To The Surbiton Manor Born

I just spent the last 2-1/2 thankless hours potting up the latest batch of tomatoes. They are sealed into the greenhouse along with the seemingly unkillable fruit flies. They are immune to the death poison that killed them last year. But they're not immune to sticky stuff. All those little yellow things in the picture, those are sticky stuff, and they are covered in carnage. The good news, the tomatoes are looking good. The bad news is the continued wretched weather.  While garlic shoots are starting to show and crocus and tulips are waking up, we're still looking forward (used in the most literal sense without the common attendant optimism) to nights in the 20's this week. This means that I didn't plant the kale, and I didn't rake the straw back from the strawberry patch this weekend.  20-30 mph. winds can really bring you down. Yesterday we almost reached 70 degrees, but it was ruined by the blasting force of the never-ending gale. I know, because I spent 16 miles

  Outgrowing the Greenhouse April has averaged 20 degrees colder than normal. Because of the heavy clouds dumping a steady rain/snow mix for basically the entire month, we've produced less electricity with the solar than we did in March. It is absolutely grueling. At this point in the year, it is getting a little tiresome to be bitten with a cold shock every time you go outside or move from under a blanket. My marathon is only 9 weeks away, and I had to cut a planned 14 mile run short to 12.5 because of the howling, freezing wind on Saturday. That, and fears of global nuclear destruction, have re-inspired dreams of a fireplace. We had an estimate for an efficient wood burning insert on Friday that looks promising. It took some doing to find an appliance that would fit in our tiny fireplace. At 20" high, it is about 2" shorter than every fireplace I could find but one, the IronStrike Striker C160 .  We need an alternative source of heat. We live in Minnesota, and, should t

 The first couple of crocus that Kiki planted last fall opened their little blue flowers on Saturday. While there are still some wintry days ahead, this past weekend we were able to get out, finish off some chicken wire fencing, clear out the cucumber bed near the garage that I'd left from last fall, pull out hoses and rain barrels, trade the snow blower for the bicycles in the shed, and run 10 miles in relative comfort. There are rainy days in the 30's forecast for later this week, but the weekend saw temperatures in the high 50's.  While it is as true for a Minnesotan as it was for Thomas Covenant, "the Unbeliever" (when he was told at the beginning of the fantasy novel Lord Foul's Bane , "You cannot hope" regarding his leprosy diagnosis) you can't help but hope a little. The greenhouse finally burst. I had to get more of the delicious variety tomatoes out. This entailed a lot of repotting and setting up a table in the sunshine. They had grown

Three more tomato varieties planted this morning They took a while to get here, but the Seed Savers tomatoes that I ordered did arrive. The trusty Wisconsin Chief that we've been growing for the past two years. In the end, I thought it would be nice to have a few that we know for sure are delicious. And we also wanted some yellow & cherry tomatoes. I anticipate a lot of salsa being made this summer because of the massive numbers of peppers that germinated that I didn't have the heart to purge, thus pricking out and potting up about 3x the number I'd planned. I figure I can make room for in the garden. Or give them to friends.  Theoretically, we still have about five weeks to go before it is time to plant out, Memorial Day weekend being the big one for these warm weather crops. It is hard to imagine because it has been snowing for two days straight.  An interesting article today on CNN, "Dirty Dozen 2022: Produce with the most and least pesticides ."  We are no