Well, I'm finally able to find time to post again. The new house is finished enough for us to live in now. We rushed like crazy the last week and moved in on December 24th. The whole project was not without its difficulties and heartaches though.

While we worked on the house we lived in a friend's RV just across from the construction site. When we first put it up it leaked so bad we had to strap an allover tarp on the roof. Of course that meant the vents didn't work too great at expelling extra heat and when our summer temperatures reached 40C we were cooking like bacon on a griddle!

Temperatures plummeted to -38C in November and cracked and froze the pipes in the RV despite skirting and insulating and putting two electric heaters under the thing. Don't know what more we could have done. In any case that meant NO WATER - no shower, no toilet, no washing machine. Slogging back and forth in the snow to the portable toilet set up for the workers at those temperatures was pretty miserable. We also had to hike water over to the RV in big buckets which we used sparingly for washing up and doing dishes. I felt like a pioneer. Fortunately the RV furnace worked well and we stayed surprisingly warm once we supplemented it with a good electric garage-style heater. Of course we ran out of propane in the middle of the night and the floor in our bedroom literally froze. My poor husband had to get up at 2:00 am to change the tanks when it was -30C and windy while I huddled under a pile of blankets inside. Not fun.

During the course of construction we hired an extra worker. The first week on the job he ran over and killed my little dog. I was heartbroken. He'd been my companion for many years - a sweet, gentle little man whom I loved dearly. The second week on the job the new workman dropped some scaffolding on his hand and went on compensation. We'd never had a claim despite most of my husband's work being far more dangerous than building houses. He logs with horses and does conventional small scale logging. It's the most dangerous business in our area yet no one on his crew has ever been hurt.

This morning I went back over to the RV to start unloading more of our stuff and found another catastrophe. We'd erected a canvas shelter beside the RV to house our freezer, large metal filing cabinet, barbecue and dog bed along with a couple of outside tables and chairs that we used during the summer. When I rounded the corner of the RV I could see it had collapsed under the weight of a heavy snowfall that fell last night. It's going to be a mess to clean up. All my frozen stuff is buried under the snow in our deep freeze that is now beeping plaintively. We're having company for supper and I can't get at any of the meat and desserts I'd planned to serve! My worst fear was that our big dog was in his dog bed when it fell. I couldn't find him for a while and was getting pretty panicky when he finally trotted over. What a relief. My husband's gone to do some tree falling so I'll have to see if I can dig it out enough to get at the freezer.

ABOUT MY GRAPE VINES. Although I feared they might die from neglect over the past summer, all of my outside vines survived except for the more tender unknown varieties I'd been given. I'd taken some soft cuttings of my Valiants in the spring of 2008 and left them in the greenhouse that winter. This past spring I took the time to properly plant them out in a raised bed in the greenhouse. They've done fantastic. I think I'll use them as a source of cuttings to increase my little vineyard next year. The two tender varieties I planted inside the greenhouse instead of outside also survived and yielded a few grapes. I constructed a trellis high overhead on the north side of the greenhouse and trained them to grow up there. That way they don't interfere with any of my other plants and don't shade out anything.

I'm going to try a little experiment with next years cuttings. I'll start some in regular plant pots as I usually do as 'controls'. I'll start a few others in grow tubes cut into 12" and 24" lengths. I'll keep all groups in the greenhouse over the summer and winter of 2010 then plant them outside in the spring of 2011. I want to see if a longer root system gives the plants any advantage in our cold climate. Although the cuttings started in pots grow a fairly long root system they also fill out on either side and are restricted from growing very deeply by the shallowness of most pots. I'm thinking that plants with longer roots and few tender side feeders may handle their first cold winter better, making them hardier in the long run. If it works well for the Valiants I'll probably give more tender varieties a try.

I have a nice view of my vineyard from my new 'office' window. The vines are pretty well buried under snow so are well insulated from the cold. Now I have to go outside and attempt to uncover my buried freezer. Wish me luck!