Dry, old snow & gardening catalogs

The snow here needs to be replenished with a new supply. We're getting drier & drier; soon I'll have to go out and water some shrubs and an evergreen or two. Haven't had new snow for about a month or so. Even the mountains around us have been mostly missed by storms.

The 2010 gardening catalogs have been trickling in - High Country Gardens, Burpee, Territorial Seed Company, Fedco, several more. Very soon I want to take an inventory of my vegetable & flower seeds to find out what needs replacing or adding to for the upcoming season.

The kitchen scraps both from home & work are beginning to pile up a little; during the winter I store everything in "Trugs" & five-gallon buckets until the compost heaps outside thaw and allow me to turn their contents over. Of course, in the meantime, the mostly-outside sunroom starts to smell a bit "aromatic", especially on those warmish days that we've had lately (upper 30s).

Twice in the past week we've spotted the lone great blue heron that hangs out around the patches of open water in the Empire Canal nearby. Ice-skaters have been taking advantage of the cold nights we've had to do some skating on Home Lake.

SNOW & COLD

Yep, it's that time of year! A supposed blizzard (really! Even the National Weather Service is calling it that) is hitting the San Juan Mountains west of us, and the San Luis Valley is supposed to get about 3-4" of snow by end of tomorrow or so. Wolf Creek is due to get about 50" of snow out of this storm! Hooray for skiing!
All of my water barrels are now empty for the season, bird feeders are full for now, and the birdies have water kept thawed by the new water heater.
We went jogging at the Rio Grande State Wildlife Area yesterday, and saw a lone great blue heron. I bet we'll keep seeing it throughout the winter, which I marvel at. What does it find to eat? All the sandhill cranes appear to be absent now; the very cold temperatures we had this past week (low was -10F) probably drove them away to the Bosque del Apache NWR in New Mexico.
I've already received two 2010 garden supply/seed catalogs! Even I think that's a bit early.....

Just finished seed order!!!

Wow, kind of a $ splurge tonight. I decided to go wholly with Johnny's Seeds this year for all my new vegetable & flower seeds. First I went through my seed stockpile armed with a seed viability chart, and got rid of a few packets based on age. Then I have 3 or 4 other packets (parsley, nicotiana [had that since '02 and not once planted it!]) that I'm going to do a germination test on versus automatically reordering. I think I've only done a germination test once before. I'll wet some paper towels, then spread several seeds out on the towels, then roll up the paper towels and put in a plastic bag. The test in our house will be keeping it in a warm place as is recommended. Depending on how many seeds germinate, I'll either use the seeds or toss them in the compost pile. My seed-starting reference book recommends waiting a maximum of three weeks for most seed varieties to germinate.
My purchase tonight includes green beans, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, parsnips, peppers, tomatillos, kohlrabi, beets, chard, lettuce mixes, melon (haven't grown these before), cucumbers, sunflowers, zinnias, cosmos, and joe pye weed (very iffy here).
I went a little crazy with ordering sunflowers - they're such enthusiastic plants, and the birds & bees love them so!
What Fun!

Sandhill cranes & companions out & about

Sandhill cranes (see image), Canada geese, various ducks, and red-winged blackbirds were in abundance, both visually and vocally, this evening on my dog walk. The ice on Home Lake is beginning to show puddles of water on top. With a high today of 52 degrees (F), it really felt like spring! Pretty difficult not to think of gardening, planting seeds, etc. right now. But ground is way too wet. Will have to settle for looking through the seed catalogs instead. Our yard still has snow cover on about 50% or less of its area. I actually did some pruning yesterday on some crabapples and a mountain ash.

Beautiful winter & seed catalogs!

Blizzard warnings today, mostly in the mountains. Overnight last night it was very windy, and many drifts had appeared by morning. At 7AM it was 31 degrees, now at 1:30 PM it's about 28 degrees.

Bruce split a bunch of wood yesterday so we're now safe from freezing! We have this wood carrier thing that allows easy hauling of split wood. It also makes a handy dog carrier - poor Caddy is at Bruce's mercy!

I went snowshoe running over at the state wildlife area yesterday in the late afternoon - saw several hawks and many tracks in the snow. It was beautiful but cold; returned home with a frosted face.

Had to replenish the black oil sunflower seed and Niger thistle today at the local co-op---holy cow! Not (sort of) cheap like it used to be to buy that stuff for "wild" bird-feeding.

Picked up the mail today - four more seed catalogs arrived. Got one yesterday, and received a couple more several days before Christmas. I'd hate to think how many I'd be getting if I hadn't taken my name off a bunch of mailing lists! But it is making me think of seed-starting........