Snowfall Warning

Friday morning we woke up to this, which the dogs really think is pretty great.

Look out Jake, I'm comin' to getcha...

Gotcha!

Take that you b#tch!

 Round and round we go

Larry, comin' thru.....

And the next thing I see is Larry on one leg, the other leg out to the side to try keep himself from falling over as the dogs just about take him out at the knee. He survived though:)

More snow coming down tonight (Friday).  And tonight we got a call from the Langley Police.  Does someone in your household own a 2004 Toyota Echo...?  And your heart drops like a stone...

Turns out Meredith had left her car at a park and ride by the freeway, and headed off with a friend.  In the meantime some low life had decided to smash her passenger window and rifle through her car.  A few CD's missing as well as her insurance papers and owners manual.  The police were a little concerned that the security of the car was compromised, although she did have a 'club' on the steering wheel.  So we decided to see if we could find her spare keys.  No such luck, and she doesn't carry a cell phone, and must be the only 20 something in North America that doesn't.  Well she had one, and then it died, and she didn't feel the need to immediately replace it.  Fortunately though, her friend is a cell phone devotee.  But... they were at a movie, so the friend wasn't answering her phone.  There was a whole lot of phone messages left.  

Message 1   We need to know where your spare keys are (of course I had also explained the situation)

Message 2 -  We found a key, and are going to pick up your car

Message 3 - We can't find a key for the club, so are going to see if two other keys for the same kinds of clubs will work, and see if we can get your car

So we head off to her car, about 6 minutes away.  It had just started to snow.  We get to her car and it is a freaking blizzard.  The broken window is on the windy side of the car, and we are struggling to try and tape a garbage bag over the window before the car fills up with snow.  Our finger are freezing because it's impossible to try and handle the duct tape, scissors and plastic bag with gloves on.  The duct tape won't stick to the wet car.  Finally we manage to get the plastic bag caught between the door and the frame so it was helping a bit.  I had actually been on my way to meet a friend for coffee and deliver something to her.  Larry decides to stay with the car, and I head onto the freeway, which I immediately regret, as it was almost a white out, and we are going just over 50 kph.  Thankfully a bit farther along the snow wasn't quite as bad. I get off at the next exit, tell the friend the story, we both decide to leave, to heck with the coffee.  On my way back, I see an ambulance and fire truck, lights flashing, on the other side of the freeway.  I get back to Meredith's car, Larry hops out and gets in our car, and I pull out and start heading home.  I figured he had had enough.  He yells 'where are you going?'. 'Home'.  'Meredith's car is still running!' Oops.  I skid to stop, well actually the curb stopped me, and he goes back to Meredith's car.  I head home, and then when I get there, wonder why I hadn't stayed so that he could sit in a warm car that had a complete set of windows, and whose heater was working properly. 

So I go back. And we sit there. Eventually I call the friend on my ancient cell phone, and she answers, but now they are stuck in the traffic backup from an accident on the freeway.  Anyway, eventually they get there, Meredith unlocks the club, Larry drives her car home, plastic bag flapping in the breeze, and we all make it home safely.  

Never say Never

I know, I know, I said there would be no more dahlia blogs.  But really, dear readers, I wanted you to feel smug, while you were warm and dry and reading this, and I wanted you to be able to laugh at us.

So there we were, this afternoon, out in this.  Yes, that is sleet running down our window.  We didn't get any snow sticking to the ground, but apparently just up the hill from us they did.

So Larry and I spent much of this afternoon, in full fisherman type rain gear, slogging through the muck to get the rest of the dahlias out.  We did nearly half, and then came back in to warm up, and then back out we went.  I thought these ones would be easier than yesterday's, they were planted in a hilled row, in some nice fertile rotted horse manure and shavings.  Well they liked it there, as most of the tubers were enormous, and it seemed to take much longer to wash the dirt out.   But now I'm happy to say it is done, or at least they are all out, cleaned off, and are in the garage.  Good thing, we have some -7 overnight temperatures predicted in the next few days.  Here's the wine cellar  dahlia storage room.  I put some of the tubers that I only had one of, on the shelves. There used to be wine bottles resting on those shelves. By the time we are done, those shelves will be hidden by piled up dahlias.

Maybe I could pretend these are weird shaped wine bottles.  

Here's a lovely Blackberry Ice Wine

Or even better, a Burgundy Cactus   Pinot Noir 

Ah, to heck with the wine, I'd rather go on a Caribbean fantasy right about now

And sometimes you just want to know 'who dun it?'

Here's the garage at the moment.  What a mess.  That wheel barrow is full of dahlias.  I don't think the car got in there last winter, and it might be out of luck this winter too.

After we were done, we went upstairs and had a glass of wine, and we were all warm and dry, and laughed at ourselves.

Here's what I see outside the window right now.  That poor, snowy, cold car, shoved out of it's garage by a bunch of dahlias. 

I'm Talking about those D@#m Dahlias Again!

It rained like stink for part of the morning, and then this afternoon we were being teased.  The front of our house faces west, and most of our weather moves in from the west.  From about noon on, we could see a line where the cloud ended and the blue sky began, but it never seemed to get any closer.

When I make my duty call to my mother, if nothing else we discuss the weather.

Ring....Ring.....

A tentative 'hello?' As in she's never quite sure if she wants to talk to whoever is making the call.

'Hi Mum'. I don't bother saying any more than this because I'd have to repeat it.  Got to start the conversation kind of slow.

'Oh hi'

'Did you get some sun today'  (She lives at least 15 miles west of us)

Which leads to a few minutes discussion about today's weather, and maybe yesterday's and the day before's weather as well, which I can never remember in much detail anyway, so I just play along or make something up.  Then the conversation moves on to what various neighbours did, when they went out, and way too many details that I am not at all interested in.  

Talk about twitching lace curtains.....well she doesn't have lace curtains, but you know what I mean.

And the relationship between my mother and I, well I could write a book.

Can you tell I didn't have the best of conversations with her tonight...?

But I digress.  This was the sky to north, which was teasing us as well

My other half headed off through the junk yard behind the barn, to clean out 'his' chicken coop.  We seem to have 'his' and 'hers' chicken coops now.  Which suits me fine, as they use to be both 'hers', and I was quite willing to hand one over.  I cleaned out mine a few days ago. 

I just wanted to let you know that he does some of the work around here too, in case you were wondering....

All those chickens go through a lot of feed, which creates a lot of empty feed bags, which pile up in various places were we store feed.  Not sure if we can recycle them, although you'd think we should be able to, after all they are some kind of paper.  Anyway, I thought of a use for a few of them.

Yep, I was off to dig up some dahlias, and quite honestly, I'm sure you're sick of me talking about them, but I've got to blog about something.

My trusty sidekick Luna was game, and just waiting for the action to start.

Out comes one clump, loaded with dirt

There was a big article in the newspaper how to dig and store your dahlias, and the guy from the dahlia gardens we visited in the summer said he doesn't wash his tubers off, he just knocks the excess dirt off.

I figure it would take longer to knock the dirt off without damaging the tubers, than it does to spray them off.  There is the added advantage that now they only weigh a fraction of what they did.

Luna was in agreement, washing is the way to go.

And a zap strap and a label (which in it's former life was a pvc slat off some blinds)

Oh yes, the real reason I took this photo was not to point out the lovely label, but to show that the sun actually did come out for a few minutes, eventually, just before it went down behind the trees. That is the sun shining on that tuber, in case you need me to point it out.

Who's been eating my dahlia?

More than one of them had parts of the tubers eaten away. Voles?

And then a couple of times we seemed to have labelled the same tuber twice, with two different names.  There were two different flowers on the stems, so that meant that there were two different tubers.  I didn't plant them that close.  They were all intertwined, one tuber wrapped around another.  Were they breeding?  Did the voles move them?

I think I figured out which was which, well maybe.  There might be a few mislabelled dahlias planted or sold next year.

And here's were the feed bags come in.  Some dahlia's I have multiple tubers of, so they all got put together in a feed bag, and the bag was labelled too.  The dahlias in the flats are drying before it it their turn to get stuffed in a bag.  Then they get stuffed into what was the wine cellar, but I guess is now the dahlia cellar.  I could have done with a glass of hot mulled wine when I was done.  I was cold and wet and mucky.

And maybe tomorrow I'll get out to the soggy orchard garden and try get the rest of them dug up before it freezes on the weekend.  

I promise not to blog about it though.

I can hear the cheering from here.

Tuesday's Toss-Up

Just some random photos.....

Pride sans coat this morning.  We had blue sky and a little bit of sunshine

Leaves and puddles and reflections down the trail

A lovely dahlia still blooming (sorry, Hornblower!)

Some dud figs.  Hopefully next year we'll be successful.

Here's the inside of the figs, with a quarter for size reference.  They have sat there at that size for months, all through the time that other people's figs were ripening.

Raspberries too.  I haven't been particularly impressed by these Fall raspberries.  They haven't had a lot of taste, and by this point they are really blah.  I walked away and forgot to even try these.

Lots of kale.  I first put in this variety in 2008, and haven't had to plant any since.  They reseed themselves and come up all over the place.

No problem though, the chickens love to eat it.

A gladiola that is a little confused as to the time of year

Rudbeckia lanciniata

Pansies

And what we call geraniums, but are actually pelargoniums

A begonia

And two border collies that are always up for a game of fetch.

It looks like we will get some freezing overnight temperatures on the weekend, and even a chance of snow flurries.  Time to get out there and salvage any tender vegetables.

Winter Fashionistas

We had decided this year that we were going to get Pride a waterproof coat for winter.  Most of the time he  just wears the coat he was born with, which thickens up nicely starting in September, when the nights are getting cooler and the days shorter.  We do get a lot of rain though, and if it's windy with that rain, well it can really suck the heat out of a wet horse.  And, considering that we are supposed to get a colder, wetter winter, and that Pride is really getting on in years, we thought it best to get prepared.  He does have a good shelter to go into, and we can bring him down into the shop that was a barn if we have to, but he does, by choice, spend a lot of time in the rain.  This is the first new horse blanket I have ever bought.  When Cathy and I were kids, we did each get a New Zealand rug for our horses.  They were horrible heavy canvas things, with a wool liner.  That was back in the olden days before all the modern waterproof and breathable  fabrics came along.  I have made a few horse blankets in the years in between, but none of them actually fit Pride that well.

Our local Buckerfields had breathable turnout rain sheets on sale, so on Saturday I splurged and bought him this.  We tried it on today, putting a bed sheet between Pride and the new blanket, just in case it didn't fit and we had to return it.  Anyway, it seemed to fit really well, with lots of room for movement, two straps passing under the belly, and a strap around each hind leg.  We left it on this morning, it was only a light drizzle, but I'm glad we did, because the rain just got heavier until it was really pouring.

And while I was at Buckerfield's, of course I had to check out the dog section.  What did I see there, but dog coats on sale.  The only dog I have ever had that had a coat was our first little dog when I was a teenager.  I did make her a little rain coat.  Some days, though, coming back in after a walk, and having to dry off three wet and dirty (in Luna's case) dogs, well it just gets a little old.

  

So I bought one of those too.  For $18 I didn't think I could go too far wrong.  The dog it fits best is Calli.  All three dogs are similar in body length, but Calli has a deeper chest, and is broader, so fills out the coat better.  It is a bit padded, which I'd rather not have, but what the heck.  I'm a seamstress, and I knew at that price, there was no way I could make something comparable.  I did have to make some adjustments.  It had overly large shoulder gussets, which I sewed half way down, to where the colour changes.  It also had a slot at the top for a harness ring, but I sewed a piece of webbing over that.

Calli tested it out on a rainy walk yesterday, and it was just fine.  She didn't seem to get hot underneath it.  We thought we'd give it the ultimate test this morning.  Luna wore it to herd the sheep out.  They were extra freaked out by the blue coat, so they all blasted back into the safety of their barn.

That reminds me of one year when I decided to put a bell on April (our old sheep) and put all the sheep out in the back hay field.  The bell was so that I could hear them if they started to run, (if something was bothering them) and I thought the sound of it might discourage the coyotes.  It was so funny though.  April was scared of the bell, so she started to run.  The noise of the clanging bell made all the other sheep run.  April was running to try to catch up to them, and they were running to try keep away from April.  It was a lost cause, and some exhausted, stressed out sheep, so I had to take the bell off.  

This morning Pride was really freaked out by Luna in the coat.  If you know horses, it doesn't take much, just something a bit different, to make a lot of horses fearful or suspicious.  Then he seemed to figure out that it was only pesty Luna.  Maybe he was jealous of her new coat (we hadn't surprised him with his yet), because then he was doing his best to try to flatten her.

Here is Pride after he got his coat on, staring at Luna in her coat, as though he hadn't already seen her before.

What the heck is that?

And of course Luna staring back at Pride

The coat on Luna doesn't fasten tight enough under the belly, so I'd have to make a minor adjustment for her.  She raced through the bush, and then one time shook really hard and it flew off over her head:) Another time it slipped forward and she got a foot caught in the front part, but all that would be  solved by fixing the belly strap so it was tighter.  On her, the sides actually meet under her belly.  Yeah, there's not much to her:)  

Well at least there was one dog that was a little dryer and cleaner when we went back in this morning.

Degrees of Daniel

Today in Ontario it was a very special day for my sister and her family.  My nephew Daniel  received his Bachelor of Computer Science with Honours degree.

He has gone from this 

( I had to include this photo, because he's wearing an outfit I made). 

 Daniel, just be thankful I didn't include any of the nekkid photos, I have a few of those. 

 I could be convinced to destroy them with the right bribe.  Just saying....:)

To this

And he exchanged this gown

For this one

Here's a few photos my sister sent of the ceremony, and afterwards

That's Daniel stood up there

 With his proud mum

And younger brother

And even younger brother, wow, he's tall now!  

...and proud dad

Congratulations Daniel, from your aunt, uncle and cousins on the west coast!

A job well done:)