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There was an area of garden I would have liked to till last fall, but I didn’t, because there were a couple of small trees in the way that needed to be transplanted first. Ken transplanted those trees today and did the tilling. We’re only about a month away, I hope, from planting the early crops. In the photo above, Ken has dug up one of the trees and put it in the wheelbarrow. Patience has approached to admire Ken’s digging.

Next: Ken with the tiller

With the tilling done, the chickens now cluster around to explore the fresh-dug dirt.

That’s Patience at Ken’s left hand. She has a huge crush on Ken.

The hawk mesh over the entire garden is almost done. I have to pick up more fishing line, though, before Ken can finish the job. He calculates that he has used about 1.6 miles of fishing line so far. We’re confident that the fishing line will keep the hawks away from the chickens. But it remains to be seen how long the fishing line will last. A long time, I hope, because it was a huge amount of work for Ken putting it up.

Sunday was sunny, and the temperature was above 50F. Everyone, including the cat and the chickens, had spring fever. Even the cabbage and broccoli seeds, planted less than 48 hours ago, had sprouted in their little indoor hothouses (photos later this week when the plants are bigger). The chickens had a nice long day outside under Ken’s watchful eye. But they constantly scan the sky. At one point, when two hawks were circling, the chickens all went back into the chicken house.

The first thing Ken did was to put up a new bluebird house. We now have three bluebird houses.

After much thinking and discussion, we finally decided that the best way to protect the chickens from the hawks is to tie fishing line, spaced about 12 inches apart, along the top of the garden fence. This is a big job and will take some time, but when you become attached to your chickens, you’ll do whatever it takes to protect them. The fishing line isn’t visible in the photo above, but it does show up in the next photo below.

Some of the strands of fishing line can be seen to the left of the bluebird house.

Ken is about 25 percent done with the fishing line project.

We found quite a lot of animal poop in the garden, in the thick patch of winter rye grass. Neither Ken nor I can distinguish rabbit poop from deer poop, but this almost certainly has to be rabbit poop. It’s very doubtful that deer could get over the 8-foot fence. And if deer had been into the garden, there’d be tracks. The poor hungry rabbits need the winter grass, so we’ll wait until spring to try to find and block the places where the rabbits are getting under the fence. And part of the plan for next winter is to plant a stand of winter rye grass near the rabbit patch, particularly to provide winter food for the rabbits.

The winter rye does look delicious, doesn’t it? It has been a great winter salad for the chickens.

Ken drops seeds into the seed-starting trays. A week from today, I expect to see baby vegetable plants.

This year, I’m determined to start everything in the garden from seed, using heirloom seeds. If I’m calculating planting dates and starting times correctly, then now’s the time to start seeds indoors for the early garden — cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, brussels sprouts, etc. When those things are in the ground, then I’ll start the seeds for the summer garden — tomatoes, squash, etc. For the early garden, I also bought seeds for lettuce and snow peas, but those don’t need to be started early indoors.

To do this, I bought a seed-starting system from Park Seeds. This includes the growing media, the little greenhouses, fluorescent grow lights, a soil warming mat, etc.

The grow lights are hooked to a timer to turn the lights on and off as appropriate. The warming mat keeps the soil warm while the seeds are germinating.

I ordered my seeds online from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.

As an experiment, I’m going to try to grow some celery. I doubt that celery will like my soil and climate, but I’m going to see how it goes. And, of course, the reason I’m using heirloom seeds is that I want to learn how to save my own seeds from year to year.

I’ll post more photos when I have some baby plants.

Park’s “Bio Dome” seed-starting system

A thermostat controls the soil-warming mat.

A timer controls the grow lights.

Have I mentioned that Ken is weird? It’s not enough that he’s immersed in the quiet and solitude of Acorn Abbey, where there hasn’t been a car on the road in a week and where the only sound on a winter afternoon is the quiet hum of the heating system and the occasional patter of cat feet on the stairs. When he writes, he has the habit of surrounding himself with a shroud to further close out the world. I’ll keep this short, so that the click of the keyboard upstairs doesn’t disturb him too much.

The ground is too soft from the melting snow to do much work outside right now. Ken knows how finicky I am about excess traffic that could wear paths or kill grass. Yards are very vulnerable this time of year. Very soon, though, we’ve got to order seeds for the early garden. Spring is not that far off. The daffodil shoots will start popping up in another six weeks or so.

The snow slid slowly off the roof of the chicken house and curled up under the north-facing eave.

It was a pretty serious snow here in North Carolina, but as the snowstorm heads north it’s being called a blizzard. I think I’m going to ignore the snow (and the kilowatt hours I’ve consumed so far this month to heat the house) and go into denial by ordering the garden seeds this week.

I was in the checkout line at Whole Foods on Saturday, and the woman ahead of me in line noted that I had two bags of brussels sprouts. “Do you ever roast them?” she asked. I replied that I usually did the same old boring thing — steamed them, then seasoned them with olive oil and butter. She declared that, when brussels sprouts are roasted, people who normally wouldn’t dare touch a brussels sprout find that they like them. Ken likes brussels sprouts, but he said that the roasted brussels sprouts were the best he’s ever had.

It’s good to remember that many vegetables like to be roasted. It’s easy to do, and it’s healthy, because it keeps the vegetables out of water.

Brussels sprouts are not a fashionable or well-liked vegetable, but that’s a shame, because they’re delicious. They’re also inexpensive. They ought to be a staple in the winter kitchen. Buy them fresh. Frozen brussels sprouts have been drowned in water.

I enjoy cooking during the winter more than I do during the summer. The summer produce is wonderful, but I love winter produce — root vegetables, cabbage, brussels sprouts, onions, cauliflower, broccoli. Maybe it’s my Irish genes. Given a choice between eating fresh tropical fruit on Maui (fantastic), or winter vegetables in Ireland, I’d choose Ireland.

The other thing that’s nice about cooking and baking during the winter is that the warmth of the kitchen is comforting rather than oppressive. Winter cooking makes me wish that I still lived in a house with a wood-fired cook stove. There’s nothing quite like it.

Quartered, tossed in olive oil with garlic, and ready for the oven

The choir’s final rehearsal in the empty church before the congregation arrives

For years, I had wanted to do choral music. But, before I retired, there wasn’t time. Not only are there rehearsals to attend, but learning the music takes time. A friend of mine who sings in the choir at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Winston-Salem invited me to sing with the choir for their Christmas “Lessons and Carols” service.

I was terrified at my first rehearsal a month ago when I first saw the music. There was about 45 pages of it, some of it quite difficult. A rhythmically complex arrangement of “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” was particularly daunting. Luckily, computers have made the job of learning choral music much easier. A member of the choir made MIDI files of each of the carols, and one can learn the music by playing the MIDI files on the computer and singing along. That’s much easier than having to play it yourself at the keyboard. I probably spent a total of 40 hours working on the music at home. I sang bass.

The final performance came off great. Maybe I’ll do it again next Christmas. It’s good for the aging brain to take on new challenges.

St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Winston-Salem

The dark blue area can expect cold weather through Dec. 19. Graph by NOAA Climate Prediction Center

Newspapers used to do a pretty good job of covering the weather. Today’s lazy, downsized local newspapers don’t bother much anymore. Even with the Internet today, you have to search long and hard to find out what might be causing unusual weather. Meteorologists on local television stations may provide more information, but I don’t watch television.

The cold snap that brought last night’s low here of 14 degrees is affecting a large area of the East Coast, from Florida up through Pennsylvania. I finally found a story in a Florida newspaper for which the reporter bothered to call someone at NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.

It seems the data is too scant to know for sure, but one theory is that this is caused by the melting of the Arctic ice, which leads to cold air being pushed farther south. It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it — the idea that global warming actually can cause colder weather under certain circumstances.

And, by the way, I can’t recommend the Climate Prediction Center too highly for those of you who are weather watchers. I find their 10-day, 14-day, 30-day and 90-day trend forecasts to be quite reliable.