From Ice Circles to Rest Stops to Beer

Lured to my garden this afternoon by blue skies (finally!), after such heavy rains and strong winds for almost the entire month of November, I was almost surprised to see that my fencing and posts were actually still standing.Since the water supply for the garden is shut off from the first of October through the first of March, I had left a bucket filled with water sitting in my garden - just in case. Turns out it's not necessary to keep a reserve of water on hand because we tend to get so much rain, but I did at least get a chuckle out of the quarter inch layer of ice on the top of that water. It was cold last night!

I checked on the carrots that I had planted in the late summer and they looked great. They are getting big and I almost pulled some to add to the tray of roasted vegetables that I prepared later in the day and shared at the Whatcom Marine Mammal Stranding Network (WMMSN) holiday potluck dinner/December meeting. I remembered that I still had some organic carrots at home, so it looks like I'll have a good excuse to go to my garden again very soon so that I can harvest my own carrot crop. I'm not certain if I can leave them in the ground for much longer without the frost damaging them, and they're those fancy yellow, white and purple carrots, so I sure wouldn't want to miss out on them.

My tray of roasted vegetables seemed to go over very well at the potluck as the pan was empty when it came time to pick things up. I had simply tossed together a mixture of the vegetables that I had on hand - carrot chunks, cubes of peeled butternut squash, quartered giant mushrooms, broccoli flowerettes, lots of big cloves of garlic and then I stirred in some sundried tomatoes. After coating them with a few dashes of olive oil, I simply roasted them in a very hot oven until they were tender and browned. They smelled so good in my car as I drove to the party and because I lived nearby, they were still piping hot when I put the pan down at the potluck. So good, so easy, I'm sure I'll be making them again very soon.

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My gift received during our holiday party White Seal gift exchange - chocolates and tea. Yum!

It was announced during our WMMSN meeting tonight that we've got two fun things coming up this winter for fundraising. First, we have permission from the Washington State Department of Transportation to host the coffee and goodies at a very busy rest stop (near a truck scales south of Bellingham on Interstate 5) for a weekend. We'll be staffing the rest stop from Friday night through Sunday - 24 hours a day - and we are hopeful that we can raise lots of much-needed funds to help support our not-for-profit organization during that weekend as we'll be there just a few days before the Winter Olympics begin in Vancouver, British Columbia. There should be lots and lots of extra traffic heading north, so if you know anyone heading to the Olympics via Interstate 5, please tell them to stop in and say "hi"!

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Second, Boundary Bay Brewery will sponsor us for a Saturday evening fundraising event. Boundary Bay is a major hot spot in downtown Bellingham and it's always crowded in there. I think we're calling our fundraiser "Marine Mammal Mania", so if you like our locally brewed beers and want to help support the Whatcom Marine Mammal Stranding Network, this would be a great night (I'll let you know the exact date later!) to come out and join us for some fun.