We took advantage of the nice weather and lit the fire bowl and had a couple of friends over. When there's fire (and beer), might as well make s'mores. We used bars of sea salt chocolate and ginger chocolate. We also figured out a way to melt the chocolate using the tool used to lift the bowl lid. They were delicious and messy!
We feed the chickens lots of lettuce and veggie scraps. I saw a wire ball for $30 that you could stuff that is intended as a chicken toy. Basically when the chickens first peck at it, it swings then the chickens run and peck at it until it's empty. Well, I ran across these clearance suet holders and I must say they work just as well for only a couple of bucks a piece. More importantly, the chickens love them. When I take them out of the coop to fill them, the chickens are waiting at the door for me to return. You can see here, my first attempt with chicken wire, which the chickens liked, but I was too afraid the pointy ends of the wire would poke an eye out.
Today we got a lot of snow. Now in Alaska this may not be news, but (1) yesterday evening I was raking, not shoveling; (2) we've gotten close to 8 inches; and (3) its still coming down. Oh yeah and its April 14th! So instead of enjoying some time in the yard as I had planned after work, I shoveled. Unfortunately, even before I was done with the driveway, it was covering back over with snow (the futility). In the video and pictures you can get a sense of how much snow we've got and how fast its still coming down. Plus, its heavy wet snow that's hard to move. On the bright side, at least its not too cold and the dogs love it.
In getting ready to leave this morning here in Barrow, we were told to wait and not leave as there was a polar bear nearby. Come to find out the polar bear less than a block from the hotel. Of course, I stayed put, not knowing which way the bear was from our hotel.. Later when we got the driving tour, we kept our eyes peeled for the bear, but didn't see it. I've been spending the last hour or so getting up the nerve to walk the two blocks to the coffee shop. I think I'll go, but walk really fast.
Here are a couple of non-bear pictures from around town today. Check out those "palm trees."
This will be my first trip to North America's northern most city. Unfortunately it means pulling out the heavy winter coat as temps with the windchill are below 0. Brrr!
Knowing that my time home is short, I took advantage of yesterday to do some of my favorite activities - baking, gardening and something crafty. Keeping with the holiday weekend, I decided to hard boil and dye some eggs. I read an article that that brown eggs turn out in rich colors, which I prefer to the pastels and having an abundance of eggs from the chickens, I gave it a shot. I think they turned out great and we'll eat them as part of our Easter lunch before I head to Barrow this afternoon.
After a wonderful trip to Costa Rica and a couple of days of just getting back in the day to day life groove, I'm finally making it back here. I'm glad to report that the dogs, chickens and plants survived the trip under the care of our friends. A couple of new things were tried in Costa Rica - zip lining, waterfall rappelling and lots of new foods. Here's where you can find some more pictures of the trip and I'll be back to regular posting any day now.
I'm headed to some place warm and tropical and don't plan to be online until the beginning of next month. Until then, I'll leave you with some pictures of my garden starts all ready to be transported over to a friend's place for plant sitting. I thought making arrangements for dogs was a pain, getting all the plants transplanted and ready for transport took hours. I hope they survive.
In keeping with the theme of lemons yesterday, I also made lemon ginger marmalade to finish off our Meyer lemons. Quite tasty this morning on homemade toast (love those lines on the loaf that the proofing basket leaves behind).
In other news, this is my hundredth post on the blog; something I think is an accomplishment in itself, especially since the blog was started on a whim. A few of the new things I've tried since the start of the blog: bourbon (didn't like), hot pepper flakes (liked), hot toddy with rum (liked), winter biking (totally hooked), hot yoga (the jury's still out, but I've gone about 5 times) and a Jean-Claude Van Damme movie (interesting). Thanks for reading and I look forward to another 100 posts.
