February, 2017

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Lettuce

Saturday, February 11th, 2017

This is the first year that I’ve successfully had lettuce all winter.

Actually, lettuce does fine here in temperatures down to zero and even in snow (though I cover it with a light row cover). It doesn’t grow a lot once it gets cold though, so the challenge is to plant it when it can germinate and grow, but not so early that it bolts. It’s also necessary to do this in an amount thatĀ gives you lettuce all winter. Until this year, I never quite got it right, but this morning, I harvested all this lettuce. There’s still more that’s harvest-ready and now another younger batch that should be ready in a few weeks. Now I just need to keep the new successions coming.

In training

Tuesday, February 7th, 2017

So this year’s plan for a rim-to-rim Grand Canyon trip has been permitted (it’s quite a lengthy process that relies on some degree of luck), and so we are in training.

This weekend, we climbed Silver Peak (about 20 minutes from our house, near Portal). It’s just under 10 miles round trip, and the elevation gain to the top is 3000 feet. (To compare, the elevation change to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is 5850, and it’s 4860).

On the first part of the trail, we were surprised to find several horses that had apparently been turned loose there. They were very friendly, and we shared an apple with them.

Toward the top of the climb, there was quite a lot of snow. This made the going a lot slower.

Here’s the view from the top.