Midwinter

It's now a month past the solstice, and we're all getting a bit tired of winter. It's been dry up until the day before yesterday, when we had a good steady rain. But it's been COLD. We got down to 17 degrees, which is damn chilly for zone 9. This shot shows ice in the fountain at midday! It stayed frozen for days.

Just before the hard freeze, I went out and harvested all the citrus. I got a respectable number of limes this year, and the hugest lemons ever!

That's one ginormous lemon! It weighed a half a pound!

I got lots and lots: about 66 pounds worth.

We also finished the pruning by taking down the rest of the apricot tree. It looks sort of hacked now, but it will come back like the other trees did. We ran lights to it as well.

Which gives us a larger lit area.

I was freezing in our big drafty house, so I bought a fire.

Increasing day length has started the girls laying again, and the new gals are laying as well.

For now, their eggs are smaller.

And the flock is finally integrated enough that they all get in the pen. The freeze pretty much took out everything left in the garden, so we've been letting the chickens loose to forage.

All the foraging is paying off, because we're finally getting enough eggs for everyone. The maran eggs are noticeably darker. And look at the very tiny egg! It's the smallest I've ever seen.

We got a little work done on 9th last weekend. Rick drives in stakes to mark the rows.

We cleared the mulch away in preparation for laying down compost.

The favas survived the freeze.

We had Karen and Glen over for dinner. I made a beef stew from scratch, including roasting the bones to make stock. Doesn't the table look nice?

We played croquet for the first time this year. It was Tony's first time, and he loved it.

Catherine does a bit of chicken whispering.

What's great about this picture of geese over the new moon? They are flying north! I realize they're probably just moving to another ricefield, but we can hope that it means spring is just around the corner.

Where it's at: The Senator is missing a lot of letters.