Garden ready for Winter

Yesterday I topped off the veggie bin in the fridge with carrots from the garden - I harvested a couple of gallons of carrots for the winter. This morning I covered the rest of the carrots with leaves and topped with a tarp.  I hope to harvest those carrots in spring.  The last time I did this I harvested 8 gallons of fresh carrots in April (click here for post). Fingers crossed it works again.

As an experiment I also buried my unharvested beets in leaves.  It'll be interesting to see what those taste like in spring.

I am still harvesting kale, and my kale often does not die in the winter.  So I am hoping to harvest it all winter long.  Except last winter the deer ate all my kale.  I also have Brussel sprouts to harvest.  Let's hope the dogs keep the deer away!

My salad greens are just about done.  The salad is still alive but I think this recent cold snap marks the end of the road for garden salads.  But it is amazing how long of a growing season I get here in Alaska.  I started harvesting nettles in May and here it is in November and I am still harvesting salad greens and carrots.  And I may have kale for the rest of the winter. And I do not even use hoops or covers.

Patrick

 

Corvis the Raven heckling the dogs on yesterday's walk

Pretty Icy!

 

Well we got snow.  But it is super icy up there now!  At the end of the storm the snow was soft and the skiing great.  By the next day everything had frozen solid and had 'fossilized' the ski and doggy tracks from the day before.

When I went up on Monday the dogs were sliding all over the place.  They would run and then keep on sliding when they tried to stop.  The skiing was awful.  At one point on the way down I somehow fell over and ended up on my back with my head pointed downhill.  I took off like a rocket and it was a little scary.  

So for yesterday's sunshine I took the dogs for a walk in the ice-free park instead.  That said, on Monday it sure was beautiful up there in the sunshine on the ice.

Patrick

fossilized tracks

these tracks look pretty but represent frozen ruts to be avoided when skiing

No need for rock skis

 

We got a lot of new snow during Saturday's storm.  I went up yesterday during the tail end of the storm and found that above the jibber bowl we got almost a foot (maybe 10 inches?) of very heavy and dense snow. The snow is like corn snow and my skis barely sank in at all.  Even the dogs mostly stayed on top of the snow.

Of course with the clear skies overnight the snow has probably frozen solid as a rock.  So we have our base.  I'll go up today because it will be sunny, but I fear it might be icy and bumpy.  

Ironically, despite the raging storm, yesterday was pretty good skiing.  It was clearing up, the visibility was good, and the snow was ideal.  I had a long ski run down into the jibber bowl.  There is even 2 inches of new snow down at the bottom of the jibber bowl.

Patrick

Some decent snow

 

These pictures are all from Friday.  We've been getting rain and snow all week and it has built up a pretty good snowpack.  On Friday the weather was nice with very little wind and it was pretty good skiing.  The snow was soft but you did not go all the way through it down to the rocks below. But I still had to be careful about rocks - and you could not ski anywhere you wanted to ski.

Since I took these pictures we have gotten another foot of very dense snow. When I went skiing today I took my good skis and did not have to worry about rocks (pictures to come).  The new snow is so dense that you do not sink down into it, and I got in a very long run.  But the weather was no where near as nice as it was on Friday!

Patrick

Hikes to the Alpine

 

On Sunday I carried a telephoto lens up with me on a dog walk into the alpine.  Rather than take wide angle landscape photos I focused in on distant mountains and brought them close.  I kind of liked the effect.  

Last week I was hopeful that we'd have consistent ski snow soon.  But it is not to be.  Today there is a south wind blowing and most of our snow has melted away.  Fingers crossed winter will arrive soon.

Patrick

Some ones that got away

 

Kodiak Boat Harbor prior to elk hunt

Here are some pictures from October that for whatever reason I never posted.  A few of them are of completed puzzles I did this Fall.  Normally I just do Liberty Puzzles - they really are the best - but this past summer my mom gave me 2 puzzles from different puzzle makers - both Maine based, and I also bought a few from a new company - Mosaic Puzzles.  

The two from Maine - Elms and Raven puzzles - did not come with pictures, and I realized that it is sort of a New England thing to do the puzzles without the picture for reference. This was also the case with another New England-based puzzle maker - Stave Puzzles -  that my mom gave me in the past.  Colorado based Liberty Puzzles always comes with a picture. When doing a puzzle, not having a picture to go by certainly adds an element of intrigue.  But that said, I like having the picture for reference.

Patrick

Ripe lingonberries

Red and Bode checking out the skim ice

An Elms Puzzle from my Mom

A 1000 piece Mosaic Puzzle

The elk hunt crew after the hunt

New skim ice on my early season skating pond

Red checks the ice

A hand cut Raven Puzzle from my mom

Halloween Ski

 

Yesterday I got in the first ski of the new season.  There was barely enough snow and not enough snow for downhill skiing.  But I thought it would be cool to ski in October and so I carried my cross country ski gear up the mountain on the dog walk.  There was a flattish area that had enough snow for cross country skiing.  So I did a few loops while the dogs chased after me.  

The new ski season has officially begun!

Patrick