Tag: kitchen garden
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Six on Saturday | 18th November 2023
First post of winter, brrr! Our nights have consistently been dipping below 0°C now, though not very far below most of the time. Enough to justify a fire in a woodstove and candles everywhere, though! There are about six hours between sunrise and sunset at the moment, though that’s closer to five hours of usable…
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Six on Saturday | 11th November 2023
It’s supposed to rain for most of this weekend, but I’ll be ducking out during the lighter portions to harvest what I can because winter officially begins for us next week. The nighttime temps will be consistently below 0ºC, the snow will fall, and the ground will be frozen solid after a few weeks. I’ve…
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Six on Saturday | 4th November 2023
So this has been an eventful week, though perhaps not one I’d like to repeat. I came down with a rather unpleasant virus at the end of last week which lasted well into the beginning of this one, keeping me from participating in Halloween events with my students. I also lost my voice, so I…
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Garden Inventory | Ribes rubrum ‘Aili’

Before moving to Finland, I’d never met a currant bush of any sort before. The most common ones in gardens only grow in temperate climates, so they were never really an option in Southern California. Even in the rest of the US, they’re not as common as other berries — even though the federal law…
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Six on Saturday | 28th October 2023
A year and a month ago, I shared a weekend project where I added shelving to our root cellar which had been sitting unused under the house for a good couple of decades. Since I’ve finished storing most things in the root cellar this autumn, it seemed a good time to catch up on how…
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Six on Saturday | 21st October 2023
Our first frost arrived this past Thursday! Maybe a little earlier than expected, but still within the normal range. All the tender plants and bulbs are either (1) sitting on a house windowsill, (2) safely tucked away in the barn to dry out a bit, or (3) already slumbering away in the root cellar. All…
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In a Vase on Monday | 16th October 2023
A mixed vase this week with something old and something new. The white dried hydrangea is Hydrangea paniculata ‘Grandiflora’ (I asked the person who planted it this time to make sure since Google was giving me too many different options), and the new little pink blooms underneath it are Hydrangea paniculata ‘Living Angels Blush’. Some…
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In a Vase on Monday | 9th October 2023
It hailed overnight yesterday. That’s not to say that we’ve had a frost yet — it’s been chilly at night but not quite cold enough to upset all but the tenderest of tropicals so far. The temperatures have been fluctuating like crazy, though. The hail melted as soon as the sun rose, but it was…
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Six on Saturday | 7th October 2023
These pumpkins are not from my garden. I purchased them from a local farm and they are now sitting in my classroom, waiting to be turned into jack-o-lanterns by my students later this month. I’m including them because they are such gorgeous pumpkins and I wanted to have some on this blog, even if my…
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Garden Inventory | Vitis vinifera ‘Zilga’

Alright, storytime! So not far from where we live, there’s an island with three nuclear power plants. The government has been conducting research projects there to find uses for the heat in the wastewater as the cooling system circulates it out of the plants. After all, we’re five degrees of latitude from the Arctic Circle…