the hummingbirds are back!!!

sorry for the bad picture quality but i took this pic through a dirty window. the hummingbirds are back - woohoo! jambaloney said that he saw one this morning so we quickly made some hummingbird water and filled our feeders. they come back every year and stay until the end of july. just another creature of the Manor to thrill and enthrall. i am so happy that they are back!

and below - frog babies! these 3 clusters of eggs have been in our pond for about a week now. i check on them hourly. i am not sure if they are frogs, spring peepers, salamanders, whatever - it doesn't matter to me. i talk to them every day and encourage them to grow!

here's another pic of our pond. not so much a pond as a hole in the ground that keeps ground water. no matter, i love it.  and our beautiful bench.

this is my favourite tree. i call him "the bonsai" because of his shape. you can see that his original top was blasted off by lightning many, many years ago. he's making the best of it though. i love this tree.

here's some beautiful, tiny blue flowers that grow in amongst the grass. so pretty!

and some lunch. yummy 3-bean salad with peppers and chives - yummeh!

the days keep getting warmer and longer. i planted out some brussel sprouts, broccoli and cabbage today. soon we'll be eating like kings!

jambaloney just got home from fishing - he's caught 7 more trout - woohoo! we'll be having the breakfast of champions for the next several days - trouts and sprouts - our fave. gotta run!

it's really spring!!!

this was the sky yesterday morning - isn't it gorgeous? we had an awesome day yesterday - we started our pepper plants, planted onions, chives, carrots, kale and swiss chard! jambaloney is still filling beds and tires - poor guy - he must have shoveled 4 million wheelbarrows of dirt by now!!! we stopped work at noon to have some lunch and then went for a walk to the river. for the rest of the afternoon we read, napped and suntanned - it was a glorious day!

here's the onion and garlic bed - i left some bunching onions overwinter and we'll be eating those babies soon! i planted a bunch of garlic at the bottom of the bed and 7 more rows of onions - yummeh!

here's the carrot bed - 5 different kinds of carrots and 3 rows of each. we can't wait to start digging them out and eating them - we won't even bother to rinse the dirt off - bahahahah!

here is the sky at noonish...those clouds are so dreamy! and i wish the pics properly showed that the sky here is never just one shade of blue - it is always 3 or 4 shades of blue. Helga, hon, let's go for a walk!

 another shot of the sky. i'm sorry if i am boring anyone but i can get lost looking at the sky here - it is so dreamy and beautiful!

let's go for a walk. ok. Helga, stop staring at the sky and come on! now we are going around the turn in the road - there's the river up ahead!

the river is so blue! and cold! that i know for sure - teehee! c'mon Helga, yer slowing us down with all of that stopping and staring - get a move on girl!

is this divine or what? i could look at this forever and never get tired!

it was a really hot and bright day. we put our feet in the water and immediately knew that we weren't going in any further - fuh-reeeezing cold! and we are not sissies! but we'll have to wait a few more weeks before swimming - i can't wait! Helga - stop poking those tadpoles!

inside our magic forest....so dreamy!

i love our trees! i love looking at the water from inside the trees - it feels like a magic, faery place! Helga - get down out of that tree before you hurt yourself!

this is where we plan to build a dock - it's perfect! and we will build our dock out of downed trees from our property and of course, with whatever junk jambaloney finds!

so beautiful!

we get filled with such a sense of peace whenever we are down at the river.

and now, heading back out of the woods and back up the road. Helga - get down from that tree - we're heading home now!

there's our little well....it does such a great job of providing us with water! look at the sun bouncing around it! Helga - get off the well! 

i hope that you all enjoyed your walk with us...i know that Helga did!

spring is really here! soon everything will be bursting with green and we will be eating fresh produce from the garden. i love days like this.

happy potatoe planting day - woohoo! and a bunch of other odds and sods!

isn't that beautiful? you may see 24 tires...but i see 24 tires with potatoes planted in them - woohoo! the potatoes are planted and i just couldn't be happier! happy potatoe day to all!

the plastic-wrapped porch is sprouting all kinds of little seedlings! i have been trying very hard not to plant anything out too early...but i think i will start planting some stuff out tomorrow. we haven't had the temps drop to freezing for several weeks now and the 2 week forecast says the temps overnight will not go below 5C. so i am putting out the cold weather stuff.




made a monster lasagna that we ate the other night - yummeh!



had delicious hamburgers for lunch the other day - look at all that cheese!



and here's some kymberz chicken alfredo with mushroons, broccoli and cauliflower.



the beginnings of the making of some traditional style korean kimchi - i love kimchi!



of course, the Framboise Manor breakfast of champions - trouts and sprouts. we love this for breakfast and try to have it every morning. jambaloney is out fishing right now. hope he brings home a bucket full! we eat fresh sprouts with at least 2 meals a day. we love them!



and speaking of sprouts - i just received my order from a new sprout place. ever wonder what a year's worth of sprouts looks like? see below.

 ever wonder what a year's worth of sprouts costs?

with shipping and taxes: $38.41

yes, you read that right. we will eat up some of these until we start sprouting our own seeds but the majority of these will go into food storage. this year i hope to try to let enough of our own veggies go to seed in order to have our own sprouted seeds for the following year. we are already sprouting our own radish seeds and they are deelish. and it's too easy to let a tire of radish flower, go to seed and then harvest them. we easily have 2 years worth of radish seed from one tire. saving seeds and then using them for sprouts - it's like a gift that keeps on giving!

some grey, some yellow, some free seaweed and beach sand, some suntanning potatoes, some potatoe tires and the most awesome hillbilly suntanning windbreak!!!

 boy that sure was a mouthful! lots of pics coming up in this post. see the beautiful sky above...even on a grey, rainy day we still have beautiful sky...sigh!

the daffodils are finally opening up - they are so pretty! they are exactly the same colour as our yellow finches!

 here's a closeup of one of them with raindrops on the petals - the raindrops look like diamonds. after a nice rain, i like to go out and look at all of the diamonds!!!

 what kind of free junk has jambaloney brought home recently, you ask? how about a truck load of free seaweed and free beach sand - woohoo!

 

 below - my secret recipe for seaweed tea!

 the basic recipe - put a bunch of smelly seaweed in a bin and fill it with water. let it steep for a few days. water all of your beds and tires with it. your dirt will love you forever. your veggies and fruits will too!

 we mix the free beach sand in with our dirt so that the dirt stays nice and aerated. dirt likes beach sand!

 here are 15 lbs of potatoes suntanning. potatoes like to suntan before being planted.

 
and that's 24 tires, 2-high and filled 1 and 1/2....i'll be planting the potatoes in the next day or two - woohoo! based on previous years stats, these potatoe tires should produce 160lbs of potatoes!!!



next up - a little something that has happened to all of us in our lives. i'm talking about that time of year when the sky is clear and blue, the sun is shining down from it's bright midday point, it's 12C and a perfect day for naked suntanning and reading BUT it's too windy to enjoy! it's times like these that everyone needs a jambaloney. jambaloney said "babe - i'll build you a hillbilly windbreak". and hillbilly it was. have a look see:

 

 that's the side of the windbreak. here's the bottom:

 and here's my black suntanning blanket, it keeps you toasty warm! and my backrest and knee pillow - i like to sit up when i suntan and read. jambaloney lays on the little green cushion and promptly falls asleep after 2 minutes. i love my suntanning windbreak that he sets up for me every time it's a little too windy!

 

it's a good thing that we keep the driveway chained...can you imagine the look on someone's face when they dropped in unannounced and saw us sprawled naked in the hillbilly windbreak?!?!?!? bahahahahahha!

free stuff - 02!

jambaloney here!

i wrote a post a while ago about free stuff - i LOVE free stuff. but it has to be useful and that can be a bit of a trick - takes practice ;-) in the city, i used my bike:

i now have truckdura which has far more capacity, though truth be told, i will always be more proud of the bike, nonetheless - this is the cargo hold:

a week ago, i went to get some tires for the garden. twice a year, there is a heavy garbage pickup and the spring one is about 3 weeks away so there are piles of junk (treasures) accumulating at the side of the road... this is what i brought home:

here it is, out of the truck:
 

first off, here are some shelves for seedling on our porch after kymber re-pots them, this was an awesome find as i was slated to build something similar out of scrap wood and brackets... time and effort SAVED!! ;-)
 

here are some odds and sods... i always collect metal mesh shelves from old fridges etc. for the greenhouse - they will make awesome shelves for plants that don`t block light or collect water after misting - have TONS of these! there are two aluminum running boards form an old truck which will make great shelves for outdoor use. also an old tackle box which will be super for small parts in the basement (screws etc.), a milk crate (which one can never have too many of ) and a shovel head, only missing a handle.

here are two sets of windows with the handle mechanisms that you wind the windows out and in with. the frames have seen better days... worst case scenario there are 4 double-paned windows that will go into the roof of the greenhouse!

here are two doors, the top one is a great storm door that needs just a bit of TLC, again for the greenhouse. the bottom one is a real find, it has a double-paned tempered glass window that is shattered on one side... the same size as the one i broke!! with one pane left in this door, i get free replacement of what would have been a very costly piece of glass!!!!!

and finally, 35 tires of various sizes... i cut the sidewall out of 31 of them at the curb to save space in the truck.

the next day, in a fit of lunacy, i went to the tire store in town and got 38 large tires. i cut 34 of them on site as well (i can only fit 18 not-cut tires in the back at a time). i had to take the sidewalls with me ( the recyclers on contract with the tire store will only pick up complete tires) but no matter, there are many uses for sidewalls... but that's a later post ;-)


cheers all!!!!