Just thought I’d share moments from my good day with you.

A pancake with a beauty mark.

Cleaning up a home.

Planting the potential, the hopeful, the tomatoes.

Indulging in thick conversation with one of my favourites.

Watching a thirst quenched.

Crossing a natural boundary.

How was your day? Can you sum it up in a sentence or two?

This is what I’d prefer to be doing.

This is what I am doing instead,  as my portfolio for my Poetry Class is due tomorrow.

At least I have good company. And chocolate. What do you prefer to do these days?

Do you ever long for a time when life was simpler? I’m not talking about the time before cars or computers or the internet. I’m talking about childhood. You didn’t have to think about what to eat, what to buy, what activities were going to fill your day. Nope, you just were. You enjoyed life as it came and you took joy in the tiny things.

Your biggest worry was if your lawn-mower bubble maker ran out of soap. And that was pretty stressful.

Yup I long for those days sometimes. When I’m trying to file taxes or paying bills or selling insurance when it’s just so sunny outside.

Or when I’m longing for those few extra minutes before getting out of bed.

It would be really nice to just sleep when you want to sleep.

And some mornings, it’s a drag choosing your clothes when you get dressed. Somedays, you just want someone else to do that part for you.

Then again, you could end up dressed like this!

Most of the time I love being an adult. I get to eat what I want when I want. I get to drive a car and go where I want. I don’t have anyone telling me when to brush my teeth, much to Marc’s chagrin. And I make more money than I did as a kid. I mean, I don’t have to beg and plead and dress up like a pink bunny to get some candy every now and then.

I suppose life all has it’s trades and growing up ain’t so bad. After all, I can drink so much more coffee now than when I was a wee one.

And caffeine is fun because it makes you type really really fast and with hands that you just can’t believe how fast you can type, resulting in an incredibly long sentence that you blame on your vibrating vision, and well it’s only been 3 or 4 cups and really how bad can it be?

…. in my case, quite bad…..

I know that after New Years I’m always trying to figure out how to properly use our Champagne splurg left-overs. I know this is probably a common problem in the whole of the modern world. So common that a cookbook addressed it with a recipe.

And I know another common problem for my readers is what to do with the acorn squash that you picked at least a month ago that has sat atop the washing machine since then, turning from green to yellow.

We cut said acorn squash open and I breathed a sigh of relief that it wasn’t rotten. Marc reminded me that the settlers counted on the Winter squash not to rot so that they could enjoy it all season when nothing else was growing. I reminded him that they usually have a cold storage in the side of a hill. They usually didn’t store their Winter squash in the laundry room in room temperature. How far removed are we from settlers!

This recipe is good enough that it deserves to be tried. Even if it means buying a bottle of champagne. The best part about this recipe is that it only uses 1/4 cup of the bubbly. That leaves a lot for tasting!

It is also important to have a sentry stand guard over the squash in case it means to escape from the oven. I have found myself a particularly stoic yet slightly fickle sentry in Ramona cat. She held still for this photo, then forgot the wood stove was hot, stretched and burned her little paw on the side. Silly cat.

My knitting needles have also been busy. My friend is due with twins any day so I found this very cute booty pattern here, (for free yippee!) and I sent off a package of handknits. I’m pleased at how quickly they came together. And I feel like a regular little craftster sending off knitting!

I’ve finally gathered enough courage to try a sock pattern that I first layed eyes on a couple years ago. My nana sent it to me in the mail and I’ve completed my first sock, though it needs some perfecting. Special mention to James for the fabulous wool!

One sock down and I’m easily distracted by a toque pattern with ear flaps! I’ll get to the other sock a little later.

It was balmy today, 9-10C. January 2nd and the bees were flying! I remember last year at this time I was in three feet of snow! Marc and I even got out in the garden. We have big plans at reclaiming this patch of land. It’s been 20 years out of use and the grass is tenacious. Drawing a plan of the garden and pinning it to the wall has been inspiration to me. We put cardboard down, and cedar wood chips for the paths. The weeds have already invaded some of the beds Marc worked so tirelessly to turn over in the Summer. But now even with the paths down, it looks more like a real garden. I am encouraged!

Our little greenhouse was so warm today that if the weather looks like it’ll keep up for a while, I may try planting winter kale. My spinach at the house is still alive so you never know what will germinate. Last year we got the bulk of our seeds from Salt Spring Seeds. It was close and we knew the seeds to have good viability because it is the same climate. We had great success with our tomatoes. Ripe tomatoes before most of our other gardening friends and it was not the skill we employed. We gave the seeds most of the credit, and the good weather the other bit of credit. This year we’d like to try growing black tomatoes, cherry tomatoes and perhaps green zebra striped ones to compliment our romas and scarlet heirlooms which will definitely be making an encore.

We’re also arranging to pick up 15 hives worth of equipment for bees. I am very excited about this. I have 12 locations on island that are interesting in hosting my bees so I can compare the forage. I still have equipment that I purchased last year that needs to be built so I think we’ll be drowning in all things “bee” soon enough.

Now if all this is not enough, I have begun running again. Yes it’s time for little miss farm wife-hibernating she-bear to get off her butt and pound the pavement. Did you know that Pender is filled with hills?! And big ones! We used to give each other small smirks when we saw ambitious cyclists disembark from the ferry with grand goals of biking the entire island in a day. Inevitably we would find them at the bakery about an hour later, looking very red in the face. Well now who is red in the face! Me! But, as one of my New Year’s resolutions, I am determined to be gentle with myself. Run a little, walk a little until I build up my strength.

Giving myself room to be imperfect is very gratifying. I encourage everyone to try it!

And… (I know I know, what happened to being gentle with myself?) I am enrolled in a university course aiming toward  finishing my degree I started um… *seven* years ago! I am utterly excited about this! My instructor is a prolifically published author and I’ve been reading her books for a few years now. And I get to write poetry in my online class. *sigh* I love poetry….

Is there anything better than the smell of roasting squash? Even sweeter is squash we grew ourselves.

Happy New Years folks! I hope you get lots of breathing time. Don’t worry, I’ll remember to breathe as I puff my way up these ginormous hills!

I’ve been very tardy and haven’t posted in a few days. I apologize to my throngs of readers (haha) for my hiccup in commitment to the blog. I would show you what I’ve been doing but it involves Christmas surprise so I must keep it hush hush.

In the unposted advent, I have received a measuring tape, a nifty little doo-hicky that helps you thread the eye of a needle, bamboo knitting needles of various sizes and a tea strainer. The photo above shows the bigger of the knitting needles I’ve received and Marc’s present of small broom and dustpan with multi-use around the stove and on the boat. A note must be put to Nana for her marvelous wool socks that I wear daily.

It has been frozen on the farm.

This is one of four ponds we have on the property, all with their ice slick that just started receding today.

This is our neighbour who we see constantly flouncing around his pasture naked. Finally he put a coat on so I can feature him on the blog with some decency.

There is no decency with this neighbour.

This neighbour doesn’t even have a working toilet. She just goes wherever. Talk about a rough neighbourhood.

We have been attending Christmas parties. Yesterday was teaming with the greatest combination of people from all different backgrounds and employments. It was a true show of colours for Pender’s ecclectic population. Those kind of gatherings are my favourite. Especially with all the good food we consumed.

I have touched on the tip of my Christmas baking. I am gathering ingredients to me. Namely, butter. And I will be delving in next week in earnest. Look forward to recipes!

But right now I’m hunkered down as I have my Power Squadron Boating exam tomorrow and I must study study.

How have you been dealing with the cold, friends?