Forced March

Today was McCoy’s turn for a trip out to McLane Creek Nature Trail.

McCoy has a ton of energy. Taking it easy, going slow, stopping to appreciate the view, none of those things are in his vocabulary. His preference is to charge ahead as fast as possible. He doesn’t really understand why we are so much slower than him.
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Even so he’s a good boy. Most of the time he walked whether he wanted to or not. He stopped over and over so that I could take pictures. He even refrained from barking when we came across another couple with a Jack Russell terrier. Seeing his desire to move ahead quickly they nicely gave us room to go past.

This time we headed down the left-hand path and actually managed to stay on the main trail for the whole loop. Right at the start we had good views of the pond. People have obviously fed the ducks because as soon as we moved out onto the viewing platforms the ducks came cruising through the water plants to say hello. We didn’t encourage their behavior.
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Many of the trails on this part of the path have been rebuilt or repaired recently so there are lots of nice boardwalks over the marshy areas.
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The rain held off and we had a nice — if fast — walk around the loop.
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New Earthboxes

Surprise! The new Earthboxes arrived today. I didn’t have a tracking number and really didn’t expect them to come on a Saturday. The new version makes assembly a little easier and also comes with casters, which will make it easier to move.
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It only takes moments to put in the screen but filling the water reservoir and then adding the soil took more time. My back has been sore so I was careful to avoid lifting anything heavy. I added the soil one small bucket at a time. After mixing in natural fertilizer and watering the soil down I planted both types of lettuce and the pepper cress. I also planted some pepper cress in front of the chives.
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While working out there the clouds opened up and rain came down. I also ate one of the Alpine strawberries which had ripened. Very tasty. The garden has been doing okay. The squash has been blooming but nothing seem to have set. I think we got them started too late. Maybe we’ll do better next year. Later in the Fall I’ll harvest the potatoes, clean out that container and the squash containers and refill them with fresh soil. The garlic will go in one of the containers. We’ll have to figure out the rest. Eventually one of the boxes will be filled with strawberries.

McLane Creek Nature Trail

Today we went out to the McLane Creek Nature Trail with Poppy.
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McCoy stayed home. The plan was to take her out there today and then take him tomorrow since it’s easier to walk with just one dog. Poppy had a lot of fun even if we didn’t always walk fast enough for her.

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According to the map there’s a 1.1 mile trail that runs around some beaver ponds. There’s also another path which cuts the loop in half. After we parked we headed up the nearest trail. It turned out not to be an ‘official’ trail and pretty much became over-grown. Of course that was after we’d already climbed a hill and started down the other side. We came out at the main trail-head and started off down the actual trail.

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The more developed parts of the trail were covered with crushed rock. Not the most comfortable thing with bare feet. The dirt portions of the trail were much nicer to walk on. There are a number of other trails than the main loop. At one junction we took another wrong turn and wandered back around through the woods and ended up near our parking space again. By that point we’d all walked enough so we headed back to town.

Maybe when we take McCoy we can go the other way and stick to the actual trail loop.

Lettuce Plans

Our seeds arrived today but there has been a change. The Black Seeded lettuce was out of stock. Baker Creek nicely refunded the money and sent along a free gift — Merveille Des Quatre Saisons lettuce. It isn’t what we planned but we might as well give it a shot.

Ping

That is the lovely noise that the lids make as they are cooling and they create a vacuum seal. It is such a cheerful sound. We got another bunch of jam canned. This time it was a Blackberry Cherry Jam. It is an amazingly rich dark colour.
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The flash brightened the colour quite a bit, it is really, really dark. I can’t wait to taste it.

So far this canning season we’ve made 5 batches of jam (3 of those were the Strawberry Rhubarb– it is so yummy!), for a total of 38 half-pint jars, and 11 quart jars of dill pickles. I need to clear off more shelves in the dining room to store the goodies.

We also made a batch of tomato sauce but we used it fresh. I got to use my new food mill for the tomato sauce. Oh, it was so much better than previous fresh sauces. The food mill really mushed up the tomatoes and strained out all the seeds and skin. We made the sauce from a mix of organic heirloom tomatoes, orange, red, and black striped. I wish I had photographed them they were all so pretty.

Kale, Strawberries and Fall gardening

Yesterday I noticed something exciting – the blue curled scotch kale I planted last week has already come up. The plants aren’t that visible in the thumbnail, but in the larger image you can pick them out. The kale is growing in the newly cleaned Earthbox with fresh soil.
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The alpine strawberries have been doing well in their little containers. They have a bunch of berries (although they are small so it won’t be much, unfortunately). We noticed one of the berries looks nearly ripe.
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We’d like to plant an entire Earthbox with the strawberries and really have a bunch.

Fall is coming. Today I ordered some new seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds. Henderson’s Black-Seeded Simpson lettuce, Petite Rouge lettuce, and Pepper Cress. I also ordered a couple more Earthboxes to add to the porch. These are the new redesigned boxes so they won’t quite match the ones we have. That’s okay. Unfortunately it sounds like shipping will take awhile. I guess I should have ordered them earlier.

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