SPENCER's ORANGE ROLLS

 

  SPENCER'S ORANGE   ROLLS

(Aptly named for the quirky, mischievous, personality-plus,  gold cat who visits my garden every day, and rolls around on the bench….)

 

COMBINE: 1 cup milk heated in microwave to lukewarm, ½ cup sugar,¼ cup margarine    Pinch salt, 2 ¼ tsp active yeast

ADD: 2 cups flour, 3 eggs, 3 tbslp orange peel or lemon peel, extra 2 cups flour to make a soft dough.

 COMBINE together into a soft ball of dough. Knead then place in greased bowl to rise till doubled. IF you add too much flour the dough will be tough, so go easy on the flour.

 Knead swiftly and deftly....

 

MAKE FILLING: Combine grated rind of 2 oranges, ½ cup sugar, ½ cup soft margarine or butter.

 

NEXT: Divide risen dough into two portions.

 

Roll each section out into a nice sized rectangle. Smother the dough with a portion of the Filling on each rectangle.

 NEXT: Roll up dough into yule log shape. Cut into 1 ½ inch sections

 

NEXT: Place sections into greased, foil lined pan.

BAKE: 375 degrees for about 20-25 minutes. Add time as needed to make sure they are golden .

 

TOPPING:  For entire batch use 2 cups icing sugar and ¼ cup orange juice or lemon juice as you wish. I prefer to make small amounts, as needed, and keep in fridge to drizzle on individual rolls. They are jsut as good without any topping.....

*These are exquisite. They DO freeze well enough. But they are so good they do not last long. I think Spencer would  approve..............

-14 Celsius (6 F)

 We have winter. -14 Celsius and holding. Up at Mt. Washington it is a balmy -22 C. But it's closed. No new snow. No skiing. Not yet. We have not had any rain for so long, and there has only been mist and mountain fog with scuffles of snow on the mountain. Looks beautiful though, from our front hill. At this time of year it should be swarming with boarders  and snow enthusiasts.

 It's cold enough to freeze the bird bath solid. Smokey and Spencer's favourite watering hole.  Every day, since the weather changed, I've had to pour hot water over it.  Smokey loves to dabble his paws in the warm water. He leaps up  to lick the ice and smack his paws in the thin layer of water.

 Dawn comes fast these days. So fast that it's difficult to catch that moment when dark becomes light. We are so cold now, the birds require a couple of feedings a day to keep up with them. The mountain range is so vast and pink most mornings. Mt. Washington resort got its start in the 1970's. Two businessmen, named Henry Norie and Alex Linton, proposed Mt. Washington as the 1st organized  ski resort for B.C. It's an easy  half hour drive from Campbell River. But you need chains on your tires in heavy snow.

The land went up for sale in 1979 and sold within 3 hours.  It was so popular when it opened because it was considered above and beyond anything else , cause the resort boasted indoor plumbing. Go Canada.

Eagle roost...

 It's home to over a hundred marmots. Cute, but not cuddly. Important to the ecosystem. The Tony Barrett Marmot Recovery Foundation  has been instrumental to the preservation of this endangered animal.

Mt. Washington also installed an over  and back chair lift, called the Boomerang Chair. Night skiing was then encouraged. And they now had all those indoor washrooms. Just think: First of their kind at any ski facility. People came in droves. (Go Canada)They still do. But for the trails, biking, skiing, snowshoeing, resort facilities....

 Paralymic World Cup events are also held on Mt. Washington

 And while it may be -22C on the mountain, it is a balmy -14 here down below. The cats are almost too cold to chase birds............Spencer sat this morning on the hill and just watched. He doesn't like the cold. Or the rain. He toddled off in search of his house.

 Mr. Towhee.......cheeky thing......scratched and fed from the seed pan.

 Then Smokey chased him away. Preferring to doze in his corner by the buckets of warmed  water, and chunks of ice. Until it gets too cold even for the him, and he scurried home. May we all have a warm home to go to. May we all be so fortunate.....

WINTER SUNRISE

 It's here. For now. At least for today. Ice. Cold. Crisp air. Some frost. Not much though. The ice cream pail of water I leave out for the neighbourhood cats froze last night. I dump out the ice, and the lick it furiously. Happy cats. I refill the bucket with warm water and put it back in its place.

 And in the early morning, caught the sunset  at the base of the mountains, hitting the windows of houses , cradled in their arms.  Was beautiful.

 A few minutes later the sunrise softened. "For each new morning with its light........we are thankful" (Emerson)

 Mr. Finch ( one of many) are hanging around looking for seeds again. Every monring. Twitter. Twitter. They have their own way of telling each other to come for breakfast. They are fat and happy. I have heard of a disease that is affecting finches and making them blind. I haven't heard of that before. But will have to keep watch on that.

 Always amazed at the dogs behind us. There are three of them. Happy as larks. The biggest one likes to throw himself up against the fence, every morning, and have a look. He is huge. Size of a dinosaur, I believe.....He watches the cats, the birds, me. Not even a woof.

 And the finches keep coming. Fat little guys.  They really get the dog behind us all excited. The cats not so much so. The cats seem to like to chase the juncos instead.

 "It is only thru the morning gate of the beautiful that you can penetrate into the realm of knowledge. That which we feel here as beauty we shall one day know as truth." ( Schiller)

The neatest thing about photographs is that they change with light, dark, exposure. The sunlight this morning hit the fir trees colouring them rusty red. No tricks. No fiddling with the mechanics. I used a Landscape  lens and the colour turned the trees on fire.I have never seen the forest below us look like this.

"If the day and the night are such that you greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry,more immortal, that is your success." (Thoreau)

 Always funny to watch the cats. Spencer especially. He thinks he owns the fence. He always falls asleep, with the finches all round. To sleep, perchance to dream...........

WINTER................welcome to the promised land.

 I can't resist. This is winter. Well, for now. It may change at any moment. Down at the beach today it was more like June. But it's still winter. You can tell because the grasses are brown.

 You can tell cause there are boats toodling around in the passage, the Coast Mountains looming above.

 You can tell it's winter ( brrr), cause the grass is blowing in the wind ( that's a song, by the way)

 You can tell it's winter cause there are not too many people braving the sunny windy beach.

 You can also tell it's winter cause there IS a bit of snow on the roof of the mountains. Not much, but it proves it's winter.

You can tell it's winter cause the younger inhabitants are skipping along the rocks and sand.

And you can tell it's winter, cause you can stand on the shore and hear the eagles burbling away, from their tall perch. They're telling stories to one another about the promised land........

FOR THE LOVE OF DIRT......and worms

 Ground Hog day. It's more like April or May. Maybe we can just forget the rest of this month and March and jump ahead. I got this urge to dig out the compost bins. I have two of them.  The task is always daunting.  But I saw worms hanging out the crevases, squiggling and wiggling their way to freedom. Heavenly red wigglers.

 They're quite lovely. Haven't seen so many worms in the compost for eons. Once the side panel was taken off, the worms came tumbling out of solid black earth. Beautifully decomposed.

 I like hard work. Especially digging in the dirt. Best to just take your time and savour it, and dig gradually.So  much dirt, and so many worms.

 I took about 3 hours to scoop out half the compost, leaving a cavernous maw amongst the innards of the compost itself. It was wonderful, really back to the earth sort of experience. I highly recommend it.

 Had bucket after bucket of compost to pile on about three garden beds. Nice black earth. Not getting any extra earth from  Brymiks Earthworks this year. Last year I got stuck with buttercups growing wildly all over the place, from their earth. I'm still yanking them out.

I'm not a tidy gardener. I like to dig and delve, then toss and swoosh around till it covers essentially what it is supposed to cover.  Then repeat the process as needed. The more dirt, the more worms, the happier the garden will be, and the happier all those birdies will be. And the happier I will be......

SIGNS............

 Okay, don't keel over. There are signs. I've seen them. Poking through the ground. You'd never guess
 what this is: Bleeding Heart ( 2-3 months early) . It just cannot wait. If we DO get a frost, it will be toast. I have seen years very much like this, where it is like spring, then a snow storm  shows up in March and kills things back. But this year, it all seems different.

 

We have not had a lot of precipitation. Even Mt. Washington is suffering, and has been closed due to lack of snow. It will be a long, hot summer if this keeps up. We see this mountain every day and can track it's snow pack...............right now it just looks like icing sugar on a huge bundt cake.

 Of course, another sign of spring is the fact the neighbourhood cats, like Smokey, are sitting on the fence again. Not wholly for  cosmetic purposes. They are bird hunting. With abandon, I must add,  these mild days. The birds hide in the grape vines, and make for excellent game (sad to say). What sun we ARE  having, the cats tend to bask in it all afternoon.

 Basking has its own sort of reward with the eagles down at the beach. They bask in the tops of tree branches. I like to think they are there for their photo op. But something tells me they are on a mission.

 The beach has been so calm lately, no storms, no wind, nothing to show it is winter on Vancouver Island. Discovery Passage has remained peaceful for a while now. Usually, in January there are such wild storms that the camera lens gets obliterated by the surf.  But there ARE eagles this year. Lots of them...

Happily watching from on high. From time to time they go fishing. Then sit on the large rocks near the ocean edge. Scaring the loons into giving up their perfect sunning spots.

 Such calm days. A sure sign that we may not get a real winter. And then if we do, it will be just a blip on the horizon. The ocean will foam at the mouth, the birds will scatter and we will get a day of something. Maybe rain. Maybe wind.  But for now , it's just waiting.

 

 Funny thing is, on the last day of Janurary, I was able to get into the garden and weed. Have NEVER been able to do that until April. The day was sunny, warm, almost too warm. The ground was soggy from the chill the night before, the worms were scuttling around in the wet earth. The compost needed digging out. Later, I'll do that, once I get a handle on the weeds. So many weeds. Even the roses are starting to leaf out from underneath the weeds.

That is a sure sign. Everything scraped  down to bare bones, or bare twigs. Like a canvas waiting  for stuff to pop. Colour to bleed out of the earth.And Cordelia, from the house on the hill, flirts her fluffiness in the late afternoon light. She preens in the sun. A sure sign of more days like this to come.