Later That Day

Nowhere ventured in constant snow



A pan shot from the deck



Going from south to north



Four and a half inches at 5pm



After a brief lull
Snow falls thickly

How deep will it be in the morning?

It Started

In mist still wet
Still



Movement only a deepening chill



Mist thickened
Clear rice on tissue paper called
Hissing momentum



The instant of white
Quickly defines black

Then There Were Two

It has rained all day. I have been out wandering this mountain anyway. Eventually the clumps of daffodils got counted while I was looking for tufts of fur, signs of a scuffle, bits of entrails or suspicious foot prints, any sign I might find as a clue. I found nothing. I heard nothing.

Tomorrow everything will be covered in snow and the temperatures are headed into the teens. If I missed some clue, it will have to wait even longer now before I might spot it.



Something was out there last night. The Spots were going nuts and wouldn't come inside. I finally gave up and went to bed thinking it was the other cat I had seen around in the last two weeks.

This morning two wet cats bolted in when I got up and opened the door. Just two.



I counted 265 clumps of daffodils coming up while crisscrossing the paths of the ridge top garden. Last year on February 26th before the big snow storm I had counted 245 clumps of daffodils. Spring looks to be on schedule.

Sadly there was one less Spot this morning. Collar, the black and white female spotlet has vanished without a trace. Chances of her return, I think are slim to none.

I'm not even hungry for cake.

Oh My God! Collar is back as of 9pm. I spent the whole day calling her. Sound travels in these hills and I did not hear a single meow, a rustle or catch any glimpse of her and I roamed almost two thirds of this eleven acres and a bit of the surrounding land. Good grief!!

Now we are three again.

Daffodils And Rain

It feels like spring is slower coming this year. The daffodils don't seem to be as far along as my memory tells me they were at this time last year. Looking back at February of 2008 on the blog tells me things actually are right on schedule. I have not done a daffodil clump count yet. Tomorrow when there is a break in the 100% diagnosis for rain I will do that. Maybe counting the clumps of daffodils will help reassure me that spring is coming on time.

Then I will get ready for the snow that is supposed to come after that. Just like last year on February 28th when there was eight inches of snow.

Something is different. There has certainly been more rain and snow and cold this winter than last. The ten ponds I have gained is testament to that. The only way that could have happened is if I have been sitting around on my okole more. There can't be that much difference between toting rocks and toting lumber and siding. It must be a quantity of days toting issue. The good thing is gaining ten pounds for me is not a problem. That recovers a third of the weight I lost since moving.



Today's rain slowed things down, but I did manage to cut and paint the first coat on the trim boards for the three windows on the downhill side of the cabin. Tomorrow I can apply the second coat. Maybe even another load of wood chips can be fetched for the vegetable garden. When the sun returns the windows can be trimmed.

Something is stirring. Mama Spot has wanted to be outside tonight for the first time in two months without me being by her side. The spotlets have been hard to keep indoors for the last few days now that the warm spells are warmer and have more rain than snow. The small critters must be getting more active and I am reminded that cats are largely nocturnal animals. It could be too the other cat I have seen lurking about twice now in the last two weeks. I know the Spots have seen it and detected the presence of another. Why are there all these cats in the middle of no where? Good thing we're all fixed now.

If I hadn't heard the coyotes across the road two nights ago, the owls hanging out very close this week and a strange lurking feline who had unusually pointy ears and a strangely long tail, I wouldn't worry about the Spots out there in the dark. It took me months to get them inside and they were just babies when they lived outside all the time. It will be alright.

I need more cake.

Inevitable

One day the cozy cabin will have all its siding, but I have reached a standstill in my siding obsession. The window trim and porch roofs must go on before I can continue.



One day soon it will be spring and the Helleborus from Fairegarden, Tennessee will have open blooms. One day the Helleborus will be big clumps in large drifts when the potted baby Helleborus join the garden.



One day the dry stack stone walls will get the attention they deserve and can be said to be finished.



One day I may look back at this time and marvel at how fast a cozy cabin, rock walls, vegetable and ornamental gardens came into being by the physical efforts of mostly one man.

One day soon I hope to be able to set in a rocking chair on my front porch and enjoy the lush scenery. Maybe I should just bring a chair down there now.

Gotta Garden

It was a might chilly this morning. To cold really to work on the siding. I needed a few things in town and my new strategy is to carry my pitchfork and empty mulch bags in the truck when I go to town and grab some wood chips on my way by the dump site down by the river.

By the time I got back with another load of wood chips it had warmed up nicely. My plan to work on the siding in the afternoon was shelved. The garden was calling me. I needed to work in the garden for a change.

I went around the perimeter of the vegetable garden with the manual hedge clippers and cut down all the dead brown stalks of last years wildflowers to make way for the new spring growth of my beneficial insect factory. That is still a ways away yet. I needed to garden though.



Yes there is a fire in the vegetable garden. Now when I burn the rubbish I can just say I am making biochar to improve the soils nutrient holding capacity. These non-woody stems and twigs don't really make much charcoal, but every little bit helps.



I will be expanding the vegetable garden just a bit this year. The small triangle of ground on the left side of the path in front of that stack of wood and the garbage bag I keep up there for picking up roadside trash is going to be brought into production.

This area was mostly filled with vetch, one of the nitrogen fixing legumes. It also has an Ironweed, Vernonia noveboracensis and a perennial sunflower, Helianthus maximiliani that I want to transplant to new locations.



From this vantage point it looks like most of the vegetable garden is mulched. It might be a bit more than half done in reality. It will take a couple more trips to town to finish.



Yesterday's siding of three courses of boards above the back kitchen door and below the porch roof took most of the day. There was extra cutting to fit around the obstacles and one cut had to be done over from scratch. That end of the cabin on sloping ground is a bit precarious for reaching up and nailing on siding. It is best if I move cautiously.



With one whole side completed, half of the front and half of the back, the siding is 50% done. Not to bad for a snowy wet winter.

Already

There's more snow coming tonight?



Will I be deprived of another day of siding? I did get the siding done to the bottom of the back porch roof today. I was too tired to go back and take a picture.

Maybe tomorrow I will be able to do more siding or maybe I will go fetch more wood chip mulch.

Fetching Wood Chip Mulch

A sunny cold day of melt was a perfect time to go fetch some wood chips. While the cozy cabin de-ices and dries out, I could turn my attention to thoughts of a bountiful vegetable garden.

There is a place down by the Pigeon River where the tree trimmers dump their chips. They always disappear eventually. There are enough smart gardeners in these parts to use up this steady supply. I could use this entire pile.



The river below the bridge is running pretty full with all the rain and snow there has been of late.



On a hill across the highway, an old farm house still stands.



Instead of loading the bed of the truck with chips, I used saved plastic bags of cypress mulch. These are way tougher than most plastic garbage bags and save me the process of having to unload the wood chips into the wheelbarrow to get them to where they need to go. I wonder if anyone makes and sells tough reusable plastic bags like this? I always saved my 3 cubic feet Sunshine Mix potting soil bags for chores like this in Hawaii. There are plenty of occasions, particularly with steep terrain, where a wheelbarrow just isn't practical and carrying bags is much easier.



The gold standard of mulch in my opinion is fresh from the trimmer's truck wood chips. It does amazing things for the soil and the plants that will grow in it. If you need more convincing there is an article on arborist wood chips by Dr. Linda Chalker-Scott at Sustainable Gardening. I have been doing what she recommends in this article for twenty years with excellent results. I even ignore her advice about not using it in vegetable gardens or annual beds and have seen no ill effects.

The vegetable garden is getting a new layer of wood chips for the upcoming growing season. Two trips to the river got almost a third of the vegetable garden covered. I need more bags. It would take fewer trips.



The mulch will act as an insulating blanket and moderate the soil's temperature swings. That means as much as it will keep the soil warmer later in the season and cooler during the summer, the mulch can keep the soil cooler in the spring when it is time to plant. I will rake an opening in the mulch when I am ready to sow seed. If we have a cool or cold spring I may do that a few days before I sow the seed to help warm the soil a bit.



You can see the scenic highway is the de facto melt line on the north facing side of this mountain. Location becomes an even more crucial consideration for planting of all kinds up here in these mountains.