Sunday was Christmas tree day, so after breakfast we hiked up to the spot above the cabin where we usually cut a tree and Himself chose this one. “Isn’t it kind of big?” I asked. “No,” he said. “It should be about an eight footer.” I’d been kind of looking at scrawnier trees, feeling a little overwhelmed by the whole tree thing, but he was right, it was a really pretty shape. It was heavy, and Himself was valiant dragging it downhill to the car (20 minutes or so? I’m bad at estimating distances). I wish the pine cones hadn’t…

My remarkable grandmother died last week. She was almost 102 years old, and she was ready. She’d told us that she did not want ever to return to the hospital and so she died in her own bed, at about 2 am, with my Aunt Molly by her side. It’s what she wanted, and while we’ll all miss her, it was time. It was actually more than time. She was a mythic figure, our “Mommy Jane” — a name my eldest cousin Brad gave her. She raised Brad from infancy to about four. When he was learning to speak, he…

 This was last Saturday — nearly two feet of snow, followed by a couple of days of very cold weather — temps down into the single digits overnight. This weekend, it’s all melted off, and it’s a lovely day, sunny and nearly 50 degrees. Although I tucked the garden up for winter a few weeks ago, there were some greens and leeks still out, and I’d tucked up a few kale, komatsuna, and chard plants in a hoop house, hoping to eat my own greens as long as possible this year.  Here’s what I found under the plastic, and a…

The photo is kind of dark, but as they say on NPR’s Pop Culture Happy Hour — this is what’s making me happy this week. It’s a small-ish, 5-line clothesline I put up in the basement. When I first bought this house the whole basement was strung with clothesline — but the lines went the long way — and were in a place that was inconvenient (and they were kind of old and spiderwebby and scary). So when they replaced my water lines a few years ago, I had them cut them down. But as those of you who have…

 Fall seems to be upon us — here’s my evening walk the other night — the colors are changing all up and down the valley, it’s getting dark at a reasonable hour again, and there’s a tell-tale snap in the air. It’s actually beautiful today, sunny and warm, but not blazing hot like it’s been all summer. And yet, I’ve  spent the weekend pulling up all the tomatoes, the peppers, transplanting the two “Granpa’s pepper” (a Siberian ornamental with blazing hot fruits), putting up chives and mint in pots, transplanting the geraniums back into their winter windowbox. They say the…

We’ve had a brutal summer here in Montana — temps consistently in the 90s, not even cooling off that much at night. Until the last week or so. The earth, thank goodness, seems to be starting it’s tilt away from the sun — there was frostbite on the cucumber vines yesterday morning and this morning, I’m sitting at my backyard table, under the dying apple tree (although it’s resurrected itself from suckers so often that I’m not giving up on it) wearing wooly socks, and a Pendelton shirt. I am a happy happy girl. Everything out here seems to be…

Since I’ve mostly been posting on Facebook and Twitter this summer, I thought I’d start playing around with Tumblr. You can follow LivingSmall there at this URL: http://livingsmallblog.tumblr.com/

 Here are the chickens in the perennial bed. Sorry for the long silence — it’s been hot and dry and I’ve been working on a new book. Also, my darling “borrowed” children have been here for the month, so I’ve been teaching Sophie to drive, teaching Lily to make jam, and just rough housing and goofing off with the little kids. Some update photos: While I’m still figuring out the new beds, and the soil needs another couple of years to build itself up, so far Im really thrilled with the new layout. The hoop house along the back is…

This is Miss Delaware (the white one). She’s my alpha hen — a funny, bossy, curious hen. She likes to be right up in everyone’s business. Which is fine, most of the time, but this morning she and my younger dog, Owen, had a little altercation. This is Owen (taken by our friend William Campbell last winter). Owie is the center of Owie’s universe — I’ve spoiled him, mostly because I think he’s hilarious. So, last night, we had a little rib eye on the grill, and this morning I tossed the bone out in the yard for whichever dog…

I don’t have a photo, but the row covers on the pepper plants are working great. They look like they’ve grown 1/2 an inch since last weekend, and many are getting another set of leaves (they were pretty tiny seedlings). This is much better progress than I got last year under plastic, and that they’ve also been getting the benefit of rain is terrific. Ordered a long swath from Johnnys Seeds that just came this morning. I’m going to put the tomatoes out this weekend (well, depending on how true those snow reports look) and put them under Agribon. I…