Welcome to our family blog to keep you updated on all the happenings around the Walker cottage and "farm". Even though we live in a rural section of the Tennessee Mountains life is far from boring as you will see.

Saturday, November 19, 2022

NOVEMBER WALKER NEWSLETTER 2022

 

Hello!

Winter has arrived here on the mountain with a few snow flurries and lots of cold weather- some days barely getting out of the 30's and down in the low 20's at night. For a couple of weeks we had some warm 70 degree weather days when suddenly the temperature nosedived one afternoon.  Now having 50 degrees would seem like a heat wave. So, we are staying busy keeping our wood-stoves going. There is nothing like a crackling fire to warm one's bones on frigid days. Outside the world looks bleak with barren trees and the last of the hardy blooming flowers gone.  It makes one very thankful to have a warm cozy house.

The last few weeks, we raced around gathering buckets of branches for kindling and helping to stack pickup loads of wood with Dwight under the carport. Every sunny warm day found me with a paint brush or spray can of paint.  I painted the back step railing, bluebird houses on the fence, and trellis seats Dana made years ago in the enclosed garden.  I sprayed pinecones for wreaths and anything else I had forgotten that needed a touch of paint. I was hoping to get the arches and inside fence painted in the enclosed garden but ran out of time as I am much slower than I'd like.

I've also been collecting seeds from the garden to save for next year. There is always something fascinating to me about saving seeds to store back. It's amazing how one tiny seed can produce gorgeous flowers and veggies that in return make oodles of other seeds.  I also planted more bulbs to come up in the spring- one never can have too many flowers- and transplanted and divided other plants. I trimmed around the trees in the yard for a finishing touch and put up chicken wire around the spots where I am trying to get some shade gardens going where the trees are too close for Dwight to mow.  For some reason the ducks and chickens seem to think that the hostas, ferns, and other shade plants are a ducky and chicky salad bar grown for them and just when my shade gardens begin to take off they eat everything down to the ground. So, I am duck and chicken proofing my shade gardens for next year.

I also put out heating water bowls and buckets in the duck and henhouse and for Tex. Dwight rigged up a heating pad in the doghouse for Tex as for some reason he is allergic to straw like we always did before to keep him warm through the winter. I've closed up the beehive for the winter as well.  During the last warm days they were really going through the sugar water to finish filling up the last of the frames with honey to live on this winter.  The Canadian geese are arriving from up North for the winter and the birds that haven't migrated South are keeping me busy filling up the bird feeders.

Sending lots of Thanksgiving wishes for a blessed Thanksgiving season from my house to yours~

Dorcas

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