Starting afresh...

And so, a new year begins. Somehow, it has become 2017.

This morning we woke up to the remnants of a few ice pellets that came down last night... seeing white on the ground for New Year's Day is something I have not seen in a really long time... perhaps not since I lived in Denmark as a child.

Thinking about my childhood, and walking around through fields and woods during this fallow time of the year... the colors then were as they are now; some green but mostly shades of gray and brown as things lie dormant.

Nature is alive, but not growing.

Around the garden, our resident mole seems hell bent on causing ongoing disruption in the labyrinth! Of all the places it could dig its tunnels, it chooses the labyrinth. Oh well...

Meanwhile, one of our forsythias seems to think it is spring-- a few yellow flowers a peering out. Reminds me that here in the Northwest we seldom see much of a really "hard" winter. Can't say as how I mind. The relative maritime mildness allows us to grow all sorts of things here, even though we are about as far north as you can get and still stay in the continental US.

The "microclimates" here never cease to amaze me. Just a mile up the road, there's actually a good layer of snow and ice on the road into town. Here? Just a few thin patches of white...

Well. One can but hope this will be a better year than 2016!

Longer Days...

Sometimes, it's the little things we notice.

Like sitting at my desk and looking out, and then realizing that I can actually see what's going on, at 5:00pm... where just a month ago, it would pretty much have been pitch black.

There are many things about living here that reminds me of my childhood in Denmark... the weather and the light... and what grows here. Of course, some things-- like the eucalyptus trees-- don't grow in Denmark, at all.

So far, it seems to have been quite a wet winter, which bodes well for the year ahead. After a super dry 2015, I'm at least marginally hopeful that we won't end up with a severe drought situation again. The rain has translated into a lot of snow at higher elevations... which means there are decent water reserves on the ground. At Snoqualmie Pass, the December snowfall was the highest recorded in the 60 years they have been keeping track up there.

As of late, I have been starting to think about the garden again, and about what we might do this coming year. Last year was pretty much a write-off, in part because we had zero funds to sink into gardening, in part because we went to Denmark for 24 days in the middle of the peak growing time (June) so we decided not to do the whole vegetable thing, at all. We did put down some tarps late in the year to keep weeds from growing... not sure how effective that is turning out to be.

The only other "thing" going on out there is waiting to see if the Peony seeds we put in in the fall will turn into "something" when the warmer days of spring arrive. Growing peonies from seed is evidently not the way most people go.

Still contemplating whether or not to undertake the project of starting in on the garden beds.