The unwritten rule...

It seems that there is a rule that on days that I must work, the weather will be sunny and 60 degrees.... on days that I have off, it will be pouring rain and 40 degrees.  Hrrmph.  I am aching to get out there to continue work on the vegetable garden plot, but it would seem that the weather gods have other plans. 

We were so hoping to tap some black walnut trees to make syrup this year, but it would seem that somehow we missed the boat on that one.  Maybe next year!  I cannot help but feel a twinge of guilt when I drop the ball on things like this... but then I remind myself that it will only have been one year since we closed on this property, and we can't do everything all at once.  This year, tapping trees just wasn't a priority.  Maybe next year.

Either way, it's Leap Day, and that means that tomorrow we are entering March.  Spring is a few short weeks away, and before long I'll be complaining about the heat instead of the chill.  I can't wait!

Crocus

I saw my first crocus of Spring today.  And our peas are coming up!

Valentine's Day

My first patient of the day was, appropriately, having an acute heart attack.  We kicked ass and he had a balloon in his blocked coronary artery within 27 minutes of arrival.  Hoorah for us!

I was having a great day.  I was feeling like my sinus infection was finally starting to get better, and I was genuinely enjoying my work. Then I suddenly became dizzy and flushed.  This has been happening, intermittently, for the past two weeks or so.  It usually goes away within a few minutes.  This time it didn't.  So I stepped into an empty patient room and put a heart monitor on myself.  My heart rate was 150!  So guess who signed in as a patient??

I was most concerned that it might be SVT, but after lying down for awhile my heart rate slowed to the 130s.  No adenosine for me.  I spent the next 4.5 hours getting tests and IV fluids.  We got it down to the low 100s after 2 liters of fluid and several hours of rest, but still have no clue why it happened.  I had no other signs of dehydration, drinking plenty of water, minimal caffeine, no more stressed than usual, no fever, thyroid is fine, labs are all normal, chest x-ray is normal.  It's a mystery to me.  My doc was stumped as well, and she's brilliant.  She offered to keep me overnight for observation, but I couldn't really see the benefit of doing so when all my tests were negative.  So, I'm supposed to see about following up with a cardiologist if this continues to happen.

Tonight we are staying in and I'm taking it easy.  We're ordering sushi takeout for dinner  I have the day off tomorrow, thankfully, and will be able to get plenty of rest.

I hope your heart is happy on this Valentine's Day!

The white stuff

We finally got a little bit more snow!  There's maybe an inch or so sticking to the ground out there right now, but it goes a long way toward making the place beautiful and magical again.  I love walking down into the woods and following the animal tracks in the snow...tiny little bunny feet, deer hooves, the strange dinosaur-tracks of wild turkeys making their own maps of our little slice of the world.

As anxious as I am for Spring, it is something of a relief to see a bit of true winter during this unusually mild season.

Thinking about space....

 
I sunbathed in 90+ degree temperatures yesterday, while working on the shallow in-ground bed that lies in the center of the greenhouse.  When we rehabilitated the greenhouse last year, we didn't do anything more to the center bed than pull all the weeds and dump some compost on top of the soil.  All of the other beds that line the perimeter of the structure are 10" raised beds, so we jumped into using them right away.  The center bed has just been sitting there, untouched except to pull the occasional weed that would sprout. 

As I dug into it today, it was abundantly clear that no one had touched that soil for YEARS.  It was so compacted that my forearm and wrist feel like they may well have been digging through concrete all afternoon.  But after some deep cultivation to mix in some nice black compost (and the removal of many rocks), the center bed was made ready for planting.

At one point in time, the vents of the greenhouse were opened by a motor and a sprinkler-style watering system existed.  The electrical and water lines have long since been lost, and we open the roof vents by manually turned the wheel.  However, a pipe still runs most of the length of the peak of the roof, directly above the center bed.  We tied lengths of string to it in groups of 9 and ran them all the way to the ground to form a series of tee-pees.  After staking them taut with sticks, we planted our sugar snap and snow peas, one at the base of each string.  As they grow they'll climb their strings and reach towards the glass ceiling.  I cannot wait to crunch that first pod!

I am continually amazed by this place.  The more we do to improve our home and land, the more I realize that we are only beginning to scratch the surface of its potential.  As I sweltered quite happily this afternoon, I daydreamed about growing over-flowing hanging baskets of cherry tomatoes, hanging from the sturdy metal hooks that jut out from the angled glass walls... I suppose they once supported either sprinkler hoses or grow lights, but we really have no need of either, so they're just hanging out, not earning their keep.  Why not put them to work and take advantage of all that vertical space available to us?

I'm wondering what other vegetables might do well in hanging baskets in the greenhouse... would zucchini and cucumber do well if their foliage were permitted to trail downwards instead of being staked upwards??  What about hot peppers, and smaller-fruited varieties of sweet peppers?  It seems to me that I have some experimentation ahead of me...