Pickin' Peppers

    Yesterday I could see from our weather forecast that we were going to be getting a killing frost overnight (-5C, 23F).  I had harvested most of the fragile vegetables from the garden, and decided, since I don’t have any heat in the greenhouse, that I would just go ahead and pick the remaining tomatoes and chili peppers in the greenhouse.

    The photo shows my pepper harvest.  I had Green peppers, Jalapeno peppers, Ancho peppers, Serrano peppers, some Hungarian Wax peppers, and others.  A few of them could have matured a bit longer in the greenhouse, had not the freezing weather intervened.  Some of these we will use in their fresh state, others I will dry for later use.

I see my painting of a previous year's peppers at:  davidmarchant.ca

Herbicidal Frankenplants

    Joan and I used to do quite a few of our walks down the runway of the McBride Airfield.  Beside the wide view of the Valley, one of the attractions for me was the many unique plants that were growing along the margins of the tarmac.  I saw a lot of flowers that were otherwise uncommon in our part of the Robson Valley.

    Although the plants growing in the gravelly margins were never thick or high, I guess the people in charge got tired of mowing the strip and thought it would be easier just to poison the margins, so they applied herbicides.  That was several years ago, and now I cringe at the “Frankenplants” that now grow there.  While some of the mosses remain, the other unique plants have now been replaced with invasive weeds and other ugly plants.  What a loss.

    The photo above shows what is growing there now, and the photos below show some of the plants that I used to enjoy seeing that were poisoned and are now gone.

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A schizophrenic Sky

    We experienced a schizophrenic sky yesterday when we took our walk.  The photo above shows what the sky looked like south of us, and the photo at the bottom shows what we saw when we turned our eyes to the east.  Luckily, the rain drops didn’t start falling until we finished the walk and got back into the car.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

Turning

    People are pretty season-oriented in the Robson Valley, and although it is subtle, it’s hard not to notice that the page is starting to turn away from Summer and onto Autumn.  The leaves on the trees and bushes are slowly loosing their green in preference for hues of yellow.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant.ca

Pressing Apples

    Yesterday when I was walking past the garden, I glanced over at the apple tree just in time to see an apple drop to the ground--they were ready to pick.  As luck would have it, the Three River’s Coop was having an apple pressing day in the afternoon, so I picked all of the apples from the tree, and we drove to Dunster to get them turned into apple cider.

    Their home-made apple press is a fairly simple machine.  Apples are feed into a grinder that chews the apples into chunks which fall into a wooden bucket made of wooden slates.  When the bucket is full it is put under the presser which is hand turned, lowering the top on the bucket and squeezing the juice out of the apple pieces.  The juice runs down to a hole where it is collected in a bucket.

    Joan and I had 10 gallons of apples and we got about 2 gallons of delicious cider, and we had an interesting afternoon making it with other people who were also pressing their apples.  Below are shots showing apples being washed, pressed, and some of our apple cider.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant.ca

Cones on the Roof

    We have a tall spruce tree beside our house.  Over the past week we have heard a constant, “Bong,” “Plop. “ Bing,” as a squirrel harvests the spruce cones from the top of the tree and drops them down, hitting our metal roof.  He will soon gather them up and hide the seeds for winter food.  The little guy keeps busy with this chore, and I will be happy when he finishes disturbing the peace.

View my paintings at:  davidmarchant.ca

Hazy Mountains

    Our mountains have been partially obscured by smoke a lot this summer.  The haze does give the viewer a better sense of distance and the topography when looking toward the horizon.  Here are some photos.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca