Imbolc or Candlemas, the first stirrings of Spring

This February Imbolc celebration marks the first anniversary of this blog.  Just like last year the polar vortex is poised to dump snow on the balmy west coast of British Columbia.  In the meantime, we have some sunny springy pictures to show.

We found out on Facebook that someone in the village of Sointula was giving away free used cedar shakes, so we filled our pickup truck with them and brought them home for fire starter.  But we had to build something to dry them out so we quickly put together this shelter with used pallets and some tin.  It was easy since we had built several of these before.

The garlic that we had planted in the previous row of peas is coming up well.  At least the deer won't try to eat it through the nearby fence.

More garlic sprouting in a nearby bed:

Overwintering perennial Egyptian walking onions.

More overwintering plants like kale and broccoli.

Waiting for the celery to grow, but we already had some in our spaghetti sauce tonight.

We are waiting for the parsley to grow a little before we start harvesting it.  There are also leeks behind it and a perennial arugula plant to the right.  The part of the bed at the top has been mulched with seaweed.

We are expanding into the new garden.  The first completed bed straddles a fence and it will be planted with peas on both sides.

We are almost finished building the second bed.  There will be four more.  When we are finished we will secure the garden addition with a fence build of 6 foot wire attached to steel t-bars.  Combined with the first garden we should have a total of 10 beds each about forty feet long.

We are making use of the fenced 15 foot spacing between the young trees in the orchard to build additional beds.  So far we have added two beds to accommodate 50 crowns of asparagus that will be arriving soon in the mail from West Coast Seeds.  We anticipate making two more similar beds for raspberries and strawberries.

Our closing image is Mitchell Bay about 500 meters down the hill from our gate basking in glorious late afternoon sunshine.  Figuring prominently is the famous "Red Shed" a lovingly restored net shed next to the public dock.  Spring really must be on the way as there are daffodils sprouting next door, all we have to do is get through the upcoming week of arctic winter blast.