The little plants have been getting big.

They outgrew their greenhouses.

So first we dug holes in the ground.

Then we built boxes.

And filled the boxes with dirt.

And now our plants have room to grow.

This year we have 5 boxes going. The box on the left is home to onions and carrots and sometime at the end of the month, tomatoes too. The front middle has broccoli, spinach, swiss chard, bunch onions and rosemary. The back middle will be tomatoes and maybe more carrots or something else, I'm thinking on it. The right front is full of sugar snap peas, tenderbush green beans, blue lake green beans, plus some herbs- basil, dill and thyme. The back right box has a mixture of leaf lettuces and will sport a trellis for the cucumbers and zucchini to climb in a couple of weeks. All I really need to figure out is where will the potatoes go?

I can't wait to watch my little plants and seeds get bigger!

Has spring sprung???

This April seems like it's been all showers and nothing else in between! There were a few moderately sunny days, and 2 warm days, but overall it's been cloudy and rainy. Consequently we haven't been too motivated to get things going in the yard.

We have been working on that tree that partially came down in a storm in December. What we can we'll store as firewood, some will go to the city compost but most of it will be the fuel for our backyard firepit.

Fodder for the firepit

We are planning on our vegetable garden being about 5 times bigger than it was last year, but I haven't gotten very far building the boxes. Hopefully this weekend we can take car of all that. I did get around to starting some seeds inside over vacation and those are starting to pop up, so once the boxes are done, there will be plenty to put in them.

Lettuces and gourds

Beans, onions and herbs

I just hope that May will be more sunny than April! I can't take the gloomy clouds much longer!

Kong squished into Michelley's bowl!

Our new housemate

Since Christmas vacation we have had a new housemate living with us.

Jack, one of Girly-Girl's kittens

He gets along reasonably well with Kong and Michelley, but he really worships Janda. He spends most of his time lounging at Janda's feet, or getting a ride on his back!

Getting a lift

Helping with dinner

And in case you were worried, Emma is still as cute as ever.

Wearing Auntie's boots

Wearing Auntie's hat and gloves

Clamming in winter

Well, it's been a long break since I posted anything, but things are settling down around here and the long crazy winter has ended, so maybe I'll have more things to post about.

Janda and I went clamming with our friends Julie and Beth on the last full day of winter, Saturday. It was also the evening of the supermoon- but we missed it. Janda and I were out clamming on the river on Friday night and the moon seemed big but not "super."

Despite being the end of winter, both days were lovely, especially Friday, when the temperatures in Gloucester hit the 70's! On Saturday afternoon, we headed out to the super secret surf clam spot and helped Janda dig clams.

Janda pulling those surf clams out

Digging

Digging away

Beth off in the distance

Janda with the harvest

We got a ton- it only took 45 minutes at the most to fill a bucket and a bag. Then of course, the shucking took place. 45 minutes of digging, 90 minutes of shucking. While the shuckers shucked, others of us made and ate guacamole and also some yummy cheeses and some gifted organic fruit. Finally the steamers from Friday were steamed and the surf clams were shucked, divvied up and fried. It was a pretty good feast for the clam lovers. I'm not one of them, but I did indulge in a few pieces of fried clam. They came out great. The good news for the clam lovers is that everyone still has enough left for chowder.

The Blizzard of 2010

As far as snowfall totals go, the blizzard of 2010 wasn't too bad for Cape Ann, but we sure did have a lot of high winds. I woke up the next morning expecting to see a ton of snow, but instead when I looked out my window I saw a huge tree half down in the side yard.

Pine tree debris everywhere

Close-up of the damage

A neighbor's tree fell onto the wall in between our yards

The view from our bedroom window

Winter clamming

Even though it's December, Janda's still been going clamming! The neighbors think he's nuts. :)

Halloween

The jack o'lantern that Janda carved




Our first and maybe only trick or treater



Cute little puppy dog eyes!

Camping in NH

Friday afternoon we packed up the car and headed to NH to try to recreate an amazing camping experience that we had a few years ago. Then we left on Friday afternoon, hiked for 2-3 hours in the dark, stumbled on a tent platform and spent the night before going up to Mt. Jefferson. The next day we took the Great Gulf trail to the Six Husbands trail and then came back down on the Madison Gulf trail. The Madison Gulf trail was such a hard descent that we joked to each other that in the future anything difficult would be rated against this trail. [Sidebar- we found out yesterday that descending the Madison Gulf trail is not recommended- I can vouch for that!] It was an amazing day and we hoped that our trip to Franconia Notch would be just as fun.

We should have known better than to try to recreate something that was so magical. After checking the forecast every day for a week and being assured that it would not rain, it began raining as we got close. We thought, maybe it will pass. It didn't.

We got our gear out and began hiking around 8:30pm. The plan was to hike 2-3 hours and then set up a campsite. We soon came to a fork in the trail and had to decide if we wanted to try to hike to the campsite or just camp out off the trail. We chose the trail with no campsite and headed off toward the Flume Slide trail. Not only was is raining at the time, but it had also rained earlier last week, so it was very muddy. It was a little hard to avoid the mud with our headlamps, but we didn't do too badly. Until we came to a stream crossing that was particularly tricky. As we walked off the path, along the shore, I stepped into a mud sinkhole above my ankle. I honestly thought to myself that my shoe was going to be stuck in the mud. I managed to toe up and get my foot out with shoe intact, but we still had the stream crossing to deal with. Remember that it's dark. Janda decided that the only option was to take off our shoes and wade across. Let's just say that I was not pleased to have to take off my wet muddy shoes and socks and then put them back on on the other side- not to mention how cold the water was! I may or may not have let out a few choice words while crossing the stream.

After that we crossed a few more streams and then set up camp for the night. That was a tricky endeavor, trying to keep the dry things dry and out of the tent. We finally got the tent set up (on a downward slope and on rocks- good thing we have air mattresses) and got the wet clothes off and into our sleeping bags. I tossed and turned a bit- mostly due to my cold feet, but I did get a few hours of sleep, as did Janda.

The next morning I pulled all of my clothes in the sleeping bag with me to warm them up. It worked a little. While Friday night wasn't too cold (we were hiking in tank tops), Saturday morning was extremely chilly, probably below freezing where we were and definitely below on the top, where it was snowing a little! Luckily we were prepared and had lots of clothes- too bad our shoes were wet! We had a nice warm breakfast and then broke down the camp before hitting the trail for the Flume Slide.

Our campsite

Janda making breakfast

Heading to the trail

The Flume Slide was quite a difficult trail and more so when wet- which the guidebook said is almost always! We had on big packs, 25 lbs for me and 35 for Janda. The trail basically felt like 2000 continuous step-ups for me! It was very steep and there were definitely some challenging parts where we needed to be extra careful. Falling off the mountain kind of puts a damper on the hike.

Stream crossing

Lots of scrambling

Steep wet rocks

View part way up

Part way up

We got to the top and had a great view from Mount Flume. The foliage was in full effect and it was a relatively clear day, so you could see quite far. We then walked across the ridge to Mount Liberty. As this is Columbus Day weekend, there were a lot of people at the mountain, most of them starting Saturday morning and going up the easier trail to Mount Liberty. We saw a lot more people on this mountain and then on the way down.

View from Mount Flume

Janda on top of Mount Liberty

View from Mount Liberty

The Liberty Spring trail was no picnic going down, but not as hard as the Madison Gulf (see, I told you that the thing that we judge all hard stuff against now). On the way down we saw what seemed to be a group of Chinese tourists from a tour bus and whoever brought them to the mountain and suggested that they go hiking did not warn them about the muddiness or the coldness b/c they were dressed to go to the mall! I hope that they had the sense to not go too far up the mountain.

Yet another stream crossing

The woods were beautiful, lots of yellows and oranges

After we got down, we thankfully dropped our packs and enjoyed some un-resisted walking! Then we headed to a parking lot to have lunch before we headed home. At about 2:30 on Saturday while we were heading home, the mountains were packed! There was no parking left and there was a very long line on the highway heading into town. So glad that we went Friday night and Saturday!

Cooking in the car