The Holidays have come and gone here in America, and in my particular little corner of the globe, winter has moved in fiercely. Temps have been in the low-double and single digits (Farenheit, which is negative numbers to the rest of the world) and winds have been brisk, driving the wind chill into negative temperatures (no matter which side of the thermometer you read!).
We set up a tree this year. It's a fake tree, but looks magnificently realistic. It's so realistic, it even leaves a pile of debris on the floor. They're not as sharp as real pine needles, but it will still be at least April before we have them all vacuumed up.
Hedge Witch's whole family was in from all over the country, and they all have children that are still of an age to be excited about Christmas. It was a heartwarming holiday, sorely needed after the miserable summer and fall we had. Nature chimed in by throwing us this heart shaped bay leaf we found while preparing holiday foods.
All the extra visitiors meant that we needed some space in the driveway, which is something we just haven't had to worry about too much the last few years. One of the things that's been taking up a lot of space are these old silt socks I get from work. They're filled with partially composted wood mulch, and the socks make a decent porous weed barrier underneath new garden boxes. Cutting them open and dumping them into the cart so I can pile up the mulch is a tiring and monotonous task, but it pays off with about 5 cubic yards of free mulch that's loaded with mycorrhizae.
I've been wanting to clean up the driveway area for a while now anyway. I have an old truck and two old motorcycles buried out there that I have the parts to fix, and now just have to find the time. While I've been looking for that time, the roses have been moving back in. If you've been reading my blog for a while, you know that I've been fighting wild roses for ownership of this property since I moved in. I'm winning the larger war, but they still take many battles. This battle was mine, though, and it paid off handsomely in rose hips. I don't really need any rose hips right now, so I left these for the birds... after taking a little snack for myself, of course.
These roses were growing so prolifically, I figured it might be worth it to haul them all out and process them for cane. It seemed like a good idea when I first had it, but it lost more and more appeal the further I got into the process. It did yield quite a pile of decent weaving cane, but by the time I was done cutting it, dragging it out of the ditch, and processing it, I didn't have any energy left for making baskets. The pic below is the last of three piles I dragged out.
Amidst all this activity, we decided that cranking the oven up to 500 for some homemade pizza would be a good way to warm up the house a bit. I don't normally like holes while I'm working the dough for the pizza crust, but this one was just too adorable to get upset about.
With the sub-freezing temps, I felt it was a good time to check back up on the rocket stove. It lost some of the thinner facing on the outside, but inside the firebox where the clay got thoroughly fired was still very solid. The system is too beat up right now to use my main heat exchanger, but the outlet pipe still warms the basement wall and I have A LOT of spare wood to burn this year, so I decided to fire it up.
Restarting it the second morning, the exhaust pipe was so cold that once the smoke turned to steam, it started forming ice crystals on the inside of the pipe. I have a 'ground' exhaust on this as well, for when the smoke and steam is too cold to rise up the pipe. It was fun watching the steam get warm enough to come up the top for a while, then get too cold and come back out the ground pipe, covering my hillside with an eerie fog.
It took a while to get going, but it was in full furnace mode soon enough to get the chill out of the house before the REAL cold set in. I'd like to get some more work done on the rocket stove this winter, but it probably won't happen. I have too many other tasks around the house that are quite a bit more pressing, like repairing the roof.
Another one of those more pressing tasks is getting the driveway cleaned up, so I have room to set up my garage-in-a-box this winter. I need the enclosure to finish the engine rebuild on the Suzuki, and hopefully get the three wheeler and four wheeler both up and running in new condition. A big part of that cleanup is stripping down appliances that I've been holding onto as parts for future projects, like this cooling unit from an old freezer. Someday the rocket stove will power a steam system, and I'll run that steam through things like this to make heat in the house.
Well, you know I've been up to more, including posting an entry (soon to be 2) with my alt for a Comedy Contest you can find out about here. It's hosted by a funny fella in a great community that is worth joining if you like a good laugh now and again.
I hope to see you here or there, and I hope life treats you well in the meantime. Stay safe out there, Hive!
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I didn't realise you and amirtheawesome were one and the same. Probably explains why I enjoy both your work so much. 🤣
It was great to read you're bringing back Comedy Open Mic in the form of a community. I'm going to have to find the time to check that out. At the moment I'm rounding up posts for the Garden Journal Weekly and this is a contender for that.
Ah, there was some confusion there... I'm not hosting the contest, just entering. Oldsoulnewb and I are one and the same.
Oh, that's a bit embarrassing. 😅
I'll go visit you there for the comedy then.
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Nothing like the expectation of visitors kicking us into gear for cleaning up. Maybe that's why I never have anyone over. lol
Interesting how hardy the wild roses are when purchased roses can be so difficult to keep alive.
Best wishes for 2022!
Cheers!
Sometimes it's nice for me to have timeline for cleaning out those 'spare' rooms. Until there's a deadline, there is always something more important!
These particular wild roses, often called dog rose locally, are quite impossible to get rid of. We also have some wild apothecary roses, with pink flowers and wonderful smell, that are a quite a bit more fragile. We started trying to cultivate some of them three years ago, and it's going VERY slowly.
Where I'm at, store bought roses are tough for the first couple years, but once they're well established, they are very resilient. I have some store bought tea roses out front that are starting to grow like the wild ones (we had hundreds of blooms on just two bushes!), but they've been in the ground about 10 years now.
Thanks for the good wishes, I'm heartily hoping this year goes better than last year!
I like how I almost always learn something when I stop by your page dude! Never knew what mycorrhizae were until now, cool stuff.
Glad to hear you had some great holidays and had some great family around. That's awesome, the holidays with little kids is definitely a wonderful time! It's made it a lot more enjoyable even though we don't have things we do that we used to so we've learned to enjoy it all for sure.
I'm with you on the crazy temps, though I think you have it worse in upstate NY but we've had some bitter fucking cold temps lately! Single digits galore, even negative one night. Not typical for this time of year just yet so I'm hoping that we don't get a really long February lol
One of Hedge Witch's brothers that was in visiting is from the 'mitten' of Michigan, which I believe is your general area. He says the winters there are roughly the same as what we see here. I wouldn't wish this on anybody, even though there are some people out there who are absolutely smitten with hard winters. Takes all types, I guess :D
The holidays for me are always sort of something to 'make it through', but all the extra joy this year did make the time pass a little more pleasantly! It has been more than a few years since I had any children to worry about for Christmas, and having children that I don't have to worry about was way better!
Glad you learned something, I always wonder if anybody out there is getting anything useful out of this stuff. I've been trying to do more personal posts with this account, and less straight how-to, while still keeping things educational for diy minded folks. I'd like to branch out into videos someday, but there are only so many hours...