Summer/ Fa;; 2015 part two

Well what an exciting Halloween! We bought the candy and ar installed a new motion sensor light to light up the yard and guess how many kids we got?

NONE!

ok then. Moving on.  I;m not too sure who is going to eat the Cheesies and Fun sized chocolate bars we bought but I suspect Dar will make a lot of friends at work tomorrow at recess hahaha.

So I finaly remembered to take a pic of the befoer and after of the garage.  We managed to do some rearranging inside, replace a big broken window, put up new exterior lights and oh yea, replace a garage door and install garage door openers.
W

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Summer/Fall 2015

So... we had a fairly busy summer doing not much at all but it took up all of our time somehow.  We only made it camping twice, which made it seem like I just got the thing loaded and turned around to pack it all up and store again.  Oh well - NEXT year!

The garden did well this year, even weathered a hard frost in June which killed everything I had planted.  Remarkably much of those things actually re-grew from dead looking yellowed stems and I ended up with too many tomatoes and lots of volunteers from last year.  People are always happy to take produce so nothing went to waste.

We used a lot of leeks which I planted again this year, in pallets.  We gave a lot away and yesterday (Oct27) I pulled the remainder, washed and sliced and flash froze them.  Though I am not a fan of anything that is frozen, I hate ot waste leeks as they are pricey.  I have 10 cups of lovely, washed, sliced organic leeks now in my freezer and can toss a handful in any soup or stew.  I also roasted the remained of the beets, skinned and froze them but in the process discovered that Trip REALLY liked beets. She is generally not a fan of any veggies beyond pumpkin and sweet potatoes, although she will eat any veggie cooked in broth.  Kira eats anything and we have not found a fruit or veggie she won't eat.  Long story short, the dogs ended up sitting at my feet as I peeled beets and I saved a couple baggies out for them. AT least I know that eventually if I don't use the beets in the freezer, the dogs will be happy to have them.

 

Last year when I was starting sweet potato plants in the house, I stuck a little one in dirt and just set it on the patio.  It never got a lot of top but it was kind of pretty all the same.  imagine my surprise when the plant froze the other day and I emptied the pot!  Two nice little sweet potatoes!  Going to probably start them in water shortly and then plant them in the garden in the spring and see what happens!

 

This summer Dar did a lot of work in the yard.  The lawn is amazing and he reclaimed a lot of overgrown areas which added to his mowing time, but sure looks a lot nicer. he pulled some old fence posts, put a new window in teh garage and siding up so I could paint and is working on solar heaters for the garage. 

I painted the kitchen cabinets as they will just have to do for a while and also painted the garage.  looks a lot better but I forgot to get  an after pic. When you see the before pic, you know that it could only get better, no matter what we did to improve it haha

 

Before

 

This past weekend it was warm enough to enjoy a fire outside, and sit and make plans about the projects for next spring.

 

We did get out camping to one of our favorite lakes, Namekus (Nam EE kuss)  You can recognize pictures of it immediately just because there is nothing like a Namekus sky. Late in teh fall, there were still some wildflowers but not many

 

Playing chase on the beach

 

We took a super long canoe ride, forget how many kilometers, but went half way around the lake and it's a sizable one. We found the creek that feeds into another lake but it was a little narrow and fast running. Would have been great going, but not a lot of fun coming.   maybe next year I will park the truck at the end lake, and then hike back and we can canoe down and then drive back

 

Kira playing hide and chase.

 

This was really cool to me.  The water grasses grow in long straight lines under the water.  They seem to radiate from a mother plant and form starburst kind of patterns .   The picture after this one show what happens when those rhizomes make a break for land

 

In search of brave new territory this water grass heads for higher ground, or more water, I don;t know

 

The mouth of the Ccreek that leads to Trappers lake, but empties from Namekus

 

My beautiful  Namekus sky

More mergansesrs

 

Namekus at the back lake

 

I felt like this mushroom ..  I don't WANT to go home wahhhh

I did not realize how many more pics I had so I will end here and maybe make a late fall one to come shortly. 

Hope everyone had a great summer and fall and let's all hope collectively for a mild winter

Holidays in BC

So it was HOT when we got to Fairmont, and I suppose we should have been thankful for bright sunny days, but for once I probably could have enjoyed a bit of a rain shower or cloud cover.  I know 32 - 36C is probably not overly hot to some people but when the hottest day you have had all summer is 25 and cloudy, that's about enough to kill ya.

Anyway it made for pretty pics

There were lots of these bushes in one place we stopped along the way to walk on a path and see some gorges.  The flowers were wine coloured and I have no idea what they are and have still not found a picture online similar.  A close up is further down

Pretty little creek on the side of the road

The water was the most amazing turquoise that it seemed a shame not to throw something in there and take a picture of it.  Wild daisies growing nearby were just perfect to show off the colour

just sitting and resting and thinking about the sandwich we brought for picnice lunch

Not sure what these are

Had to get a number of these same shots jsut because it was awesome.

Add caption

That's it!  He couldn't wait any more and just sat down and eated his sammich. haha

Not sure what these little flowers are either but they were purty

Seems like a long way down

Seems like a long way up

Green Indian Paintbrushes!!

A Mariposa Lily or sometimes called Sagebrush lily.  Oh man the prettiest wildflower! Better take a hundred pics of that!

Sun going down

A walky place in teh mountainy things

Here is a close up of the wine coloured flowers on those bushes.  I have no clue what this is but I wonder if they make berries of some sort?

White indian paintbrush

I thought this might be a burdock but the colour is wrong.  Will have to look this one up too

Also a long way down.. but the rock formations were super cool

Little wild columbines. so pretty

We've been busy

Lots of things have been happening in the past few weeks and it seems a lot easier to make short emaily bloggy thingies than to try and catch up and post a bunch of pics.

This past weekend Darwin's friend Kim came to help us do stuff for the weekend.  Well of course you know it rained and so that made it difficult to do a lot of the things on our list.   However, they did haul out the old fireplace and then they took out the old chimney.  It made a lot of mess and we now have a hole in our roof which is kinda not awesome, but we will try to get it patched and then we will be able to have someoen help us install the ne propane fireplace that is sitting in the living room.  We have had it there since January so I am pretty excited to finally quit tripping over it.

And so it begins....

That was a lot of work, and a lot of mess.  But it's out now.  Just have to patch the roof, insulate inside and then get the new fireplace in

Old fireplace is outside.  We hope to actually make an outdoor fireplace of it with big bricks, but that is a project for some other year

While the guys were doing that, I decided to try and clean up the barn wings. There used to be sides attched to the long barn, but snow/ stupid kids/ whatever collapsed the roog on them.  No one bothered to clean that up or muck out the barns and it was growing grass and stuff in there.  Dar is convinced that i have contracted hantavirus from that but I am pretty sure I am just garden variety ill.  Seems to be a flu or soemthing and intend to go to doctor today again. *ugh*

Got this section totally cleaned out and will get  the wheelbarrow and haul the poo out to a heap in the garden so it can continue to compost

I couldn't life or remove some of these big pieces so will have to do that some other time.  A saw would make pretty quick work of the big pieces and at least there won't be grass growing in there.  Would like to have a roof on this portion again some year, and make it into a greenhouse because that would be swell

How appropriate that we live on Noah's Ark

The first babies I have seen this year.  I am not sure why the one is so much smaller than the rest?  Maybe I could write a story about it and call it the "Littlest Gosling" since it isn't ugly, not a swan and obviously not a duck.

Strawberries taht I bought at Dutch Growers and they are ever bearing and producing already like crazy.  It was suggested to me that I should not let them produce this year so that they spend time growing roots and making runners.  That would be smart... BUT what if they die in the winter>???  Better to have berried and lost than never to have berried .

I am having a rather hard time once again with this blog business and trying to put pics in order.  I think it might be that hte rain has gone to my brain.  I wish it would go back to the plain in Spain, where I do not believe it mainly falls any longer.  What a load of brown stuff that is.

some ducks

another duck

So I planted a lot of stuff in pallets, because the ground where our garden boxes are is mostly sand and gravel and very hard packed.  As well I had seen this at a greenhouse once and thought it worth a try.  The whole "no weeding" makes it a pretty sweet deal

This is an ataulfo mango seed pod.  Apparently some people have luck growing them indoors.You scrape all teh flesh off the pod and leave it to air dry overnight. Then. like shucking an oyster, you get the seed inside. Creepy looking thing, init?
Then, you put the seed in a pot or baggie of peat moss, keep it moist and it should sprout in 1-3 weeks. We'll see!

we got this quad to move snow.  I hope we never have to use it.

The resident bittern overseeing teh garden weeding process.

Another shot of the stuff coming up now.  LOTS of brussel sprouts, tomatoes are going along and the pallets of lettuce and leeks.  If we could get some heat wow ... it would be great

Got some yummy little peppadews the other day.  Lots of people have not heard of them but they are S. African peppers taht look much like little tomatoes.  You can stuff them with just about anything like as appetizers.  In teh olive section at Safeway and probably other stores

It\s a rhubirb

Don't even ask

Shari's lewesia that I was entrusted to care for until she comes back to Cansda

This is a tree earring that Shari sent for my birthday!  Coiolest thing ever - you put those suet balls in there and hang then from a tree like an earring!  Hard to find suet balls this timeof year so I am hoping to find a small round hummingbird feeder that I can put i n it and hang.

Hey Ben ... found this the other day and wondered if you were craving any hahahaha,  I believe you used to call it "Chip Muck"

Just spooning a l'il

So the sweet potato did sprout some great roots and small leaves I planted it in a hanging basket and will see how it does

Bitern wandering through the play ground

Guess what'sin this little lawn ornament that Shari gave me some years ago?  An artichoke!

Go to your room!

OK I probably have lots more pics and some were even interesting but internet is just , well, crappy.  SO I will post this, crossing fingers .... and hope you all have some good sunshiney days on the way soon