those can all be done later.

I really should take down the hedging cedars right up against my front balcony for fire reasons but I like the screen they provide from the road. The hope is to put a solarium there instead, with some sort of adhesive glass frosted stuff in the road direction, but that's a long ways away.

There's big stuff going on in the world, many people dying and many more deciding that some group or another needs to die. It's abhorrent. It's happening locally and internationally. I read about it more than I want, and I garden because I'd rather be doing that than reading. I can't tell you how lucky I feel to have this garden, better than I ever believed I could have in my whole life, and these cats and dogs and geese ranging around with their own individualities making up a community I can tolerate and that always wants me to be alive. They even take joy in my physical existence, which is so good for my heart.

Writing this feels superficial, but words have power, and so: I wish this for everyone in the world. A safe home, a loving community that feels joy in their existence. Safety. Life. Enough food of the kind that makes them stop sometimes and just say "this is so good". I wish this for everyone. Please.

The first tomatoes to ripen outside this year were:

Some hummingbird f2s. These are from Joseph Lofthouse and most are about pea-sized. Genetics are roughly 50% pimpinelifolium, 35% domestic, with some pennellii and some habrochaites. The ones that are ripening are all tiny, and on little, branched plants, mostly in racemes of 6-8. There are two plants with larger fruits that haven't begun ripening yet. I haven't tasted them yet but the fruits are on my counter waiting.

Mission Mountain Sunrise. These plants stay tiny and then just set clusters of fruit. I found one out there ripe before all the others, a gorgeous orange-and-black.

KARMA miracle x sweet cheriette F2. There was a set on my deck that ripened awhile ago, they were pink or orange cherries with a really zippy, lovely flavour like I liked from zesty green. There was also a bright orange grape shaped one in the garden I haven't tasted yet, I bet it'll throw some green babies. Sweet cheriette seems to impart both earliness and a good robust growth up here. Now that I'm sitting here I'm wondering if the ones on the deck were actually zesty green and my memory is failing me, I should check this.

The next ones to ripen will likely be a promiscuous tomato, Ildi, Brad F5, and some of the Mission Mountain Grez as well as some other cheriette crosses.

Corn is slow but it's looking like I'll get something from my morden field crosses and maybe from my sweet corn patch, which is pretty alright.

I harvested a bunch of brassica seed the other day: ethiopian kale (carinata), ultraviolet mustard, and a mix of napa cabbage, pak choi, the aforementioned two, and whatever else was around.

My cinnamon rose is producing hips; I'd like to harvest them and pot them up to hopefully germinate in spring, and do some layering on a couple of my rose branches. Cuisse de nymph did well this year too.

I have some lovely lettuces out there that are unlikely to finalize seed before frost. More interestingly, I have some turnips that are quite small, and densely planted. I'm going to leave them and see if they overwinter through both cold and voles and maybe give me some seed.

Some tomatoes are going to come in for breeding, and I have some F1 seed of zesty green x carbon that just ripened. The other F1s are a zesty green field cross and a taiga x early promiscuous tomato cross.

The dango mugi barley and khorasan grains look like they may ripen nicely, the former more certainly than the latter. The batanka wheat didn't really start up, so maybe it'll overwinter and be a spring wheat? We'll see. The sumire mochi barley only one stalk survived, and this is the second time I've had that happen. It's not happy here I guess.

My apple seedlings need to go in the ground to overwinter, but that means tilling somewhere. After I get the disability forms filled out I'm hoping to do that, but right now the thinking involved in disability stuff is just laying me out in bed.

Luckily I have a rotating selection of cats to help me with that and the show Time Team.

The transparent-type apples are near ripe, and I'm very much looking forward to them. The branches really bend under their weight, until the geese can grab and shake the apples off, but then the branches rebound and leave some for me.

I harvested a very large amount of rhubarb seed, an dI should remember to harvest some sweet ciciley seed.

That's all my mind will do right now, but it's the important stuff anyhow.

I walked down to the highwayside of my property today to hang a red dress along the highway. I very very rarely go there -- it's a wildlife corridor along the highway, in my mind, and not really for me to mess with. I noticed a bunch of stuff.

For one, there's a lot of water down there. The cattle dugout behind my fence trickles down into the aspen woods, and at the far end of those woods by the highway there's one of these ephemeral ponds. I had to look closely to make sure it wasn't a beaver pond, but of course there's not enough of a stream for it to be beaver. When the glaciers scraped over this land not too long ago, and when the big glacial lake was settling into the Prince George and Stuart Lake areas, a lot of clay-bottomed wetlands were formed. These are basically impermeable shallow basins that fill up with overland flow water, and then dry out by the end of the year if there's no reliable inflow.

There are also a lot of trails. They're obviously animal trails; it's unclear to me how much of the paths through grass, wildflowers, young trees, and larger forest are Solly, how much are large animals, and how much are made by smaller ones. That said, I saw droppings from the young moose, deer droppings, and at the southwest corner of the property many poops from a very large bear. I also mostly didn't have to duck for the paths through smaller trees. So it looks like my wildlife area is doing what it's supposed to and providing habitat, kind of as a tithe for using the rest of the land.

I think they also recently did some culvert work under the highway down there. My highwayside ditch is significantly wetter than I ever remember. We're still in a low-level drought, and the last couple years have been heavy drought, and it really matters seasonally what time I go there as to whether there's water. But still. Lotta water.

I didn't see clear signs of smaller predators like foxes, coyotes, or lynx but I also wasn't really looking. I know foxes hang out at my neighbours. I also see them on the highway or in parking lots every once in awhile.

Anyhow, Solly is doing a fantastic job in the back and she's a very good girl. Now if only she could stop eating her collars. Everyone has a microchip and their vaccines now (I would have assumed everyone who was neutered got a chip but turns out they didn't. That's now remedied) but as the stray cat reminded me it's nice for people to know someone is owned by some sort of clear sign, especially since she's so skinny. She is in fact skinny enough from jumping the fence and running around that I'm going to put her on a puppy or performance food for awhile and see if that helps.

Today was a very active day -- planted several garden rows with corn (gaspe x saskatoon bicolour ears), gold rush beans, batanka wheat, dango mughi barley, zesty green x silvery fir tree F2 tomatoes, some napa kind cabbage starts, and then marker calendula and radishes in with those seeds. I'm just doing a couple rows at a time but I'm working through it. Then there was the walk back to the highway.

So I spent the rest of time splitting love among the cats. I can't imagine how someone can dump an animal that is so openly affectionate. Normally my imagination is pretty good, but my neighbour who's done some cat rescue says this is "the season" and having enough folks do it that there's a season? Ugh.

My counselor and I were brainstorming what I'd need to live on if I can't work anymore, and how that might look. I've been feeling that this life, which I love, has an expiry date and maybe so should I in that case. I can't imagine giving up my animals -- my family -- and my ability to grow things. I can't picture just languishing on Mom's or a friend's second bed until my body annoys them into kicking me out.

I could be happy here even if the deterioration continues; emotionally I can handle not being able to think or move much, just lying with my dogs, getting up when I can. As long as I can feed myself and run the house -- paring away the extra animals, if there was a way to get supportive infrastructure and maybe replace wood with fully electric heat, set up a hydrant in the field so I don't need to carry water, fix the road into the back pasture so I don't need to carry feed as far. I'm not sure how I'd do that with less money but it left me with a sense of hope, that maybe it wouldn't need to be November that this life is over, but could be longer.

Either way I'm happy now, and happy to have had this.

I could spend a lot of time being frustrated that more prompt access to the medical system might actually have meant I didn't have to worry about this, that it's possible a couple timely specialist appointments would have meant I'd be perfectly ok right now, but there'll be time to do that if I do in fact lose my job because of it.

I'm still struggling with the idea that I might have to go on disability just to wait for specialists to get back to me, not because I'm irreparably sick but because I just haven't got to that right pill yet, if it exists. I can't imagine shifting my whole outlook to being ok with a lesser and continuously lessening level of functionality for a couple years, then getting used to the idea of going back to work full time after that again. It feels dislocating? Though I've got used to things I can't imagine before, I suppose.

None of this should maybe be as alarming as it sounds, but things are definitely deteriorating and I don't see any reason they should stop unless I can actually manage to get appointments with folks -- my doctor is currently scheduling four months out except there's maybe one to two days per month you can call in to get an appointment, after that her schedule is full and you have to try and hit the window next month. I can call the nurse's line and see what they recommend but just doing this stuff takes basically 80% of the capacity I have, and I can't navigate the system and work at the same time.

Today was the Steven Edholm apple order day. He lives in a much warmer climate than I do in California, but he hand-crosses lots of neat stuff. This is the third year I've ordered apple seeds from him; I don't expect a super high survival rate but I do order carefully from crosses with at least one hardy parent (preferably the mother, though I'm not sure how much difference that makes). Open-pollinated seeds from a hardy parent are cheap, where hand crosses are less cheap but still a very small investment overall. For apples the big investment is land for them to hang out for 5-10 years before they fruit. In most places that's a big ask. Here a place without moose to eat the trees to the ground is a big ask (thank you, dogs).

Anyhow, he focuses on red-fleshed and long-hanging apples. Long-hanging apples don't work here between bears and the fact that they need many months to ripen and super cold temps, but I can peel off the short-season hardy ones and capture some of the flavours he favours: berry, cherry, savory.

Plus this year I have some crabapples from ecos/oikos farm to plant. In general I receive these too late to plant on any given year so they wait for the next year but it's possible this year's edholm ones will arrive by Feb, which means there will be time to rehydrate and cold stratify them before planting and I'll have two years' worth of seeds to plant, maybe 300 babies in all plus the ecos ones.

I cannot possibly describe how hard it is to wait to see which ones survived from last year. Some died in the drought -- they were being watered but they just crisped up anyhow. Some didn't put on any height and just hung out. Some shot up, mostly those with Wickson or Kingston Black as a parent. During the winter some might also drought out despite the snow, and they may become tasty treats for voles. Then I expect some to be cold-killed even though we still haven't gone below -15C or so. Granted, they are covered in snow so they're pretty insulated from snaps, but I have no idea what percentage will make it through. As always I am very curious about this winter's temperatures anyhow, and if it stays above -25C that's a good couple climate zones warmer than normal so then next winter will be another big test.

Parents I'm interested in: Wickson (a hardy, very tasty big crab that grows fast babies), trailman (a super hardy crab), Williams Pride (a just-hardy but very early and tasty apple), Sweet 16 (a descendent of Wickson and a more full-sized, very tasty, and hardy apple), roxbury russet (I adore russets but they don't usually ripen here. I'm planning to drive something like 12 hours one way to get a couple hardy ones, one of these years, but in the meantime investing in seeds crossed with shorter-season varieties seems like a good middle ground), cherry cox (cherry flavour!!), and some apples edholm has created basically with those parents crossed in for good measure.

The saskatoons are huge in town, the size of grapes, and they're bending the bushes over. Mine were like that last year but without water this year are much more scarce. I wonder if the roots go down deep enough to drink from the lake water table in town? My hands are purple from eating them on my walk from the mechanic's at lunch.

It'll be interesting to see how they're doing out away from town. Bears are already showing up in town, or rather never left. The little one in back of my place has stuck around too. I hope we have a good salmon year. We've had a couple significant bear birthing years in a row now - lots of triplets- and it's no good having a bunch of starving bears converge on town, though it will inevitably happen sooner or later I think.

I've been enjoying the bird app. Lots of swainson's thrushes, song sparrows, violet-green swallows (though the salmonflies hatched and they fledged and I think a bunch of them went to the lake) and a while bunch of other sparrows, some swallows, some robins, the red-winged blackbird, some flickers. Amusingly it thought one of my ducks was a heron, and my young chickens were goldfinches. It can be hard to find a time when ducks, geese, pigs, dogs, and fire helicopters are quiet enough so I can hear the actual birds with the app, but every second day or so there'll be a moment when I'm walking Solly out back.

Did I mention I've been using the hammock out back daily to several times per day? It's by the newly planted orchard, which with the heat, the new dog, the new trees, and the garden I've been spending a bunch of time in. Even with the smoke I do take the dog out back (she's learning not to chase birds and cats, so she needs supervision still) and on my bad days I'm pretty wobbly by the time I get out there so having somewhere to sit/lie is amazing. It's a double hammock and set pretty low to the ground, so I can lie sideways in it or longways. Next step is to pop some sort of high-tech piece of warm-but-compressible fabric into a drybag and hang it on a branch for the cooler days out there. Goodness knows I won't get around to sewing all my warm bits till winter. I walked 8k today dealing with getting the exhaust fixed on my truck, so I should be good for it, but it's just so nice not to have to worry about staying upright so many times per day.

Still enjoying a little interlude of cool and kinda damp breeze before the heat is supposed to pick up again. The evac alert and order on the fire by my house is currently rescinded, which is lovely. As always, an unpredictable season and more so than most this time.

Solstice/solly nee keesa arrived today. I picked her up a two-hour drive away, she'd already been in a truck an hour and a half to get to me. Her people were very nice, and very grateful I think that they found her a good home. She was carsick but put on a good face.

Thea accepted her somewhat nervously, perhaps because it was Way Too Hot and she didn't want to move much. Thea is such a good girl. Avallu DID NOT accept her on first meeting, unsurprisingly, so now I'm doing some rotation/separation so they can get used to each other's scents and stuff.

She's going to be a big girl, she's a little taller than Thea right now but in the super skinny adolescent stage. She's probably as long as Avallu already. When I'm sitting on the ground she's taller than me.

I was definitely contractually obligated to snuggle everyone -- Thea to reassure her she was being so good, Solly because she was in a new scary space and also is a go-out-and-return-to-snuggle snugglebug, Avallu to help him regulate, Whiskey because he got too close to Solly when she was eating and got snarled at, Hazard because everyone else was getting attention...

All in all, not a bad start. Will need to spend lots of time with Avallu and Solly's intros though.

No elderberry resolution, but I've been thinking:

One of my major fencing issues is that dogs need to be able to pass through all fences to protect livestock and also to access the house with their food etc. I want to keep geese, pigs, and ideally ducks and chickens out of the area around the house though. I'd been thinking I'd need to build a dog door into a piece of plywood in the fence, to let the dogs through, but today I had a new idea. What if I made part of the fence a 2' wide/tall section of roofing tin? The dogs can easily hop over that without it training them to hop over normal fences. Pigs will be unlikely to pass through it unless very motivated since they don't like going through something they can't see (it would be a secondary fence system for the pigs in case they got out of electric; not a primary system where they'd have time to learn to hop it). Geese could fly over it but if there was food and water and grass on their side they'd be unlikely to, and likewise the ducks. The top is sharpish, so they're unlikely to hop onto it and then over. Chickens and muscovies will just fly over but with just them around the house there should be less of a mess and I may end up confining the chickens anyhow.

That said, here are the elderberry considerations:

Fence along the road: this would be a really great place to have them. Those spruce trees are dying and it would be nice to replace them with a screen that's not just aspen. The soil is relatively rich and something with reaching roots could capture ditch water. However, it's pretty grassy and there's a dog trail there so the babies would have lots of competition and not be well protected. They'd also be shaded by the remaining spruce trees. This might be a better place to plant test apples?

South fence by the berries: they'd be just south of three apple trees on antonovka rootstock (very small now), and south of my berries, but there's a big slope here. If they're at the bottom of the slope they'll get good moisture without baking too badly and they won't be shaded by the apples, but they will shade some of my berries over time. The bottom of the slope has pretty dense turf, though the rest of the slope has been well cardboard-and-mulched. This area will always be fighting off grass since the grass will be coming through the fence from the neighbour's pasture. It's certainly not a candidate for more apple trees, and theoretically the elderberries would be able to compete well after a couple years, especially if I cardboard them regularly.

Pig fence south: this is between apple trees on B118. It's pretty sunny, receives a ton of moisture from the slope of the winter pigpen to the north, and will be between my potato bed and the pigpen so would have relatively little grass competition. They would shade the garden after a couple years but it's a good slope, so when the sun goes high in summer it would be fine. There would mostly be shade in fall as the sun got lower. This is a high goose-activity area so they'd need to be well protected; the apple trees here got some nibbly setbacks. This area is a bit shaded by the house, a fold in the ground, and the sinking shed.

South fence by the house: mom cleared this area under the aspens last year. It gets lots of sun and is more open than I'd like. It needs plant screening, though because it's on the slope it could use some tall screening to actually impact the yard. This wouldn't shade any garden space. The ground itself is pretty hard and dry both because it's the south-slopiest and because of all the aspens there. The aspens need to go but maybe putting plants under there before the aspens are gone would damage the plants when the aspens were coming down.

Pig fence north, between pigs and woodfield: this is a little complex. The fence is currently at the top of a short, steep slope; the pigs can access the slope. They're eroding it. They love lying on it in the sun. If I plant on the slope itself it would stabilize the slope, and the elderberries would be down a bit so they wouldn't shade the woodfield garden too much. On the other hand I'd need to move the fence to the bottom of the slope for that since the pigs would just uproot the elderberries. The fence is lots of wood right now and shades the woodfield so that would be good to do. The spot gets near full sun. If moving the fence was easy I'd definitely decide on this spot. As it is I could plant directly on the other side of the fence from the pigs, on the flat, and the roots might still help stabilize. They'd shade the woodfield garden though and that's the sandy flat garden that's my most conventional growing conditions. If I'm ever going to get root crops it'll be up there. OTOH I have been thinking of putting apple trees up there, and elderberries to the south of apples is a perfect shade situation. Also then I couldn't run pigs in this field for a couple years, and after that not for long.

Woodfield fence north: northernmost edge of my property. Always nice to have screening around this sort of area. If I plant apple trees in the woodfield they will shade the elderberries but not for a couple years at least. Right now it's in full sun and if I retain it as a field it will remain that way. Again the grass creeps through from the (other) neighbour's pasture but depending on how close to the fence I plant it's clear right now and I can cardboard around it. I'd like a mixed-species hedgerow to end up here eventually and I will certainly plant other things in here so the elderberry seems like a good start. Any perennials here will require me to mostly exclude the pigs from this area.

Between woodfield and back field: this is a bit messy right now, that fence is falling down. Because it's a north-south line rather than an east-west one it creates less shade, and is itself in the shade of two spruce trees for a bit of each day. I'd have to redo the fence but I guess if I put them here I wouldn't be letting the pigs in much so they could replace the fence in some ways. There's a bit of grass, sod, and aspen in one corner of this space, preserved as a bit of a refugia for critters in the middle of the long garden. Not sure how much competition it would be for the babies.

Between the back field and the back pasture: at the base of the slope back field garden, to the south, there's a ridge of soil pushed down by pigs. It's a foot or two in from the fence, where the electric fence was, and it's a long, great planting site. Shortish woody perennials here would give nice shade to the bottom of the garden and they could be planted on that berm. However, they will shade the garden. This is a spot I've been considering a mixed hedge just because it's so easy to plant into. I don't want too much visual screening because I want to be able to see into the field from the house. Again grass will come through the fence but less so since my pasture is grazed. A row of sour cherries and plums would be stunning here. Elderberries would be a bit taller but could be cut back?

Thaw has been proceeding remarkably quickly. Every day snow is peeled off and water trickles downhill. Yesterday I took some time to walk the property after work. It's been awhile since I could do this in the afternoon; the snow crust is firm from overnight frost but mushy in the warm afternoon so previously it meant stepping through knee-deep snow which isn't really much fun. Yesterday I stuck mostly to my previous tracks and dog trails and the snow never topped my farm boots.

My south slope is nearly clear of snow. I planted haskaps and romance cherries on this a couple years ago, together with three apple trees on antonovka (full sized) rootstock: September Sun, Wealthy, and Goodland. The Wealthy was girdled by voles back to below the graft union two years ago, and all were nibbled by geese that year; this year the September Sun and Goodland have new shoots of a couple feet from above the graft line, and what used to be Wealthy sent up several good shoots from the antonovka stock. Antonovka is supposed to make a pretty ok apple tree.

With the snow gone I was able to get a good look at that south slope. Last summer/fall I'd done cardboard over it with year-composted chicken bedding over that and coarse unchipped aspen saplings over that. While that was supposed to help alleviate the fact that it's a hot, baking-dry hill with layers of shade and organic material it did also prevent water infiltrating evenly during our super dry hot fall and I was concerned voles would find a playground under the cardboard all winter and just girdle everything.

While some of the haskaps have die-back, I imagine either from the drought or from the quick, deep cold we got when we dropped below -30C with no snow on the ground, some do not and the apples look good. I couldn't see any vole damage on the apples or the romance cherries, which I believe to be the voles' favourites. While the hillside looks deeply messy, it also has a satisfying understory look to my eye: I like those bigger, inch-or-so branches beginning to go brown and black and signal a very slow slump into soil. My plan is to continue to add a layer or two like this every couple years: some slow-decomposing material, some cardboard, and some animal bedding. I want the soil to develop a top organic layer with embedded wood in various stages of decomposition. This is also probably the fastest-decomposing place on my property, just because it's so warm and sunny.

Into that messy-looking slope of branches and bedding I need to (very quickly) seed some lettuce, poppies, calendula, edible chrysanthemum, and maybe a couple other greens and/or flowers. I'd like them to get the jump on whatever weeds are in the animal bedding.

Come to think of it, maybe I should put the poppies in a location that doesn't have edible greens/flowers so there are no mistakes when picking. They go well with small grains, I think.

Just above that steeper south slope is the spot I planted my garlic trial. I'm very interested to see if any of it survives.

Meanwhile the rhubarb is still under several feet of snow: microclimates are real. Increments of slope and shade make such a huge difference. I can't quite see the ground in my field gardens: it's a plain of slowly-subsiding snow punctuated by cornstalks and lamb's quarters seedstalks and around each stem is a dip that almost, almost shows the ground. Any object sticking out of the snow collects heat on the south side, melting more deeply, and most of them screen heat on the north side to leave a little mound. Metal fences collect heat and stand in their own dips. It is a good time of year to learn about sunshine and heat.

It's also seed-starting time. I'm trying to remember to pick up soil on my way home from work today so I can get everything started this weekend. I want to not just start tomatoes and peppers and potatoes, but also get the apple seeds from my fridge into soil. I'm very curious to see how they do.

I do not have a labelling solution for this year and I'm upset about it.

I'm debating buying more apple trees this spring (the best time for planting trees is always yesterday, the second best is now). I have elderberry cuttings I can almost get into the ground. I need to figure out which dimensions of frost cloth I want to get, which means remeasuring my fields and deciding on planting patterns/bed shape. I am not ready to make those decisions, but it needs to happen so the frost cloth can get here on time.

My first greenhouse's cover is definitely destroyed. I'm costing out plastic and wiggle wire to re-cover it. Five winters isn't a bad run, and the frame is still good. It was one of those pop-up ones. I also need to figure out how to re-cover the woodshed, ideally with something more permanent, and maybe I need to decide if I want it to stay there first.

During the winter the power company came along and straightened up the power poles along the road, they were leaning pretty badly. I honestly am pretty skeptical of the whole thing since my understanding is that if a mix of snow and dirt is used to prop up a pole, when the snow melts you're gonna have issues even if regular frost heaving wasn't a thing. But, that's not my problem. What I'm interested in is the bare, disturbed, and now snow-free ground outside my fence along the road there where I'm considering dropping some of my extra raspberry canes and some comfrey roots. I don't want to pay for something that deer might eat, so my first idea of haskaps wasn't great, but I have a ton of extra raspberry runners.

All the other apples seem to have come through without vole damage too, which is very strange. I know the cats were much less busy this winter than they were other years, and there's less vole damage than I've seen before so far. This year I really need to get vole collars on them all; I did most but not all last fall and it's just luck that everything made it through.

The Zestar! apples might have a bit of southwest disease damage, we'll see how they do. This was their first winter here.

So: spring, kind of unexpectedly early. I wasn't quite thinking I'd see the ground anywhere quite yet.

Hunkered down against the cold all night - my bedroom is pretty comfortable - but when I got up the wall thermostat came on, and when the sun came up it was -36C on the deck. That's Too Cold, and the temperature isn't rising with the daylight as we'd hoped. I was waiting for the temperature to rise a touch before I checked the animals -- no one is up and about out there, they're all staying in their warm shelters -- but it doesn't look like it's going to to that. I am displeased.

The house is making loud sharp noises from time to time. Some of them are icicles breaking off the chimney and falling onto the roof; others are just things shifting and settling. It's over a 50C temperature differential between in and out so I can hardly blame it.

I can see where all the draughts are this morning: the north window has ice on a spot on the frame, the crack between the patio doors (which to be fair always freezes like that) has frost for an inch or two on either side of the bottom, and the dog door seals at the bottom but not at the sides so frost creeps in there too (and the plastic gets a little stiff at this temp, so the outer of the three flaps doesn't always close perfectly, which is non-ideal). It's not cold enough for ice on the inside of the downstairs doorhandle yet.

I cut back the big peppers by the patio door and drew that side of the curtains, which I think means putting a light under the desk for them. Next up will be filming the north window so it can stop blowing cold air onto the sofa. It's a -- do you call it a dormer if it's got a flat top? -- kinda bay window thing and from the ground it looks to not be sealed under the eaves so well either, a piece of wood and some spray foam may go a long way out there. But, not at -36.

I also popped an oil heater in the downstairs bathroom, which doesn't have its own heat, and made sure the dryer vent flap was closed (lint tends to accumulate and prop it open a crack, so I gave it a good clean-out the other day, it does seem to be closing well now). That whole laundry room could use better insulation, including the 6' of dryer vent that I am certain has ice on it right now and including the plywood that the fuse panel is set into (but that's challenging because there are a lot of wires and I'm not sure how to insulate around them).

Work discourages outdoor work below -20C (must work in pairs, etc) and forbids it below -35C. I have to say, it does make me a little nervous to go far in this weather. If something happens I won't have my phone, because the battery doesn't work at these temps, so little things can quickly get big.

Having said that, it's not getting any warmer so I'd better go out and take care of those animals in the scary cold. Bets on whether the water tap is frozen? If it's not, my little polar fleece sewn faucet cover gets "object of the year" award.