Longing for Spring   by: S. Moore

O how I long again to see The vernal face of Spring, And hear, from every budding tree, Some little warbler sing.   I long to see the forest trees Clothed in their robes of green, And swaying in the gentle breeze Display their glossy sheen.   I long to wander by the stream Where sport the speckled trout, Or in the noontide's genial gleam See lambkins frisk about.   I long to see the sons of toil Perform the noble deed Of breaking up the stubborn soil To plant the fertile seed.   I long to see the meadows green Bespread with flowerets gay-- I long to have a change of scene From winter cold and gray.   It won't be long--a little while And snows will disappear And Flora with her winning smile Shall find a welcome here.         I found this lovely poem today and wanted to share it in celebration of the Vernal Equinox.  Brightest Blessings...may all the seeds you sow this Spring, reap you a bountiful harvest ☽◯☾

New Adventures in Cooking or Screw off BC Hydro...I'm Tired of Giving you my Money!

It's been about a week now since the 220 volt, power grubbing, electric range has left my house and I haven't missed it at all so far. The space that it used to take up in my 12 x 50 foot mobile home was immediately filled and I like the new look. My going stoveless was to be a temporary arrangement until after the wall that it backed onto came down and the kitchen expanded to include what is now a spare room. For this last week I have relied almost exclusively on my woodstove to do all my cooking. The only exception to this has been the day I decided to make myself a loaf in my bread machine and I am already considering my options as far as that appliance, that runs for over 4 hours to make one loaf of bread is concerned. I always do a certain amount of my winter cooking on my woodstove but never taken it as seriously or had so much fun with it as I have had this year. I mean...it's sitting right there in my kitchen burning already to keep my house warm...it's the only source of heat in my place...it's always hot...what the heck. I've made the usual soups and pots of beans as well as complete chicken and salmon dinners, not to mention fried potato, sausage and french toast breakfasts. I don't feel that I've lost anything or suffered at all over this last week and in fact I am grateful for all that the electric range's departure has brought me. It certainly has raised my awareness as to my self-imposed dependence on electrical appliances. Half a dozen times a day I used to turn that stove on to boil my kettle for tea...220 volts of power to heat one cup of water...was I nuts! Two hours of oven time to cook a chicken when my already toasty warm, woodstove is sitting six feet away just begging to be used?! I'm already dreaming of what I'm going to do with all the money I save. Not to mention the sense of accomplishment and pride I feel in doing my part to lessen my environmental footprint. I have felt a stronger connection and appreciation for the food I am preparing in this manner as well. It is hard to describe and I don't quite know where it's coming from. Maybe it is because I harvested the dead trees from the forest this Spring with my friend Bert and split those blocks of wood once home with the help of  Barb and her son Dave, so have those happy, memories to add to the fire that burns to cook my meals today. Certainly don't get any warm, fuzzy feelings from paying my hydro bill when it comes in, LoL! I purchased a two burner, hot plate from the local thrift store prior to letting the range go and am already thinking that I could probably get by with that and my toaster oven(both of which take considerably less power and space) come summer when it is too hot to light a fire inside and too dry to burn one outside. Yes, I am already visualizing outdoor cooking adventures on my trailer park pad for the coming year, but that will be another story for another day. I'm beginning to think that I don't really need a full size, electric range or some of the other gadgets that suck power and take up counter space at all. Some life style adjustments and a little bit of ingenuity...the possibilities are endless...screw off BC Hydro...I'm tired of giving you my money!

Growing and Drying Hot Peppers

Well I came back from shopping in town today and decided to stop at the store and grab a coffee before I went home and put it all away. It's cool enough now that I can get away with that. We don't have a coffee shop here in town so the next best thing is to buy a to go coffee from our general store and sit outside on the bench and see who comes by to visit with. First I visited with one of our local yocals who was already there, coffee-ing and keno-ing. I learned a lot about Keno from someone who sounded to me a seasoned veteran of the sport. After wishing each other well and parting waves, I decided to try my hand and went inside to purchase my ticket. I paid $5 for 5 chances at guessing 3 numbers out of 20 drawn for 5 draws. Sounded easy enough to me. I was sure I could do it. WRONG! After winning $2 on the first go around, I reinvested my "jackpot". Still hopeful...... Oh well, I guess Keno's not my thing. Maybe I'll try it again another day. Or maybe the powers that be decided that my having a Type A personality and enough problems already to deal with, they were doing me a favour by not letting me win and getting hooked up. I mean, I swear I was even addicted to Q-tips at one time. But that's another story. Along came somebody else I knew (in this town it doesn't take long to know practically everybody - gotta love it - unless you're into anonymity I guess ). After the usual how are you doings and the talk about the weather and the coming winter, she mentioned to me that she had just pulled in about 25 pounds of paprika peppers from her garden and wasn't sure what to do with them all. Now I hate to blow my own horn(lies,Ha Ha), but I have established a pretty good reputation in this community for my "green thumb" and my knowledge about utilizing the produce I grow and wildcraft. Truth is the subject facinates me, I have a passion for it and am always looking to learn more about it. I shared with her what I do with hot peppers, haggled with a price on what she'd sell me a couple of pounds for and then followed her out to her place to purchase them. After weighing them out we took the proverbial walk and talk around her gardens and I headed home with my new found treasure. Better than Keno any day. Now I have enough paprika to dry for  this next year's use, and seeds(which I will harvest from the dried peppers in Spring) to grow my own plants for years to come. No more who knows where, under who knows what conditions,grown to sit for who knows how long on a store shelf paprika for me. One more thing I can cross off the weekly 50km round trip grocery list. After putting the groceries away and saying hello to my cats(Tully and Nina J) I gave the kitchen sink a good scrub and the peppers a cool bath. I laid them out on the counter on a clean towel to dry while I went outside to feed my rabbit(BunBun) and back inside to light myself a fire. It's been pretty cool the last couple of nights and some areas of town have already been seeing frost. Talk this year seems to be of early, hard winter. One day at a time..... I went and found my sewing needles and selected one that was thin and had a big enough eye to accomodate some fishing line. You don't want a needle that's too big as it will split the stem of the pepper. The thinner the better. As long as you can thread the eye. I like to use fishing line because it is strong and doesn't break easily. It's very frustrating to thread a string of peppers, go to hang them up and have the line break from the weight and have to start all over again. Been there, done that. Sucks. Have better things to do with my time than to do everything twice. I don't  usually make my strings more than about 4 feet long(which is about 2 pounds of small hot peppers) so if you use about 10 pound test on your fishing line that is plenty strong enough. Keep in mind, the heavier the test, the thicker the line. I find that if you make your strings longer than 4 or 5 feet there is more of a problem with your line tangling and they are bulkier and harder to handle. It's not necessary to use really good quality line for this. The cheaper stuff works just fine. It's also a good idea to keep your stuff organized so you know where things are when you need to use them. Unfortunately I still have work to do in this area as I couldn't find my tackle box, let alone the fishing line that was inside it. I really have to get that shed of mine sorted out before the weather starts to get too bad. It was dark by this time and I don't have power out there to dig around so it seemed the perfect excuse to me to go over to a friend's place, borrow some from her, and drink tea and visit while I strung up my peppers. What a wonderful plan. She had purchased a new herb book in one of the thrift stores on her travels out of town since I had seen her last and it made for some pretty lively discussion as to the new merits of the cur-sed "Napweed" that this book opened our eyes to. As we chatted away I began by threading my needle with some of her fishing line. At one time I used to cut off a length of line but soon discovered that more often than not I would have either selected too long of a piece which to me was wasteful or worse yet too short to accomodate all my peppers. Now I unroll a length of line and then let the spool sit on the ground on my left side as I am right handed and find it easier that way. I thread my needle on to the free end and pull it through the eye about 12 to 18 inches so that it doesn't slip back out while I'm working with it. I take a pepper and push the threaded needle through the middle of the thickest part of the stem near its base where it is attached to the flesh. When I harvest hot peppers for drying, I use a small pair of snips and cut them from the plant leaving about a one inch piece of stem attached. I find that it makes them easier to work with. After I get them all threaded, I remove the needle from the end of the line and  I carefully(to avoid tangles), adjust how they are placed so that I have about a one foot piece of line from the last threaded pepper to the what was once a needled end. I cut the other end  leaving about the same distance of bare line and then I bring both ends up so that they are parallel to each other and loop them into a knot. I now have a round threaded string of brightly, coloured peppers just like a large, beaded necklace. Normally I am at home when I do this so I take them into a warm, dry area to hang them for the winter. For me that is my spare room. I have hooks hanging from the ceiling for this purpose that I leave up all year. I take my loop of threaded peppers and just hang them on a hook and leave them to thoroughly dry. I usually leave them until it's time for me to start planting my bedding pepper plants for spring. Pepper plants don't like to deal with the cold so I don't usually plant them outside here until after the third week in May and sometimes not until the first week in June when I'm sure that all danger of frost is past. I like them to get a good 8 week head-start indoors as our season here is not as long as I would like. I usually take my dried peppers down and plant seeds around the end of March or the beginning of April. I usually leave my dried peppers whole, stored in one gallon glass jars, and only crush up a small amount at a time with a mortar and pestle as I need them to help preserve all their volatile oils. In my opinion the taste is far superior to anything that you can buy at the store and I believe that it is important for us as a society to try to find our way back to living with the seasons and reconnecting to the production of the foods that we consume. But that is a story for another day. Growing and drying your own hot peppers like cayenne and paprika are easy and can be done even by people who have limited growing areas. One or two plants will produce enough peppers for the average person's use and will grow readily in containers in an area as small as an apartment balcony. They are easily started from seed. Their foliage is bright green and they produce small, white, delicate flowers followed by brilliant red fruit. Brightest Blessings and Happy Gardening!

Brand New Blogger Day!

I do tend to carry on (my kindergarten report card stated "Jayne is a Chatterbox") and I found that the Facebook page would only let me print so many words at one time. This is hopefully my solution to that situation. I feel that I have a lot to say. It doesn't even seem to matter to me at this point if anyone is really listening as I don't think I need any input. I believe the output will be cathartic enough and that is the main purpose for this blog. My healing. I would like it if through the process of sharing in this way some people will listen and get to know me. I hope that I will better get to know myself. I am hoping that at some point I will be able to relax and release my fear of judgement enough to let the words that need to come, out, without my constant censorship. I hope that at some point I will allow myself to just BE. That makes me cry from a deep place. I've lost a lot of things in my life but nothing compared to the pain I felt when I realized that I had lost myself. Enough for now. Let's see if this thing will link up to my Facebook page.