Thursday, December 20, 2012

Mid Winter

It's really feeling wintery now. I got some pics of the leaf season before it was over. Here's the upside: beautiful colors.
And the down side... lots of leaves and berries everywhere. I took my trusty electric blower from property to property, blowing leaves daily until it was over. The trees are pretty bare now, and I'm hoping I've raked the last of the berries.
 The rainy weather made for some lovely rainbows.
 This one was so spectacular that I texted Rick at work and suggested he take a break and look at it. You can't tell in this photo, but it was fully double.
This was something I'd never seen before: an upside down rainbow in the clouds.
 We had Thanksgiving with Titus and Jane and the gang.
My tatting project got set aside in favor of knitting, because wool just seems more fun to work with when it's cold, and besides, people can always use hats and such. But the tatting project is almost done.
In farming news... the lettuce has been really productive. These are the drunken women and romaine. The butter lettuces proved quite tempting to the slugs, but we're still getting lots of production. I put slug boards out in the garden: just old fence boards, but the slugs like to crawl up under them and stick themselves to the wood. Then we just grab the board, turn it over to reveal all the bugs, and stick it in the chicken tractor pen. Goodbye slugs, hello protein-rich chicken feed.
We're also getting astounding amounts of broccoli. Buddy poses with a lovely bouquet. There really is no such thing as too much broccoli, and we're eating it daily.
At 9th Street, Buddy helped me get some rows dug up and we've planted favas in 5 rows now. I need to go over again and plant some more, but it's been too wet and I've been too busy. The first favas are well up however.
I took a walk and couldn't resist the juxtaposition of the red car and the purple church just around the corner from us on 16th. It makes me think of the Red Hat ladies.