Preparing to Sell and Sale

The real work has begun, we are making preparations for garage sales and finishing some unfinished editing of the house itself.

 

Long time no see

I received a request for an update. I haven't written in quite a while and my public misses me LOLOL...

What have we been doing? Well we started our Keto lifestyle on December 1st. We have each lost approx 30 lbs so far (he a bit more and I a bit less)... we are loving the keto life. We get to eat all kinds of delicious treats which we never used to eat before, we were not dessert people. Now I make cheesecake 'fat bombs'... as our diet is 5% Carbs, 25% proteins and 70% fats there is plenty of room for what we would have previously considered 'junk' food (desserts). I make peanut butter cups, keto pizza... tons of delicious recipes all of which are popular with our friends. For anyone considering the Keto Lifestyle, I personally recommend using 'The Carb Manager' app, just put in your details and the system will create a meal plan, grocery list and gives you excellent recipes. We have not found a recipe we didn't like on the app, and that says a lot! 

We spent about 5 days in Jasper doing a dog sit in about February, I think. It was nice to get a change of scenery and the 2 dogs were very well behaved. All 3 dogs got along great.

Stacey is planning a trip out here likely in May and Meg will be coming out again sometime soon, although nothing definitive.

(don't tell her I put this here ;) )

My garden starts are doing fabulous and are just waiting for the weather to stabilize. We were in double digits last week but yesterday we got an inch or so of snow again.

What else? I dunno, just playing Pickleball, going to Cards, volunteering for catering events at the club...

I have begun to expand my Reiki thing, I wouldn't call it a 'business' but I am expanding it so that people anywhere in the world can book a personalized online session with me. 

Also, I have always wanted to do Pottery and so I have begun teaching myself how and Brad picked up a large craft table for me just yesterday.

Robbie is doing great. His cataracts were quite bad and as I know that Castor Oil works well for human cataracts I decided to use a dropper and try it on him, there was really nothing to lose as his eyesight was so terribly poor. It has made a huge difference for him (* not medical or veterinary advise), his eyes have mostly cleared up and he can see so much better now. His hearing however.... well, he takes after his father.

Our Granddaughter was in the Edmonton Cheer competition this past weekend and so we went to the big city for that. Her team placed 5th of sooo many teams. It was a fun day for her.

I think that about sums it up. Just day to day winter doldrums really for the past few months. Super excited to have Spring springing.

Garden Results

 Here is a picture of what we got out of all our garden building efforts this year.....

Okay that picture is a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much... we got:

Enough garlic to fill a 750ml Jar with honey

10 tomatoes

15 potatoes

1 small cucumber

tons of herbs and flowers

So if your wondering why I haven't been posting, its because there just wasn't anything to talk about. Our winter stock of teas, herbs, flowers is set but I had to purchase a few items from the Hutterites (Amish) in order to get 12 jars of vegetables fermented for winter. 

Our Elderberry plants ( 2 of them) survived and seem to be doing well. Both blueberry plants, the strawberry plant and the cherry tree are all doing well also.

I guess this year will just be chalked up to preparation for coming years. Our infrastructure of raised beds, herb and flower gardens etc are all in place. Our intention for next year is to build a greenhouse 10 x 26 in the area where our in-ground garden and shed (shed has been dismantled and removed already) are currently. A new shed will be built on the north side of our house.

We are going back to Salt Spring Island very soon to visit friends and extend the fall season before coming home to a settled winter. For any new readers, we lived on Salt Spring 2018 - 2020.

How does our garden grow?

Not well, that's how.

The herbs and flowers are doing great but vegetables... not so much, not so much at all. Although the onions look to be doing well.

Backyard herb garden

Backyard herb garden behind the tall plants

Grass looks great and the hanging baskets have held up fantastic

Strawberries are doing well and the grape is growing but no fruit yet (1st year didn't expect any)

The largest 1 of our 3 Paste tomatoes

8 paste tomato plants and nothing, these 3 won't do anything before 1st frost in a couple of weeks.

Slicing tomatoes have a dozen or so fruits but again, not before 1st frost. Carrots seem small but who knows what lies below.

Kale was pulled ages ago and replanted with spinach... 3 spinach have cracked the surface.

My 1 lone pepper on my Thai hot pepper plants

1 lone bell pepper too and its dinky

This years garlic harvest didn't produce much of anything

Potato plants were moved into the shed to allow for drying as we've had so much damn rain.

Celery and Parsley are doing great! and my 11 sunflowers have been whittled down to 4 but they are growing well.

3 are here and...

Sunflower #4

Kidney beans don't seem to be doing much, peas and red scarlet runner beans aren't so hot either.

All in all, given the work we put in to building the gardens this year, it is a massive disappointment. We console ourselves with the knowledge that it is the same for farmers and growers everywhere this year.

We will have to go to the big city for some organic produce so that I can at least get enough ferments made for the year.

I will update after onion harvest and by then I will have the potato count also. Some people have grown potatoes in bags as I did and got diddly squat out of it, so I'm not getting my hopes up.

Next year: Greenhouse 10' x 20'+

Another addition to the deck

We ordered a gazebo for the deck as the bugs were more than we wanted to manage

Largely made of screening, it maintains the views

Major storm expected, we put all the flowers under the gazebo and just as well as it turns out. However, since then....hail. 

Hopefully the return of the sun will liven things up again.

On a lighter note: my zucchini has doubled in size since this picture was taken last week.

Also, we found a great deal on a fire table through Amazon and are currently awaiting its arrival, will be a nice addition to chilly evenings on the deck.

We just can't help ourselves

We continue to buy plants/flowers... I'm running out of buckets to put them all in (still have a few :D) In our defence, we had several large bags of potting soil left over from the last raised bed and we wanted to use it up.

Re-homed the plants we had in these and replaced with lovely flowers

Brad found this massive flower planter and had to have it

Brad's Mum bought us this garden planting stand and with everything planted now we decided to fill it too!

Re-homed the 8 Lemon Balm plants that were in this garden bed (as it is a spreader) into pots for the deck and replaced them with more Rosemary & Thyme, then added Spinach seeds. The hope is that this cooler shaded area will allow the spinach to thrive during summer but either way we will be planting spinach also in the fall.

My Zucchini ( I grew from seed) hasn't budged at all.

Amish Peas have cracked and are doing well

Kidney beans are doing well

Scarlet Runner beans are doing well

We went for a drive the other day which took us through the area where the forest fires were threatening our community. Its a mess and thats just the small bit you can see from the road.

The biggest take away from these pictures is just how fast Mother Nature recovers, the fields are filling in already. The fires in our area are still burning but are 'under control'.

Yet another garden.

We put in another garden, just a little one. There were some leftover flowers that needed something doing with, so… 

I also did up some more pots… These are all just pretty not edible or medicinal as far as I know, although I will check - with t(e exception of the first one which is a 12-18” variety of cherry tomato called Red Robin.

The view from my kitchen window.

Outdoors update

Front Yard

Brad's 'finger' garden

Herbs/Flowers left side

Front Porch

Herbs/Flowers right side

Back Yard

Back deck 

(still have plants to pot up)

Back Yard herbs/flowers

Strawberries/Tomatoes, Basil, Stevia and Marigolds

Tomatoes, Stevia, Basil, Peppers and Marigolds

Under tree shaded seating/hammock area

Potatoes/Willow area

In ground garden

Garlic, Onions, Tomatoes, Scarlet Runner Beans, Eggplant, Cucumber, Kidney Beans, Zucchini, Amish Peas and Celery

Berry Orchard

Elderberry, Blueberry, Raspberry and Cherry

Planters on side of garage

We plan to add a 2' wide garden area along this side of the garage also.

But thats another post.