Quilty Pleasures: Spiderweb Quilt With Snow

Like many grown kids, ours came to visit last weekend toting her laundry, including this spiderweb quilt I made a couple years ago.

She's trying to preserve this quilt because the previous one had so much laundering and drying the border ended up shredded (crummy fabric, methinks).

"Will it dry outside?" she asked. "Sure," Tom said. "It'll freeze dry."

So she draped it over the deck railing for overnight.

It was just a 10 percent chance of snow, which around here usually means it ain't gonna happen, but sure enough, it did. And so the quilt had a quick tumble on low temperature anyway and is none the worse for wear.

Bees and Carrots

This is a pretty random post, but since I've been random in what I do lately (like today waking at 4 a.m. and deciding that since I can't sleep, I might as well make a gigantic batch of granola), why the heck not talk about two topics that really aren't related?

Today after the epic granola project, I had to do some gardening chores. There is a 600 gallon water tank which acts as a thermal mass for the dome. The water evaporates, so I lugged in the hose to top off the tank. While it was filling, I did some planting.

But to make room, I had to pull the last of our Nantes carrots. This is the first time I've grown carrots in the dome and they did well. Now an Early Girl resides where the carrots were. I added some worm castings and growing mix to welcome the new tomato to the block.

Do you like that dishtowel? Thanks, Pattie!

Just outside the growing dome are the beehives. For a while there I was worried: robber bees were trying to get into the beehives with epic battles just outside each hive. I finally reduced the entrances to about bee width so the guard bees would more easily stop the invaders and it seems to have worked. All is orderly again.

Here is a closeup of the entrance to our top bar hive, now open because the robbers are gone. Most of the beekeepers around here use this type rather than the more common box-type hives called Langstroth.

Those little specks you can see against the cinderblock are flying bees.

Each of the bars, which you can see under the metal roof (which needs a good hit with the hammer), is 1 and 3/8 inches and the bees make their combs along the bars' length. There are no frames, so the bees make the combs just the way they want them. When we harvest honey, I hope this year, we lift out the bars, cut the combs off the bars and crush the combs to extract the honey.

This past fall we left all the honey for the bees because they were a new colony and I wanted them to have enough food for the winter. As of last week they still had some honey left, but friend Sue gave me two bars of honey yesterday. So I switched out some lightweight combs (they had eaten most of the honey) with the heavy, full ones. That should hold them for the couple of weeks we have until the flowers bloom. We have a late spring, yes, we do.

Surrounding the bee yard is an electric fence to keep out bears because the last thing the ladies need after a long, cold winter is for their homes to be invaded again, this time by gigantic furry destroyers. Both Ms. P and I have involuntarily tested the fence and it works just fine. The rocks on top of the hives and the orange straps on the ground keep the wind from blowing off the roofs.

I hope by midsummer to expand to four hives, but that depends on the bees and their queens and if there are enough flowers for them, and who knows what else. 

We will hope that all goes well with plenty of honey for everyone this year!

The Lazy Boys: George and Ringo

Meet George and Ringo who have been content to wander around the ranch, eating for a while and then lying down. Then they rest after their hard work, which consists of eating and lying down. There is plenty of grass so they don't need to range far and wide to find food. It's all around them.

But this dried grass is boring! It's like eating shredded wheat cereal!

Lately, though, they've been steers with a purpose: find grass that is green. It's starting to green up, especially along the creek bank, and they are on the job finding all the best morsels.

It's like when we say, "I think I want a salad!" after all those carbs.

Possible rain is forecast for a couple of days and that's just fine. We all want salads in spring.

Boyz in the Hood

This morning I drove six miles up our dirt road for coffee with a neighbor. We were going to inspect her beehives, but the weather turned stormy and windy which isn't something bees like. So we took a rain check.

 On the way home I saw these pretty boys and had to stop to say hi.

The guy on the left nickered a hello and ambled closer when I got out of the truck.

Then the pinto decided to investigate whether there were treats involved.

Sadly, I had no goodies but they didn't seem to hold a grudge.

And that ominous sky? Nothing happened!

Growing Dome Report: Early Spring 2013

Early spring in Northern New Mexico is not pretty. Everything still looks dead and three years ago when we first moved here, this SoCal gal wondered if any of the plants, trees, or grass would ever come back.

Looking north toward the cabin and Growing Dome

Temps are still as low as 3 degrees with highs in the 30's or 40's. The wind howls and it sounds like the roof is going to be ripped off. It's times like these that I remind myself that summer will be in the temperate 70's and 80's and not over 100F for weeks like at our old home.

The Growing Dome is the place to be during times like these. With the sun shining it's in the 70's and 80's which makes it cozy to sit in the Adirondack chair, read, listen to the wind, and watch stuff grow.

Below is the eastern side of the dome. I planted most of this stuff in late September. We ate lettuce, radishes, carrots, chard and kale throughout the winter.

Cast of characters here: kale, onions, rainbow chard, carrots and broccoli rabe.

Here are some closeups:

Broccoli Rabe

Carrots, rainbow chard, and red stalk celery

The radishes look as pretty as their picture.

I just bought a Meyer lemon tree. In the background are some EarthBoxes. Box 1: spearmint, Box 2: rosemary in the back and cilantro sprouting in the front, Box 3 (which you will just have to imagine): lemon thyme in the back, basil in the front. The rosemary and lemon thyme are a year old now.

The west side of the dome has been my lettuce garden and it's almost done and I have to wash off the aphids before we eat the leaves. I know, "Yuck!" But there's some protein there, I guess. I've been keeping the aphids in check with insecticidal soap which works if I keep at it.

Some of the sugar snap peas are ready to pick.

And I have one last crop of snap peas waiting in the wings. These were planted late February.

Pretty soon it will be time to plant the warm season crops: beans, tomatoes, cukes are number one on the list. Yay!

And here's another Yay!  We will be adding some raised beds where the south lawn is, so I can grow more stuff outside! We don't need that much lawn and why not have a potager (kitchen garden) just outside your house?

Happy Spring, everyone!