I think that winter is misunderstood.

One of the best things about the changing seasons is that you get the opportunity to plan for new things in the garden. Surprising things. Beautiful things. Or yummy things. The fact is that we need the down months of winter. Our gardens are always growing, moving, producing, and evolving in one way or another no matter what type or style.

At one point last year you may have hit a wall or two and found that it was it impossible to keep up with the weeds, or deadheading, or overgrowth, or the harvest. Did you really find enough people to take all that zucchini? Or maybe the armloads of flowers you brought into the house didn’t leave any blooms to dress up the garden.

The garden isn’t the only thing that needs the quiet time of the cold months. Winter offers the clean slate that we need to take a look at the bare bones and reassess. It gives us the rest that we need to collect our dreams and ideas and bind them together with some tangible planning. We need time to think and time to make plans.

I’ve got some killer plans.

1. Our first project is a brand-spanking new veggie garden — no small feat, I assure you. The bazillion deer alone are a force to be reckoned with. Since we just moved to hawk Hill last June, we weren’t able to wrap our minds around a proper vegetable garden. I just drug some over-grown, root-bound tomato plants and peppers with me popped them into the rock-hard soil. I refused to plant them back at our old place because probably a non-gardener would move in and waste my darlings. Heathens.

2. The hill-tiered garden that we stuck the scraggly veggie plants in last year will be a lovely (and my largest) herb garden. I refer to this garden as “the potager”, pronounced “POT-u-jer”. Which is, by the way, completely incorrect pronunciation of this word. It’s more French than that. But hey, my garden; my rules.

3. I saved my coolest plan for last. If you don’t like fiber or fabric, you can move on now. Cuz’ this will bore you to death. But if you’re a crafter…oh yeah, you’re going to be so pleased. I’m planting a dyer’s garden. What is a dyer’s garden? It’s badass, awesome, and totally on the cutting edge — that’s what it is. It’ll be a garden of plants whose flowers, stems, or roots can be used to dye fabrics, yarns, and other goodies.

This is not a sheep.

Plus, Betty White lets me spin her fiber, so there’s that.

Top those plans. Go on, I’ll wait.

*Oh, and for those who are still saying “potager” over and over, here’s the correct pronunciation of “potager”

(You have no idea how hard it was to resist adding “Dude” to that post title)

~ Dead plant photo by Yours truly, Chris McLaughlin
~ Calendula photo by Audreyjm529
~ Betty White (Angora goat) photo was taken by Hollis McLaughlin

This looks like a simple fall flower pot. But, this pansy-planted container has a deeply buried secret.

Here’s a fast and rewarding way to plant a container with cool-weather annuals that naturally make way for spring daffodils. We made these with the kids in our ornamental horticulture 4H project and I think the kids are going to be pleasantly surprised when what they planted underneath their pansies show up in the spring!

What You’ll Need:

• Medium sized pot or container
• Potting soil
• Coffee filter (Optional)
• Organic fertilizer (Optional)
• 7 Daffodil (Narcissus) bulbs
• 6 pack of cool-weather annuals such as pansies (Viola) or snapdragons (Antirrhinum)

Plant Your Double Planted Flower Pot

1. If you have a coffee filter, you can place it at the bottom of your flower pot. The filter isn’t a necessity by any means, but it helps keep the soil in while letting the water drain out. Now, fill the container with about 3″ of potting soil.

2. Place the bulbs into the pot, doing your best to keep the bulb sides from touching each other. It’s not a deal-breaker if they do touch but it’s better to have a little soil in-between the bulbs.

3. Now fill the rest of the container with potting soil. At this point, if you’d like to sprinkle some organic bulb fertilizer into the soil, you can do that now — but again, it isn’t a big deal if you don’t.

4. Gently plant your cool-weather annuals into the pot. When you’re making the hole into the soil with your fingers, feel for a spot that’s in-between the daffodil bulbs. Plant as many in there as you’d like (or as many as you can fit), tap down the soil & water.

Enjoy your fall flowers and as they die back or stop blooming, your daffodil leaves will be waking up for the spring. Don’t be surprised if your pansies remain alive & re-bloom again, too.

Yes, I actually spun the wool on this spindle. Swear.

I learned to spin today. I’d been waiting for this for years.

More specifically, I learned the first part of spinning wool. Apparently there’s a few more steps and the next one involves “plying”. Plying basically goes like this: after you stress out and finagle everything into spinning a couple of bobbins, you let a couple of yarns twist together (or a single back onto itself to add the plies), effectively cutting your progress in half. Go figure.

Anyway, I’m trying hard not to think that far ahead. My teachers run a small business called All About Ewe and are some of the nicest ladies I’ve met since we moved up here. They kindly cheered me on saying that my spinning looked great (no doubt “for a beginner”, but ya’ll know I’m easy and I’ll catch any bone tossed my way).

I think I did okay.

I had my first spinning lesson inside a charming barn filled with all things warm, colorful, and handmade. This place where the sheep ladies teach doubles as a handcraft boutique that I didn’t get nearly enough time to peruse.

There couldn’t have been a better classroom.

Like every fiber craft I’ve ever learned, I knew I would enjoy it. I felt comfortable right away while drawing the wool from the roving and letting the wheel twist the fiber onto the bobbin. I’m learning on a smoky-brown wool called Rambouillet (pronounced ram-boo-lay) and while I don’t know much about the sheep breed itself, rambouillet is about as romantic and exotic sounding as it gets — so there’s that.

You’ll recognize this sheep breed from the back of your expensive wool sweaters — Merino.

When my lesson was over, I got to meet the sheep behind the wool, so to speak. I say “so to speak” because these sheep weren’t actually those behind the wool that I was spinning — but they very well could have been. The fiber I was using came from a sheep named Victor who is now grazing on that big pasture in the sky. Although, I’ll never meet him I silently thanked him for donating his lovely wool so that this first-timer could learn this ancient and classic art.

I tried to sneak this one into the back of the car…

I did get the chance to chat with a black sheep that had some seriously big doll eyes framed in long lashes that let me ruffle his wooly head — like a story book come to life. I kid you not. There was also a curious Llama who came right up to me and wasn’t unfriendly, but would rather you kept your hands to yourself thank-you-very-much…I felt I should respect that.

I got the feeling that she ran the place.

As I drove away with both spinning wheel and fluffy roving, I thought about the fact that after completing the basic spinning steps and the necessary hours of practice, I’ll be able to create something warm and wonderful for my efforts.

Then that it dawned on me that I don’t know how to knit.

By now you may have heard that the suburban farm has moved to the country. Even on 5 acres, I would still define it as a micro or hobby farm. In fact, I still do a lot of suburban-type farming such as planting in containers on my back deck and growing in raised beds. That may surprise people considering the “space” that I have now. But the fact is that I share that space with a lot of deer and other wildlife — not to mention that I have horses and goats. So, to utilize my land I have to cross-fence with TALL fencing if I want to grow on the acreage.

At one time many years ago, we lived in this same vicinity, but I’m having to re-learn some of the skills I acquired back then. We tried many things on out little farm at that time but some of the things we’re doing in the country now are new to us. One thing I do remember is to listen to the folk that have been there and done that. Amazingly, just before we made the big move, The Joy of Hobby Farming: Grow Food, Raise Animals, and Enjoy a Sustainable Life by Michael and Audrey Levatino showed up at my door.

With their friendly voices and can-do tone, Michael and Audrey Levatino have not only written this book from hands-on hobby farming experience, but the passion that they have for the country lifestyle comes through loud and clear. It’s this type of voice in a book that excites me. For example, take a look at this passage:

“Hobby farming embraces the idea that smaller is better. Better tasting foods, both plant and animal, come from small farms that don’t use intensive cultivation methods to increase profits. Hobby farming profits come mostly from the reddest heirloom tomatoes, grown with personal attention and careful handling; the freshest eggs with firm, orange yolks, made by chickens who have fresh air and room to roam; and the hardiest, most gorgeous flowers that retain their brilliance for weeks in a vase. The profits aren’t always monetary — you’ll have a stronger body and mind gained from hours of personal fulfillment working on the land.”

And if that wasn’t enough to make me devour this book — this was the closer:

“Unless you’re independently wealthy or have inherited your farm, you’re probably going to keep or find a job outside of the farm to pay your mortgage or rent. That’s why it’s called hobby farming. It doesn’t mean that you’re not taking it seriously; it means that you’re realistic and practical. After all, diving headlong into this particular economic situation (surviving on farming alone) has ruined countless well-intentioned people.”

The bold type is mine. I kept thinking, ” I have found my people.”

From finding your farm (and asking all the right questions), to growing food, flowers and raising animals. The Joy of Hobby Farming is an excellent introduction to the reality of hobby farming the truth about the work involved. The last section goes into running your farm as a business and once again gives you some tools that you may not have been equipped with before picking up this book in the form of the right questions that need answering to become successful.

There are lovely pictures and excellent side bars throughout the book that only served to egg my hobby farming passion forward. In fact, they’ve given me some better ideas than I originally had for our place here at Hawk Hill.

Basically, they’re my kind of people that wrote my kind of book.

The Joy of Hobby Farming: Grow Food, Raise Animals, and Enjoy a Sustainable Life
Authors: Michael and Audrey Levatino
Softcover: 256 pages
Publisher: Skyhorse Publishing (April 2011)
ISBN: 978-1-61608-228-4

Check out what else the Levatino’s are up to at Ted’s Last Stand.com.

A copy of “The Joy of Hobby Farming” was sent to me for the purpose of review. That said, all of the views and comments in this article are honest and all mine.

Rooster photo by Dunngodung
Honey photo by The Food Gift Hunter
Calf photo by fklv
Strawberry photo by Geekpulp

In the middle of June, as we packed our entire home and yards for the big move to Hawk Hill, it dawned on us that most of the gardens would have to stay. Surprisingly, it wasn’t the vegetable gardens that I worked on every year that got to me. It was Phil.

“Phil”, our beloved philodendron that we placed into a HUGE pot out back had sunk his roots well beyond his pot. To attempt to take him with us would more than likely end up in disaster for Phil. So he was to stay behind at the mercy of the next family who moved into our home. He’d been with us for about fifteen years and five homes.

The ‘Weeping China Doll’ standard rose tree that husband-extraordinaire had given to me as an anniversary gift many, many years previously had been planted into the ground at this house, so she would stay behind, too. It was the same for the eight Japanese maples that husband-extraordinaire had coddled as little saplings and then found the perfect spot for them to live out their lives. They had grown large and were happy exactly where they were.

Actually, he wanted to hire some big digging something or other to come lift them out like with a crane or something — he’d really lost it by that time.

In fact, no matter how often I told him he was going to kill them digging them up while they were actively growing, it took a total stranger (okay, he was a Japanese maple nurseryman) at the SF Flower and Garden show to convince him not to do it and that dude managed it with a simple firm shake of the head.

Whatever.

So, there’s the sadness of letting many things go when you up-root your entire life. Yet on the very same day that we were coming to terms, a big box was delivered to our door. Proven Winners had sent us some brand-new baby plants to coo over and coddle. These plants were the first of our new beginning and I immediately potted every one of them into containers so that they could make the move with us. Granted, some of them would never see years in those pots — but they represented the exciting new things that were coming our way in our new home and I was thrilled at their timely arrival.

I placed the Hosta ‘Autumn Frost’ in a fat, glazed pot with Moneywort (Lysimachia) and Baby’s tears (Soleirolia) surrounding it.

In a rectangle terra cotta container I placed Hemerocallis ‘Going Bananas’, with two Superbells ‘Grape Punch’ (Calibrachoa) on either side of it.

Echinacea ‘Little Annie’ is living in a gorgeous little glazed container surrounded bu some ‘Elfin’ thyme.

And Spirea ‘Double Play Artist’ was flanked by a few Superbells ‘Cherry Star’ plants.

All of the beautiful Proven Winner plants have filled in and blossomed beautifully despite heatwave after heatwave.

There was more. And it almost made me forget for a moment what I was leaving behind. Almost. I did end up planting a darling, creamy-green philodendron in a half-barrel in the potager that we’ve dubbed “Little Phil”. He has a lot to live up to.

The view of the Coloma valley from our back deck — I’ve died and gone to heaven…

So where the hell have I been?? Certainly not writing on my, poor, neglected blog. Okay, so while I finished The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Small-Space Gardening, I was also working on the edits for Hobby Farms: Small-Scale Rabbit Raising…and packing and moving to one of my favorite places in California — Gold Country (Sierra Nevada Foothills)! We’re now living on our little micro-farm at Hawk Hill.

Here’s part of the terraced potager. I can SO work with this, muahahahahaha.

Thirteen to fourteen years ago we lived out here and it’s been “home” ever since. So we were tickled pink to be moving back. We’re now out of the suburbs and have 5 acres of land to mess around with…can you even imagine what’s going on inside my head? The funny thing is that you’d be amazed at how much small-space gardening is still involved. I have a small, hillside-terraced potager which will be the first garden I’ll tend because it’s fenced and hot-wired to keep the deer out. Yup, we’re gonna have a face-off with the deer now. I also have containers on my back deck because it’s safe from the deer, as well.

Hydrangeas at the top of the potager.

Out front at this point, we have to carefully select ornamentals and veggies alike and plant those that are deer-resistant. Notice I said deer-resistant as there really isn’t any such thing as deer-proof. But I’m having a run of good luck do far. Not only is it gorgeous, historical, and right above the American River (white-water river rafting!), but I once again have my horses home.

Ya gotta love my mare’s fly mask…

If you’re a horse person, you’ re smiling right about now ‘cuz you get it. Right after we moved (about 3 weeks ago) the book edits came back for Small-Space and of course, I had online articles to work on in-between. Did I mention that in the middle of everything my kids and grand kids came to visit us from Tennessee for two weeks? No time for breathing — or eating. And I dropped 5 pounds off somewhere.

Yeah, so that’s where I’ve been: in Crazyville. But, a good kind of Crazyville.

I hope you guys will hang around because I can’t wait to share my gardening escapades as I start my gardens all over again!

The Mason bees in their little bee sleeping bags (cocoons)

My first season with my Western Blue Mason bees has been a tricky one. Everything was cruising along just fine until we decided to look for a place with a little more land — and found it. We didn’t have an exact date pinned down for the move-in, but spring wasn’t waiting for the likes of us and we knew that our bees were going to want to wake up soon.

Boring, cookie-cutter tract home

So, Husband-Extraordinaire, the Children of the Corn, and I decided to take them up to our new place in Gold Country (Placerville or Old Hangtown), hang up their little bee condo, and release them up there. Although, it’s been extremely difficult to get the pictures that I’d like, I think it was a smart move on our part. Placerville area is where California loves to grow their apples…and all kinds of other fruit trees. In other words, Mason bee heaven.

Semi-custom home in the same neighborhood

First, we rolled out the welcome mat by having the youngest of us decorate the bee house to resemble our indoor fairy house. We then used logic and science while we argued about the best location to place our first bee residence. We’re pretty sure our only-neighbors-on-the-hill didn’t hear a thing.

Of course, it ended up being secured in the exact location that I had suggested from the beginning. This isn’t so much because I’m bee-brilliant as it is that I have a secret weapon when it comes to rearing mason bees — Dave Hunter. Husband-Extraordinaire and the Children of the Corn are in no such way hooked up to bee people. So I win. Here’s a couple of tips for the spring from Dave at Crown Bees:

• The males will emerge first and hang around the holes waiting for females to pounce upon and mate. They will also forage for food, but predominantly will wait for the females.
• The females will emerge next (2-7+ days). They will forage, mate with the males, and then begin nesting.
• You might not see females actively go in and out of your holes for a while. Be patient…
• Your females might find other holes to nest in around your house, and they might also move to where they feel there’s better pollen and holes. It’s awfully tough trying to train a bee to know which house is theirs!
• Birds may want to nest in your mason bee house if there’s room. They may also want to play with the straws. (for shame!) Consider placing netting over the entrance if you’re concerned. Use holes no smaller than ½”. A garden or hardware store will carry netting or chicken wire.
• Pests, especially parasitic wasps or cuckoo bees. The cuckoo likes to sit near a hole that is being slowly filled by a mason bee. When the cuckoo bee sees the mason bee leave, she quickly runs in and lay her egg in the pollen filled hole. This egg hatches later and its larva then kills our mason bee egg/larva. The wasp lays her eggs through the side of thin tubes and can squeeze through plastic trays. You can remove either by spraying them with water from an old Windex squirter. (and then squishing them. I know… we should let nature do their thing, but still!!!)
• Mud is important! Be watchful that you have moist mud. Open water isn’t what’s needed… your bees can’t swim! Crownbees.com has a suggested mud pit to try.
• Dead male mason bees near the colony. This isn’t a bad thing, but something to be aware of that is natural. (They live only 2 weeks!)

Here’s what my Mason bees probably look if I actually had a picture…

Next, I’m going to con…I mean ask politely the only-neighbor-on-the-hill if she’ll snap a picture of my bees in the next day or two. If it turns out her legs are broken or worse, she heard us yelling and already refuses to speak to us, then I’ll snap a few next Friday to share with ya’ll.

*In case you missed it, here’s the first post here on Western Blue Mason bees ~ My Blue Mason Bees Have Arrived!

A guest post by author Michael Nolan

Check out this horticultural hottie’s book, “I Garden: Urban Style”

DISCLAIMER: This post is intended to be humorous. If you have none, please don’t read on.

Sometimes you just have to appreciate a good badass.

Most people wouldn’t imagine it could be possible but there are some seriously badass bitches in gardening these days and I feel that they deserve some recognition for all of their bad assness. Here are some of my favorite Badass Bitches and the Gardens That Love Them:

Ivette Soler

I’m not going to lie, I love a garden diva who thinks about how well her gardening plants will couple with liquor. Ivette is a goddess among badasses and she does amazing things when she puts her badass fingers in the dirt. Her new book “The Edible Front Yard” (Timber Press) helps you transform a bland, water-hungry lawn into a beautiful, edible foodscape. It doesn’t get much more badass than that.

Shawna Coronado

Like me, Shawna is a self-made garden badass. She didn’t study for years to become a master of her gardening domain. She looked around, saw a problem and figured out what she could do on a regular basis that would help to create a solution. Then she wrote the book “Gardening Nude” to expose the naked truth about it all. That’s why Shawna Coronado is one badass bitch!

(Pay attention here…I paid extra for this part)

Chris McLaughlin

You knew I wasn’t going to let this opportunity pass me by, right? I couldn’t miss out on talking about Chris on her own blog! She is the ultimate badass and she doesn’t even know it. She is the author of the book “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Composting” and how could you not love a woman who can talk shit? She also wrote the book on heirloom veggies, another topic that is near and dear to my rockstar heart.

It takes a lot to be a badass bitch in the garden, but if you don’t mind stirring the compost once in a while it can happen for you too.

Michael Nolan, The Garden Rockstar is an author, blogger and speaker on gardening, sustainability, food ethics and homesteading. He is currently in the process of writing a new guest post on a different site for each day in May. To follow his progress, visit MyEarthGarden.com.