Cheating

I have a thing going with jalepenos. 4 gardening seasons ago, I bought a jalepeno plant from the farmer's market. It did really well in my wee garden on Mission Hill so I saved the seeds. The next spring, I planted the seeds and the plants did amazingly well in my garden here at this old house. I had more jalepenos than I ever had. Last summer, I planted seeds from those plants and I ended up with jalepeno plants up to my waist and ripening jalepenos and setting blossoms right until the first hard frost. At Mary Sue's encouraging, I dug up two of the plants and put them in a big planter and situated them in front of Kaetlyn's huge, southfacing window. And the blossoms that were setting just before the frost grew tiny little jalepenos (Kaetlyn has eaten them all so I can't verify their taste although she says they were not very hot - which is what she was hoping for). With the lengthening days and increased sunlight, my plants are full of blossoms. And look at this ripe, red jalepeno! I'm going to try to pollinate those blossoms myself with a cu tip as soon as they open all the way. What will happen next? (and yes, I saved LOTS of seeds from last year's biggest and best jalepenos, so if you want some, e-mail me with your address and I'll send some off!)

To Drive the Cold Winter Away

The sun woke me up this morning - falling across my bed. The kind of bright morning sun that calls me to my garden. Although my garden beds were just bumps under the snow, I decided to take a walk along my garden paths. And look what I found? These are Egyptian Walking Onions - a kind of perennial green onion. I love them for this very reason - long before any other green thing is edible in my garden we will be enjoying the tangy sweetness of their fresh flavour. I love the little miracle that they are - generating enough heat in this cold to emerge from the frosty ground.








And I love living in the Okanagan where we don't need a holiday like Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario for a break in mid-winter in February. This isn't mid-winter. This is the very end of winter. The snow is inexorably melting. Spring is surely sneaking in.

Valentine Memories

We are not really big on Valentines around here but it has been awhile since I posted so I thought I would share some Valentine's memories. I'd have to say that my favourite Valentine's memory is from the house we lived in on Fir Street in Prince George, up the street from Fort George Park and Miller Addition, the first school built in PG that I attended with my brother. It was a wee 4 room school that went from grades 1 - 4. I loved it there. My best friend was Nels who liked to ride bikes with me and called his parents by their first names. It was the house where I got to pick the wallpaper for my room and get new curtains (all pink). On this particular Valentines, my mother would have been pregnant with my first sister (after 3 brothers!) and I would have been in grade 2. I woke up that morning to iced sugar cookies on my pillow from my mother with Valentines sayings on them. I can still feel the thrill of the magic of opening my eyes and finding COOKIES! on my pillow. I have forgotten who gave me what valentine at school or even any later boyfriends' gifts but I remember still the joy of waking up to the cookies that my mother made and decorated in the night when I was 7.

So what am I doing today? I am making brownies for a friend with her foot up, making sugar cookies with my 7 year old and having a lamb shoulder roast for supper. Happy Valentine's Day everyone!