Hopes for a Colourful Summer

Spring is springing very slowly indeed. There's still a thick layer of snow on the ground but is is melting, slowly. There's nothing we can do to hurry it along so better just get on with the next best thing to an actual real spring... planting seeds!

1: Heated Greenhouse   2: Five days after germination    3: Seedlings potted on

So I made a start. I was after some heating mats for seedlings and I found a "Heated Professional Greenhouse" by Jiffy. I liked it because it had all the goodies to go with it: the heating mat, the seedling tray, 72 little peat soil pellets as well as a clear cover.


I've not used a heating mat to help germinate seed before so I was keen to find out how well they worked. I popped in some Zinnia (Enchantress Rose) seeds, followed all the instructions for planting, covered it and inspected every day.

You would never believe my total surprise when I spied germination on the THIRD day! Haha, spring is indeed springing!!

Blanket of Snow

We set out on an expedition to the top of the property where the vegetable garden is situated. Dressed up to the eyeballs in snow suits and snow shoes we trekked out to make an inspection of our beloved veg patch. We had fenced it all round last year, ironically with wooden snow fences, - and my, did they work! The whole patch looks like a huge swimming pool filled with snow. We're thinking that at least it will be watered well when it all melts. We simply walked over the top of the fence. What a surreal experience. It feels crazy knowing that we're walking several feet up in the "air"!

Something Seedy...

Peggy has completely gotten away with herself. The little packets of seeds in the shop were far too tempting to resist. I warned. I scolded. I did my best to distract her. But there they were, on the counter before I could get her out of there. Little packets holding treasure. Seeds carrying sunshine and blue skies and dirty hands and happy harvest. Of course she planted them far too early for the Manitoban climate. Every book and expert will tell you. But into fresh potting compost they went on 5th February while there was another famous blizzard belting it out there. I sighed as I went to make a cup of tea, and smiled as I knew those seeds would probably never amount to much. But they held hope, hope that this endless winter would eventually end and green, busy times were up ahead.

First Seedlings (planted 5th Feb) - Onions & Leeks

Winter Garden

It's been a really long, cold winter. Everyone, even the hardest, gnarliest Manitoba farmer is grumbling about the cold. The weather statistics say it's the coldest winter here since 1896. And we feel it. Each and every icy day we watch the temperature as it either plummets down to -25 with a windchill factor of -38 (or something of the like), or hover around a bone-chilling -32 in the sun.

There has been snow on the ground since early November (2013). And we've had a lot of it! We bravely and enthusiastically put up some snow fences hoping that our courageous (if naive) attempts would drive somehow miraculously drive the snow away from our house. We were miserably mistaken of course! We have been watching our snow mountain grow to an impressive height of around 9 ft!! This is our snow drift almost the whole length of the house. I keep saying, "It's coming for us!" It gets closer and closer and it feels like its going to totally engulf the house and all its inhabitants for good...

Our 9ft Snow Bank                                                            Deck bedecked with Snow!