I'm In A Magazine!!!

I can't believe it!!!
I've been featured in a magazine and I think I'm going to burst from being so darn excited!!! *grin*

When my little project of recycling and reusing my children's old rubber boots that I had saved and turned into hanging flower planters had gone viral last year and started showing up all over the internet it was fun to see. But then earlier this year I was contacted by the editor of Cottages & Bungalows Magazine to see if I would allow them to print my photo with a little comment on my inspiration in their May edition and I was SO excited that they would even ask me :)

It made me think of the Dr. Hook song 'On the cover of the Rolling Stone'.... and I was going to go and buy 5 copies for my mother! LOL. Okay while I didn't quite make the cover I was definitely doing the happy dance :)

It is quite a lovely magazine full of home and garden ideas...

projects to make and tons of inspiration.

Thank you so much to all of you wonderful readers some of you which have become wonderful friends over the years as well for stopping by and saying hello and sharing about my blog as I know without all of you this wouldn't have happened :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Happy Snow Day

The weather man had been hinting that we might be due for a flurry of the white stuff towards the end of this week but I hadn't really given it much heed since his forecast has been a little wonky lately but when I awoke this morning this was what I saw out the kitchen window.

I must be being punished for having started turning over the soil in the garden for spring planting to early *grin*. I knew full well that there was still the possibility of frost and snow when I got in there to weed and make the beds but still seeing it covered in 4 inches of fresh snow sort of sucks.

Hubby had to go down to the wharf in the afternoon to check on his tug so we tagged along and enjoyed the scenery. You can't beat the clean, bright look of fresh snow. It just makes everything look so pretty :)

Halfway to our destination we spotted flashing lights from a local police truck and the fire and rescue truck lodged in the ditch. It seems that he had a little incident and slipped off of the road. No one was injured except for maybe their pride.

The kids had a blast outdoors building fortresses with giant snowballs for the walls and building snowmen all over the front lawn. The snow was heavy and wet, just the perfect consistency for those lovely 'slush angels' of the wet west coast *grin*. Mega fun was had and now I have 3 sets of sopping wet snow dripping and drying in front of the woodstove :)

How's your weekend shaping up?

Hugs,
Rosina

Weekending

Somehow we were spared the deluge of rain that was supposed to hit our end of the island and instead we had nearly two full days of sunshine!! So out we went to enjoy seeing our shadows and exploring what was left in the garden :)

As the kids ran through the secret pathway and tromped through the knee high grass that has taken over a neglected flower bed they found some fairy lanterns. Well poppy seed heads actually but the winter had left nothing but their skeletal innards and my daughter thought they would be perfect little lanterns for fairies to use to light their way through the long winter nights *grin*.

Their next exciting find was the 'Ice Whales' swimming in one of the frozen buckets of water :) The thick piece of ice covering one of the pools of water had formed some mysterious shapes that we could think were none other than the dorsal fins of miniature ice whales that were visiting our garden :)

As the kids continued to poke around and dance around the giant mullein stalks still standing in the garden I thought I would get busy and take on the mega job of digging up and turning the soil in the garden for spring planting.

I usually have it rototilled but as I was plucking some of the weeds I noticed how many wriggly fat worms there were just under the surface layer of soil mulching and fertilizing and I made up my mind that this year I would take it upon myself to save those precious little workers from being chopped up in the tiller tines and turn it all by hand.

I only got a quarter of the way finished today and my shoulders and back are aching a bit from the strenuous activity after a lazy winter but if I can get it all finished I'll actually have it ready for planting even earlier than usual since I usually have to wait longer for the soil to dry for tilling so it doesn't cake up to much as it is turned.

I think I'm going to see if I can get my strapping young teenager to help me out though when I return on the next sunny day *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

Let's Get Planting!

It's that time of year. The days are slowly getting longer, the sun is peaking out a wee bit more and I feel the bloom of spring just itching to burst forth from the soil *grin*.

I know, it's barely the middle of February and we could get snow and frozen temperatures at any minute but I can't help myself but want to will spring to come now. So to fill the time until it finally does appear I pulled out my box of seed packets to see what I had, what is needed and to sort out all of my tomato seeds because it's time to get planting :)

Our growing season is wet, cool and rather short so anything I can do to help things speed along a little quicker before it's time to get things in the ground outdoors is always welcome. Last summer you probably remember that Hubby built me a little greenhouse and it will be perfect for growing an early crop of tomatoes in. So I pulled out what I had left of my little jiffy seven peat pots and soaked them in some nice hot water to puff them up for planting.

I planted Bonny Best, Italian Paste, German Red Strawberry, Polish Paste, and Rocket so far but I also need to start some Black Krim which is a wonderful meaty heirloom variety that we love for sandwiches.

You can find some of them in my favorite seed catalogues like West Coast Seeds, Seeds of Victoria, Salt Spring Seeds and of course all of the wonderful ones I find every year at the various Seedy Saturdays (click for listings) scattered over the island :)

With my little seeds tucked away in a nice dark spot itching to sprout they will be all ready to harden off in the greenhouse nice and early so we can make the most of this summer. I can't wait!

Hugs,
Rosina

Our Fall Garden...

is growing strong :)

It is such a treat to pull open my creaking and quite visibly crooked garden gate with my kitchen bowl in one hand and a the warm fingers of my little one in the other as we tromp together through the weeds and grass that have now taken over the paths between the rows and search for the delicious treats that are waiting beneath their coverings.

We have been enjoying the extra beets I planted this summer immensely! Oh my goodness are they yummy. All of the children love them so I've been boiling them up by the pot full for our dinners and eating the leftovers cold in salads and the turnips are a special treat for me :)

The cold weather has begun here and the temperatures have been dropping to just above freezing or slightly below at night. The perfect temperatures to sweeten them up just right. Who new one could get so giddy over vegetables *grin*.

Along with the vegetables there are a few flowers and herbs still thriving. One of my favorite herbs is my Mullein (verbasacum) with it's giant fuzzy leaves and towering spears of little yellow flowers reaching for the sky. The kids love to pick the leaves and rub them on their cheeks as they are just as soft as a bunnies ear :)

They are a wonderful herb for coughs and asthma to. The leaves and flowers contain mucilage which can be very helpful in soothing coughs and acting as an anti-inflammatory for the lungs. I myself make a tea from the dried leaves and flowers and drink it to help with my own asthma :) Another wonderful thing to make with it is to make an oil with the flowers to treat earaches. So many wonderful uses and it self sews rapidly providing fuzzy leaves the first year and flower spears the second year :)

Do you have a fall garden planted? What sort of vegetables are you growing?

Hugs,
Rosina

Planting and a Greenhouse Update

We're finally getting down and dirty *grin*.
My oldest and I shoveled all of the rows in the vegetable garden and hauled in manure to dress the beds with. I've been working this spot for nearly 10 years now and the soil is really starting to look super healthy. It was terribly poor sandy soil when we started and everything refused to grow in it but as we turned the soil this year it was loaded with big fat earth worms, was darker and it just looks better so I can't wait to see how everything grows!



I'm trying something new this year and using floating row covers over the newly planted seeds. Last year the birds took a lot of the seed right out of the ground as soon as we planted and I even had my first crop of broccoli stripped of every green leaf and had to start over. So this should keep everything safe!

You should have seen the robins sitting on the fence posts watching us as we put the beans in. You just knew that as soon as you turned your back they were going to swoop in but we quickly covered the bush and pole beans with the cover and foiled their plans *grin*. It's actually keeping the little seedlings warmer to! It's been only two days and they are already starting to sprout and they never germinate that fast.

Oh and check out my greenhouse!!
This is the back wall and it has two giant windows and just a foot and a half of solid wall at the bottom maximizing the early morning sun that comes over the mountain first thing in the morning...

and here is one of the side walls with another big window that will go in. I just love the smell of the cedar and the chunky size of the hand milled lumber that my dad milled :)

Only one more wall to go up in the front which will have two more giant windows and I have an old solid glass door for the front so it is going to be awesome! Oh my I can't wait. It is smoking hot out here all summer so it's going to be perfect :)

It's taking a little longer than I had planned for it to be completed as Hubby comes and goes between work but I've waited years for this to happen and even if I don't get to utilize the full summer growing season I'm going to do some winter crops in it this fall and next spring it'll be ready to go right away. Yay, I can't wait *grin*.

How's your week going? I hope you all are enjoying some sunshine, time outdoors and maybe even some time getting your hands really dirty in the dirt :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Rhubarb

Rhubarb season is finally here and those bright red and juicy stalks are beckoning me *grin*.

The extended cool and wet weather we have had this spring has really allowed them to burst from the ground with gusto and I found a giant bloom on one of my plants!

Rhubarb blooms are really pretty when they open but I want my plants to continue to produce for a little while longer so I broke it off. The kids brought it into the house and we'll see if we can force it to open in a jar of water :)

The leaves of the plants are poisonous so you can't eat them but they make a wonderful natural insect repellent for deterring cabbage worms, aphids and other things. Just throw a bunch of leaves into a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Pour the strained liquid into a spray bottle and treat any plants that have buggy problems!

I think for now we'll just enjoy some of the raw stalks dipped in a little bit of sugar. A yummy way to enjoy this tart treat :)

Hugs,
Rosina

Transplanting

It was a perfect day to sit outside and do some much needed re-potting of my tomato plants :)

I can't believe how fast they have grown! This will be the last time I re-pot them until they make their final trip out to the greenhouse which I hope is very soon. I'm so excited because hubby and I found some great big pieces of glass for the new greenhouse he is building me and I'm hoping that when he comes home he will be here long enough to maybe nearly finish it *grin*.

So with all of my tomato babies packed outside I got busy pinching off all of the leaves that were going to be buried underneath the soil in the larger one gallon pots...

and then filled each pot up with potting soil and a really healthy dose of cow manure. I think I must have filled each pot more than half full with manure *grin*. Mama wants some BIG tomatoes LOL.

When I started packing them all back inside I had just enough room on the bay windowsill to fit all of the pots. I guess it's the next best thing to having a finished greenhouse :) Maybe it will be good incentive for hubby as he really doesn't like it when I turn the dining room into an indoor jungle *grin*.

Hope you have a wonderful Sunday!

Hugs,
Rosina

Weekending ~ Garden

What a wonderful weekend!

The sun was shining and it was so gloriously warm today that for the first time since last fall we were able to take our jackets off while outdoors and just soak up the rays :) It probably won't last long so we took full advantage of it and hit the vegetable garden to get it ready for rototilling and planting.

There wasn't to much to do. A few leftover stalks from the broccoli and cabbage plants, some wayward pots and the stakes from the row of peas needed to be pulled up. The ground was nice and soft so I worked around the perimeter of the fence yanking out the creeping grass that always winds itself in and out of the wire and transplanted some of the fuzzy mullein that were growing in the middle of the garden so they wouldn't be turned under when everything gets tilled :)

We filled a couple of wheelbarrows full of grass which were taken to the compost.

After a while everyone got tired of helping mama pull grass so the boys went off to pretend sword fight and L sat on the lawn with her care bear for some girly play time :)

I know it doesn't look like much now but I'm so excited to think of all the vegetables that I want to fill this space with this year :)

One day I'm hoping to convert the whole thing to raised beds like I used to have years ago at our old house. I used to love coming out in the spring and just turning the dirt in each of the beds by hand. It was just somehow simpler... this spot always seems so unruly to me in the spring *grin*.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend to :)

Hugs,
Rosina

We're Planting!

My greenhouse isn't ready yet but I'm still going to get a jump on my tomato plants this year *grin*. After lunch today I rounded up my youngest little helper and we went hunting for the leftover stash of jiffy sevens that I knew I'd tucked away somewhere last spring for safe keeping. You know, one of those super safe places that are so good you don't even remember where it was!

I love these little things :)

You drop the little discs of compressed soil into a little bit of hot water and they magically puff right up providing a lovely warm home for your new seeds.

My five year old is growing by leaps and bounds and becoming such a great little helper that this year I let him do all of the planting on his own. With supervision of course :)

He carefully opened up the top of each of the jiffy sevens and placed three tomato seeds onto the soil and covered them up very gently. I like to plant in groupings of three. That way if any of them die or don't come up then I've got backups!

I planted 9 seeds for each type of tomato and if all goes well I should have 54 tomato plants all together. Most likely I'll loose a few due to poor germination but this will provide a substantial amount of tomatoes compared to the few I did last year. I've got great plans of canning stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce again this year. Normally I just purchase cases of field tomatoes from local farmers for this task but I really want to use my own. They just taste oh so much better *grin*.

I tried to find varieties that were well suited to growing here on the coast or for canning purposes so I went with:

Bonny Best: a strong indeterminate plant with excellent flavor. Especially good for colder climates.

Rocket: medium sized fruit, fast maturing and grow well in the short season of the coastal BC and prairies.

Italian Heritage Roma: abundant harvest of thick walled tomatoes with few seeds, perfect for tomato sauce and paste.

Lisa King: large red beefsteak, good flavor and very productive. This was highly recommended.

Polish Paste: flavorful and meaty, good for tomato pastes.

German Red Strawberry: large 1lb fruits, good producer and canning tomato.

They're all organic, non gmo and some are heirloom varieties so I'm hoping to have a great crop :) If not I'll cull the ones we don't like and pick new ones next year *grin*.

Can't wait until they start to sprout out of the dirt!

Hugs,
Rosina

Waiting

I find it very amusing that barely 2 months ago I was really looking forward to putting my garden to bed for the winter and not thinking about weeding, watering or what I wanted to can any more. Yet here I am standing out in the field looking at the frozen mounds of plowed earth, turned and waiting for the spring thaw and making mental notes on what I want to do this year to improve my garden!

The seed catalogues have been showing up one by one and I now have a Stokes, West Coast Seed & Johnny's Seed catalogue to peruse during these darker winter days. West coast seeds is my favorite as they have non GMO, heirloom and organic seeds and my list of seeds that I want to purchase is growing larger every day *grin*. I was teasing Hubby that I better start my own personal lay-away plan just so that when I do finally make my order it won't break the bank!

I would love to build a small glass greenhouse for tomatoes this spring on our front patio. It is crazy hot out there in the summer so we never actually sit there and the space would make a fantastic hot house. Maybe I'll have to put my son's new miniature doll house building skills to use and see if he can make a full sized building for me this time :)

So many plans. Thank goodness it's only January....

But wait! Now that I think of it I really don't have a ton of time! The tomato seeds need to be started in February if I want to see red tomatoes before the next fall frost. I better start planting the greenhouse bug in some ears sooner rather than later *grin*.

Hugs,
Rosina

PS. I've got Day 2 of my Project 365 posted HERE :)

Rotkohl

I am enjoying the cabbage we picked from our garden earlier this week immensely! Well actually we all are *grin*. I brought one of the heads into the house right away for dinner. I had to strip away some of the outer leaves that were loose and bug bitten and extract a few little creatures but those are the joys of organic gardening LOL.

I was laughing to myself in the kitchen as I was cutting it in half because I was more interested in photographing it and studying the intricate pattern hidden within the head than getting down to business and chopping it up!

Hubby had just returned home from work and I had great plans of making Rotkohl and bratwurst as a special meal and with all my shutter bugging it ended up taking me a whole hour longer than I had planned to get things out on plates *grin*.

As a child I remember having the most delicious rotkohl that my Omi made and it has been years since I had tasted its sweet and slightly sour flavor so when I ran across a recipe for it I just had to try making it. Mmm, so good!! The kids all loved it to and I knew they would because it really is like eating candy *grin*. Regular sauerkraut made with green cabbage is quite strong and has a very strong vinegar taste but this is the completely opposite end of the spectrum and the kids don't question what it is then LOL.

I'm thinking that this will be the perfect way to use up all of the red cabbage so that I don't waste any of it. I have never canned cabbage though before so I still haven't found out exactly how I need to process it. If you have any experience canning rotkohl please let me know! This would be such a special treat to pull out for sunday dinners :)

Hugs,
Rosina