Up here in central-western Alberta, summer is often just a suggestion and more accurately called “mud and construction season”, and spring and fall are unofficially known as “late winter” and “early winter.” To add insult to injury, our soil consists of an inch or so…
Last year we put in the new compost bin that we picked up at Costco. It’s made in Canada from recycled plastic and not very pretty to look at, but that’s ok. Functional is good enough, pretty is just a bonus. I left it alone…
Well, they took their time, but bell peppers are fickle little beasts and it’s only barely warm enough in my little make-shift indoor greenhouse. Day 15 and I was starting to wonder if I needed to get a heat mat, but the first one peeked…
It’s the best time of the season – the days are getting longer, and we have spurts of spring mingling with snow, but hard winter is done. The water and septic line heat tapes are unplugged – the next electric bill will be considerably lower!…
It’s common knowledge among those who know me, that I’m a little a bit of a nerd and geek. I love technology. I love watching how the collective intelligence of humanity is making lives easier (somehow life still feels quite hard, doesn’t it, though?), life…
When I started making our homemade tortillas, I didn’t have any lard in the house (post holiday pie baking wiped out my big tub), so olive oil it was, knowing they should be good, but maybe not as good as they could be. Still, they…
How much trouble can a water well be? Besides the cost, which can be 10s of thousands of dollars, you might have issues with water quality that has to be resolved to be able to use the water. If it’s bad enough, it can damage…
We recently ran frighteningly low on honey, and my brain being, well, it’s usual scatter-brained brain, forgot to buy more on the last two trips to Grande Prairie. It was on the list; I did go down that aisle. Maybe something shiny distracted me. Anyway….…
I’m on a quest lately, to make peanut butter snack bars my boys will like more than store bought ones. Because, you know, they’re expensive and why pay extra for all that crap they put in factory food? So that was this morning, making the…
That moment when you realize it was 2014 when you posted last, and it’s somehow now 2017…. How did that happen? Looking back over all the year’s posts, my poor garden blog went from frequent excited posts to sporadic random recipes and “want to do”. …
Well, it’s been winter since the second week of November here (it was winter early October last year though, so I am happy fall stuck around a little longer) and it just keeps getting more and more wintery. And I’ll tell you a secret, I…
If you follow me on facebook, you probably noticed a few pictures I’ve posted of our recent “guests”. They are gypsy moths (or the caterpillars that will turn into them) and they don’t want to move out. Google says that BTK is “the thing” to…