Greenstorm's Journal

Snow fell the last few days, and a little even stuck. Canada Post is on strike and my bulbs are in it, but I think I planted them about this time last year, and the ground isn't frozen yet. I'm hoping they arrive not too damaged after sitting in a warm spot for over a month.

The provincial public service is on strike too, which I suspect means my disability application won't be accepted or processed until they're done, and after that I imagine a backlog-- no wait, I think this was a federal one? Anyhow, neither they nor insurance has asked me for anything in the last two weeks, which is nice.

The pottery class has one more class. We did glazing yesterday and the glazing area is pretty small, so I peeled people off one at a time and we worked on their stuff while everyone else got free play time, and most ended up scultping. This is excellent, since sculpting is not my strong point, and they got to do a bunch of it without my needing to instruct on more than the principles of attaching things. I like people doing people things, I guess.

It's seed swap season (did I already say that?) and the Canadian seed swap fb groups put up all their stuff and arranged groups -- the way it works is you send in ten of the same variety to a central volunteer, and get back nine different varieties (The tenth one goes to a prize that I guess folks get entered into, or into mutual-aid style packages). So groups of ten people, none of whom have the same variety to send in, get made in all sorts of categories: paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, brassicas & root crops (not sure why those are together), lettuce and herbs, etc. Then the landrace organization, who I believe are now labelling themselves as adaptation gardening people, have asked for seed donations in Canada so I'll send in a bunch of stuff to them; they distribute it free. They'll get some very fun tomatoes.

All this has prompted me to start seeding tomatoes more seriously. I have trays of now-ripe tomatoes on every surface downstairs and I need to get the seeds out of them, and ideally them into a salsa or something and canned or at least to pigs. Josh will be here in a week and it would be nice if there were some surfaces not covered in tomatoes for him.

Meanwhile my sauerkraut has gone from fermenting in the cool pantry to the fridge. It's perfect, crunchy and sour and lightly spicy since I put hot pepper shreds in most of my sauerkrauts. Now there's kimchi fermenting in that spot, I have a couple more gallons to make. I have yet to sample the test batch to know how I should tweak it but was very happy to find diakon at the grocery store here.

I enjoy chattering away about the garden and wish I had the wherewithal to do more. I do want to update that three of the muscovy babies from this spring survived -- two male -- and nine ducklings, and now there are seven chicks feathering out. The muscovies from Shelly's farm are doing well here, competing for my napa cabbage and flying all over to hang out on top of things, like muscovies do. It's like having animate jewels.

I'm not fully sure how to divide the animals for winter. I'd like to get the goosehouse mucked out fully but it's slow going for me; if I do it right I can put aspen chips in it, and they're easier to muck out than straw when they've semi-composted. I'd like to use the actual greenhouse in the spring, so I want whoever is in it to not nest in it, or to have a place to go in February that's snug for nesting and predator-free in that lean time. Right now Solly is somehow getting in to sleep in it and I think she's only letting the chicks in with her. For that matter, I'd like to get the pots of frosted dead tmatoes out of the woodshedgreenhouse and put wood in there. Hopefully Josh can help with that.

This is probably more going on than I should have. My mind feels a little clearer, though I still can't remember students names from one moment to the next and when washing my hands I've been drying them before rinsing them lately. My muscles feel softer. Still off the pill, eating hurts less and is easier, though my muscles really do feel like they're made from sticks and playdough. At some point I expect my hormonal system to notice it's supposed to do things and start up again, at which point I'll rev up the pills and the various eating medications I've been given, but right now I have a little calm space.

We're supposed to get our first real snow of the year in the next 24 hours: 20-30cm.

Shortly thereafter it's supposed to drop to -23C or lower. It's going to be very hard on the plants; the soil is still dead dry.

Last night I was out with the headlamp and then this morning out with the headlamp again.

I got the tillers under cover, got some roofing on next year's split wood (but there's still maybe 2/3 cord to split, and the splitter is still out there, and I didn't do the aspen yet).

I got all my lumber (2x4s, spare house wood, etc) under cover but not up on racks. I had to pry some of it off the ground, pretty much everything has a couple inches of gravel frozen to it at this point.

I got the garlic covered in straw.

I raked the snowblower path from the house back to get twigs etc out of the way, but I didn't get the front of the driveway done.

I got the animal carriers split, clamshelled, roughly cleaned (there was some frozen stuff I couldn't get off) and put under cover.

I got extra straw to everyone to keep them warm.

I picked up a bit more garbage and organized some things, put all the cardboard in the cardboard pile.

I got the hoses strung up on the deck, but only one got put away (I snaked it through the rafters on the goose shed, which is honestly where I should put some of the 2x4s)

I did not get the far-back straw bales re-covered for a third time after the wind blew the tarps off; my plan was to bridge between the two with some treetrunks and put some roofing over so I can get the pigs back there in the spring. I need to do that tonight, during "at snow; at times heavy".

I did not get the back side of the animal carrier A-frame reattached where it blew off.

I did not get the missing metal panel from the pigpen reattached; I need to cut several metal panels and put them up for that.

(Doing this now) I did not let the fire go out and clean the chimney, but I really should do that before the hard cold comes.

I did not test-start the snowblower or pull the garden textiles off it (they have not been stored in a bin safely).

(Did half of this) I did not get all the flower pots from my deck moved off the lawn out of the snowblower path.

I have not yet wrapped the apple trees and berry bushes to keep voles from eating the bark.

Busy times.

At the end of last week some folks from Vancouver and the Island came up for the weekend-- it had been a couple years since I'd seen them. They had come up previously when Thea was little and before I got Avallu, so that would have been late summer 2017. I drove in to pick them up from the airport in the city and we spent some time eating, petting animals, walking along the lake looking for rocks, and chatting before I drove them back Sunday. We went in a couple hours early to have lunch in town before their flight.

Well, as I got into town the truck started flashing a ton of lights: ABS & traction control, 4Hi, & 4Lo. I got us to the restaurant and they went in while I ran the codes. At this point I hadn't tried to do anything like go into 4hi, the flashing had all just started on its own. Well, I turned 4hi off and on again, turned the truck off and on again, and rocked back and forth a couple inches. That part stopped flashing. The code the engine was giving me was for a rear speed sensor. That wheel looked fine, the code cleared and didn't come back. For awhile I was looking into a cab to the airport from the restaurant for folks and a hotel room in the city because I didn't want to get stranded. In the end, because the codes didn't come back and the ABS appeared to be working, I drove folks up to the airport and then myself and Tucker back home in the twilight/dark. We skipped our normal shopping because I was just done for the day: when we got home after that last hour of driving in the dark and snow I went straight to bed and fell asleep.

Turns out that was the right call because this morning we woke up with several inches of snow on the ground and maybe 14" total falling throughout the morning/afternoon. I am so glad I did not have to drive home in that, especially in a vehicle I don't trust.

Turns out that snow is the northern tip of a ton of rain falling on the south coast that's taken out all highway access: basically the umbilicus that connects the interior to the rest of the province and to Canada. A big snow closed these same highways in 2015 for five days but this is a lot more structural damage than snow. Thoughts: Very Happy my friends did not drive up here, concerned to see if Josh can get up at the end of the week, very curious to see what grocery stores do in the next little while. Also this will probably foil my 4th attempt at getting a bank card by mail, so there's that. There are some pretty spectacular pictures of the Coqihalla (highway 5), highway 99, and highway 7 washouts. Apparently there are a couple hundred folks stuck between slides and they're trying to evacuate them through to the nearest town, which itself doesn't have power. I'm feeling pretty lucky with a full pantry and a generator (though no gas for the generator and I need to replace the fuel in the snowblower since it's been sitting which has meant a lot of shovelling).

Exciting times. I'm glad mom lives on a boat, though she said a random boat looked like it was lifted from anchor by the flooding and drifting towards her dock.

After Josh's (hopeful) visit next week is Tucker's birthday, when I'm looking forward to making tasty food appear and watching movies and snuggling. Downtime stuff. It feels like winter has hit pretty hard and I'm ready to hibernate awhile with some good tea, no-cook charcuterie platters, and a book or two.

I live somewhere cold and reasonably wet. Our occasional extreme low (not to long ago the regular low) in winter is sort of -40 (which is both Celsius and Ferenheit, it's where the streams cross). We get maybe 3m of snow falling over the course of a winter, which is maybe 1m of accumulation at the height of winter. Snow is much more variable than rain, of course, with density and thus volume fluctuating wildly. Still, what I'm trying to say is that there's white stuff on the ground for six months.

We're connected by a few ribbons of pavement. There are groceries in town, gas stations, an insurance agent and a dentist. There's a dollar store and a department store and an auto parts store, two mechanics and two hardware stores. There is a medical clinic. Prices in general are higher here but it's possible to order in what can't be bought in town and to not leave much. Most people drive into the bigger city pretty frequently though: there are bigger stores, variety in stores, bulk discounts, a movie theatre, restaurants, bank branches, optometrists and orthodontists and physiotherapists. Few people out here are strangers to driving in winter conditions. They (we?) are used to navigating roads that are marked by two dark tire strips in a flat white expanse, sorta guessing where lanes are when the plough hasn't gone by yet, taking it easy and slow when the roads are slippery.

Or we're supposed to be.

Thing is, a vehicle with snow tires in -20 handles basically normally. The snow/ice is cold enough to either blow off the road or stick to it like more concrete. Winter tire substance is sticky at low temperatures, unlike summer tires, and so it adheres to the road much like summer tires do to a summer road. It's pretty reasonable, especially if you choose to drive in the brief window of daylight.

In the shoulder seasons snow is wet and slippery, half-frozen. Not everyone has their snow tires on yet and snow tires aren't entirely built for water over melting ice anyhow. Everyone has seemingly forgotten how to drive in this, which is fair: it's only for a total of maybe two months a year. This morning it snowed here; in the city it rained-then-froze, which is black ice, and then snowed overtop. Here was sloppy driving to work and I got to play with the Tundra's 4hi since I won't have my winters on till Saturday. In the city was a ten car pile-up and closing down a major highway intersection (the city is the crossroads of the two highways up here, one of which runs north-south and the other which runs east-west).

The first couple years I drove 20km to work and 20km back and was pretty nervous around this time of year. It's the sort of weather when my rollover accident happened and I'm both a relatively new driver and relatively new up north. Then I moved workplaces and also it was covid so I had a shorter drive when I drove in at all. Today I came in for the first time in awhile because work is offering a free flu shot. Turns out the nurse administering the shots is coming in from the city.

We'll see if she shows. Meanwhile I'm here in the office, wearing my fancy opal ring with the leaf on it, looking out the window at the light skim of snow over everything and the sun rising over the lake.

More like sleet. Wet, obscuring, doesn't seem to stick. It's chilly. I want my chimney fixed. Still, it held off pretty late this year.