it's been a fun and busy weekend!

it started with going to our sister community of fourchu and hanging out with friends at "chase the ace" held in the community centre and then hanging out with friends at our friends' house afterwards. below is a pic of a beautiful evening at fourchu harbour. amazing isn't it?

 

 saturday was spent planting 200 garlic bulbs - woohoo! some had already started sprouting when i took these pics today. here is garlic bed #1:



and #2:



dinner (or lunch for the crazy people that call dinner, lunch - teehee) was a delicious and very filling salad of lettuce, cucumber, pineapple, kiwi, vermicelli and shrimp. served with a super-hot, super-tart lime-chili-ginger-garlic dressing.

on saturday one of our friends and his son dropped by with an amazing gift. he gave us a snowblower with a broken transmission that he tried to fix and then decided that based on the cost of the parts - he's just gonna get a new one. jambaloney, the garbage collector extraordinnaire, who can make, design, build, macgyver just about anything is planning to make a mulcher using the 9horsepower motor, which runs fantastically, and he is going to use the bottom half of it to make a box scraper to use behind the atv for the driveway! we've got some awesome friends!

the friend that i am referring to is the friend who made the beautiful green wreath for us for Christmas. i loved it so much that i have never taken it down. not a single pine needle has fallen from it yet and i love the fact that it is now beigey-brown.



that wreath stays at the front door until it completely falls apart. i think it will still be there next Christmas!!!

for supper on saturday night, we were invited to a friend's house. it was a small gathering of only a few of us, but the meal was delicious with ham, pasta salad and potatoe salad. oh - and 3 different kinds of pie. i'm not a pie eater but i did have some of the cherry pie because i looooove cherries.

today we've been busy getting garden beds ready and tending to the greenhouse plants which are coming up like mad. and check this out - almost all of my tomatoe seeds and pepper seeds came up - woohoo!

 

want a fast and really delicious, nutritious dinner? how about sharing an avocado that has been scored and then a slice of lime squeezed over it, sea salt and fresh cracked black peppercorns, a can of tuna and some pear slices. yummy, filling and delicious!

today was a bit of a grey day but no matter....

 

 there's still lots of green things poking their heads out of the ground like these day lillies:



some daffodils:



want a quick one-dish supper that does not look pretty at all? have this:

it's rice, cream, corn, peas, broccoli and spinach with 4 chicken breasts sitting on top. after you take it out of the oven you dump a cup of cheese on it. or, if you are us, you dump 2 cups of cheese on it - we love our cheese. it's even more unappetizing looking when served on a plate but trust me when i say it is deelish!

and now for something beautiful to end this post:

 

 that's 32 potatoe tires already filled with mulch, manure and compost!!!! based on all of our years growing potatoes in tires, our estimate is 200lbs of potatoes not counting what will be used as seed potatoes for the following year. we love potatoes and i'll be planting them in about week.

that's it for now. i'm off to hit up your blogs and Pioneer Preppy, if you put up another post with my picture on it - the friendship is over and i do have a lawyer on speed-dial! not a very good one but a lawyer none the less! bahahahaha!

after you read his first post - go and read this blog post of Pioneer Preppy's - the comments are hysterical - especially Matt's and Rob's - bahahahahaha!

i hope you all have a great week coming!

easter weekend 2014 and a ton of pics!

i hope that you all had a wonderful easter weekend. ours was very non-traditional, though we are usually very traditional when it comes to easter. we did; however, take time out to remember the reason for this weekend.

this weekend we had the honour of helping our friend, r, who was recently diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and his wife, set up a bed in their spare room. we told r that it was for times during his treatment when he just wanted a place to sleep by himself. he loved the idea and the bed. little did he know that the bed was set up for his son, whom he hasn't seen in 15 yrs, who arrived last night at midnight. my sister e sent me a few pics of the homecoming and i am just so glad for all of them.

now let's get on with the 12 million pics shall we? we didn't have our traditional turkey but that doesn't mean that we suffered....here's some steak and grilled veggies - yummeh!

and not proper korean bulgogi but, let's say my way of doing proper korean bulgogi and at the last minute throwing in some broccoli:

yesterday was a gorgeous day - a true and proper cape breton spring day! it started like this:

yep, sitting in the hottub and enjoying the gorgeous view. well, as long as you don't look at all of the junk in the yard and the upturned furniture on the berm...and well...just ignore all of that and enjoy being in the hottub. if there is one thing that i want for all of you is for you to go out and get yourself a Softtub hottub - they are the best in the world. and so good for your overall health.

after the hottub it was a walk to the river.

look at the beautiful clouds and sky.

after you go around the turn in the road it's just another 700 or so feet to get to the river.

deer tracks!

isn't it amazing that from what everyone tells us - our piece of land and nearby is where the deer converge to mate every year.

oh my! look at that beautiful river!

and we have 2 swamps on either side of our road to the river and they are filled right now with tadpoles. soon all we will hear is the "meep-meep-meep" of the spring peepers!

our last big windstorm busted the crap out of our lockbox that we keep down at the river - have a look:

the wind was so bad that it busted the lock and busted the top of our box. no worries - jambaloney will come up with some kind of macgyver fix for it!

there's boatdura (we call it that because of our 1980's chevy vandura....we call our truck "truckdura", and everything else we own gets a "dura" on the end of it's name....ahhh whatever.)

probably the ugliest boat known to man but we love it. it glides us up and down our river like magic.

and here's our beautiful river, sky and clouds. it's so healing to be down at the river.

here's my man doing what he loves most - casting! he's not trying to catch anything - the water is still too cold and the trout still too sluggish but he loves casting anway.

i love watching him!

here is my "sitting" rock - it's where i sit when i watch him casting.

as a child, i used to collect rocks. not anymore though...our land is covered in rocks.

but every time we go to the river i pick a favourite rock. the purple/blue one at the bottom was today's favourite!

here's my favourite rubber boots - i just love them!

another pic of the side of the river.

on the way home after a wonderful afternoon enjoying our river.

i woke up early this morn and was glad i did. look at this beautiful sunrise.

let's try this again, shall we?

well, the snow has all melted again after 2 nice, bright sunny days....and strachan's brook is almost all melted and flowing.

 

there's still big chunks of ice down at the river so no canoeing and trout fishing for jambaloney just yet, but soon!

here's our first real sign of spring - i love those little flowers!

 

 i already have tomatoes and peppers coming up in the greenhouse in the house - woohoo! those babies aren't going to be re-potted and moved into the greenhouse until we are dead sure of frost free nights and the 2 week forecast is looking really good. that, plus the fact that the greenhouse is staying way above freezing overnight even when it drops to -2 or -5. that greenhouse is going to be a godsend this year - we are already enjoying it's benefits!

 here's a yummy dinner (lunch for some of you crazies) of home-grown sprouts, greenhouse tomatoes, local cheese and avocado on home-made bread - yummeh! lots of healthy nutrients there. along with some artichoke hearts, olives and pepperocinis - remember kids that any fermented food contains many good probiotics!

yesterday i planted a bunch of big pots filled with 3 kinds of cilantro, 2 kinds of dill, 3 kinds of parsley and 4 kinds of basil. we already have 2 big pots of mint that we overwintered and they are coming back like mad, as well as oregano, rosemary and sage - woohoo! we'll finally get to building our proper herb garden this year as every other year we just planted them in tires. but we want to build a proper rock garden this year - i can't wait to start.

want a delicious and cheap supper. you start with cabbage soup. you dump a can of tomatoe juice and a can of diced tomatoes in a pot. you add the normal ton of garlic and oregano, a dollop of unpasteurized honey, apple cider vinegar with the mother in it, a dollop of olive oil and then you go crazy on the turmeric, cayenne and cumin. fry yourself up some hamburger loaded with the last 3 spices and save 2 tablespoons of the grease before draining the hamburger. dump the hamburger in the soup. and using the same pan that you cooked the hamburger in, don't even wipe it out, dump the saved grease back in and throw in some cabbage. saute the cabbage until lightly browned and then dump that in the soup. eat it for supper and then have some more for dinner the next day. and the day after that when you only have a little left - that's when you throw in a cup of cooked macaroni. don't forget the parmesan and red pepper flakes! deelish and cheap! 

in a few days the ground will be workable and we will then get this season's garlic in, harvest last season's garlic, and plant radishes, beets, peas and onions. it's looking a bumper year for this year's garden and i am soooo excited! this year we are going hogwild crazy! jambaloney bought our first bag of potatoes just last week...so our potatoes lasted us from august until april! this year we are doing 24 tires of potatoes and that should take us right through until the new harvest is ready the following year. we still have a ton of potatoes but have decided to use those for seed. we are doing the same with our leftover carrots....they are being replanted and let go to seed because carrots need 2 years before they produce seed.

it's gonna be a good garden year and i love that greenhouse! i hope you all have a good gardening year too!

well...it was spring....for a day!

arghghghghghgh! ok - i had to get that off my chest.

now on to the post. yesterday was awesome! gorgeous and sunny! since i already planted my tomatoes and peppers in the greenhouse INSIDE the house on april 10, i thought it was time to get some stuff planted in the OUTSIDE greenhouse. and woohoo - i planted a bucket-load of lettuce and a whole pile of brassicas.

the day was beautiful - check it out! and check out jambaloney's new thingie-ma-bobs that he is building to keep cats out of raised beds, as well as birds, as well as having an easy way to cover beds with plastic when the torrential rains come.



did you notice that there is no snow on the ground. well, there is one tiny piece but i will show it to you later. anyway, it was an awesome, sunny day and we reveled in being unclothed and working in the greenhouse together!



that's four trays of a variety of heirloom, mesclun lettuces that we will be enjoying soon!

the blue things you see below are old water jugs cut in half and they are filled with a variety of lettuces that i will transplant in mid-may. jambaloney got them from the garbage. and all those little president choice pots, jambaloney got in the garbage. i swear i love that man.



i am starting a variety of brassicas in the pots which will also be transplanted in mid-may - woohoo. and because i know that a bunch of you love seeing little planted pots and pots of other stuff, here's another pic - bahahahahah!



we took a break for some gorgeous liver with onions and bacon, a little side salad and some peas and corn - just what we needed to keep working for the rest of the day!




i was on such a roll yesterday with the planting and being naked in the greenhouse, and jambaloney was building those thingie-ma-bobs...i just had to take a pic of our last chunk of snow.



i was all "hey you chunk of snow. you can stay there until you melt. i won't even bother breaking you up with a shovel. you just take all the time you need buddy!"

and then i woke up to this, this morning.

arghghghghghghghghghghghhgghgh! please someone make it go away!!!!!!

driveway bs ;-)

jambaloney here!

this post i started last fall and never finished, today's little job continued the theme so here you have it!

first off - the text i started

"okay >>  sometimes projects don't get finished when winter hits - i won't complete this til spring so here ya have it!

our driveway is steep and about 100 feet long until the turn around -...."

here WAS a nice fall day

well that was it so here we go with the rest of the fall pics - yes - the driveway is long

someday i will get to putting in this perforated hose @ strategic spots... pay attention to that thing in the upper right corner..

as the ruts that the truck tires make become run-off making deeper ruts every rain

so last fall i started re-trenching the ditch  and adding strategic diverts every 20 feet or so

here is a good pic of how deep the tire tracks had gone...

i filled in the tire ruts with the dirt from the trenching of the ditches

you can get an idea here

here is a ditch before trenching..

same ditch after!

okay off to the beach for gravel!!!

not too much so the truck doesn't suffer...

and seaweed while there!!!

i filled in the rest with beach gravel until the freezing came upon us - got about 75 feet up the driveway!

so now it is spring!!!! and the ruts are back!!!!

and how - i will be filling these in again - but i am also going to devise some kind of scraper to grind down the middle part...

but we have something else to  fix - remember that "thing"? well i found it during large pickup last year i THINK it may be from an old satellite dish - they used to use the real big ones here years ago - it is metal and heavy and hollow in the center

we need some other tools today...

and this stuff...

why you ask? well this winter i got the truck stuck going up the hill and it came to rest against one of the  poles for our chain.   my buddy d came to drag me out - BUT i had to hack the pole down. as it was buried in snow and ice i used a few 2x4s to "glue' it back together. well the snow and ice is gone and my wretched mess is falling apart. i plan to put steel posts in that are set in concrete, but i needed a "here and now" solution..

first off, i took the old pole down and took off the 2x4s.. but it turned out to be too short and fat - i had a lot of chipping away with the axe to make it fit in the new base..

so i looked at the other post and eyed the baby on the left - it was pretty much just sitting on the ground so it wasn't providing support anyway..

so  off it came and trimmed with the sawzall!

it fit in the base nicely and i used the axe to cut some wedges..

and added rocks galore! 

i took an old support from the busted post and banged it in where i stole the new post from - old nails, sledge and rock - good enough!!!

thar she be!!!

and we have our "gate" back!!!

last step was to wrap a plastic bag around it and tape it to prevent water from getting in the crack and rotting the wood..

good enough for a couple of months!!!!!


i will do the rounds to visit you all soon - been a crazy winter but finally the grackles and robins have arrived and there is way more brown than white!!!

cheers!