greenstorm | Imbolc; it begins!

As it turns out I'm not very formal about marking the wheel of the year. That's ok; the point of it is that it marks itself. I spent some time last weekend/this week clearing out the back corner of the diningroom where boxes of books from the chimney replacement were stacked, and on the other side where the last rabbit stuff (bucket of food; box she'd chewed on) hung out because I was too sad to clean it up after she died.

Then I brought in some dairy crates and some boards from an old broken shelf I'd meant to burn and set up the first real seed-starting shelf of the year. My fancy peppers and a couple microdwarf tomatoes are on it now, with LED shop lights. I also have a couple of the same tomatoes under a sunblaster, because I'm curious. I finished it about at the same time everyone was posting their imbolc altars and when I look at it now it's a classic altar form, with lights.

I'll need to clear out the wine shelf downstairs before tomato season, so I have a month and a half. The wine kit boxes need to go into fermentation buckets along with fruit; then my one freezer will be substantially empty and my shelf will be free for tomato transplants. There is actually space under the imbolc altar/plant shelf upstairs for those fermenting carboys to live.

The sun is really really coming back -- I have almost an hour after work before it gets really dark -- and the cold spells are getting less intense. If we hit -30 now I expect it to be an aberration rather than a long stretch.

My plant spreadsheet is on its way; I almost have start-months on everything. At least I know I need to get my artichoke seeds in the ground pretty quick.