HIBERNATING KITCHEN GARDEN

  Snow has taken over the lands here. It is nearly winter solstice, and I can feel it in my bones too. It is so dark in the mornings that it is difficult to get up no matter what the time is! And so dark again at 4pm, that it is hard to resist the soft comfiness of the living room couch...

Sometimes I wish I could just sleep off the entire dark and cold winter. Like nature does.

My small and humble kitchen garden is covered with snow. It has earned it´s rest after surviving last summer of neglected care... =)

The other day, one of these short and dark ones, my daughter (who loves food) found the last stems of kale still standing up from the ground in my kitchen garden in our back yard. She must have remembered eating them in the fall, because she went straight up to them and took a big fat bite of the frozen and snow covered curly leaf! It was so hilarious. She was perfectly happy for the next ten minutes chewing on the fibrous mouthful. What a cutie. =)

Raspberries are only a faint memory by now.

Think I went overboard with the rabbit fence? Yes, there is a small cherry tree inside, somewhere... We got it from my sister two summers ago, and I´m so terrified something might happen to this tree. It would be soooo embarrasing to kill it!

The only thing alive still in the garden is my compost.

Never before have I been able to keep it going this well at this temperature. Usually it freezes as the snow falls, but not now baby! Outside it is 10 Fahrenheit (-12 Celsius) and on the inside 86 F (+30 C). Yipee! I know it will not last through the entire winter, but the further I can go tossing our bio waste in here, instead of the trash, the happier I am.

Yum yum, food for my kitchen garden in 2015. I´ll take the mass out in the spring and dump it into another bin, where it can further decompose over the winter of 2014-2015 . Then it will be ready to be used as fertilizer in my garden. Honestly, I´m sure my daughter and I produce 90% of this material. The other 10% comes from my husband´s coffee brewing. What is it with the male sex, why won´t they eat their vegetables?!

  Rest in peace, I wish I could too! (On second thought, it is X-mas soon, and I would miss out on all the chocolate, and the excitement in my kids´ eyes before opening the presents, and seeing Santa, and watching "It´s a Wonderful Life" on tv. I take it back. I´d like to hibernate through the dark and cold, but set the alarm clock for X-mas, New Year´s, and sunny days. =)