Many months ago we planted a vegetable garden at our old house. We got a truckload of good soil, rented a rototiller and hoped for a great growing season. All those plans fell apart when we bought our new house, started packing and moving everything. Keeping the garden watered and properly fertilized wasn’t very high on our list of things to do, so the plants were all left to their own devices.

The Weather Service was predicting a hard frost over the Interior on Friday night (and it came—it was 16°F at our new house this morning and all the ponds in our driveway are frozen), so I harvested all the above-ground produce on Thursday night. The photo on the right shows the entire output from six broccoli and six cauliflower plants. They were tasty, especially the cauliflower, but not exactly the quantity I was hoping for. I also harvested two six-inch zucchinis (also far below expected production) and the cabbage. All ten cabbage plants produced some reasonably sized cabbage (bigger than a softball, smaller than a bowling ball), so I’ll have enough for a couple gallons of sauerkraut. We’ll probably harvest the potatoes in a few days. I don’t expect to find many large baking potatoes (we grew Russets this year), but we’ll probably have enough for making hash browns on Saturday mornings.

The other photo shows Piper on her new bed. We didn’t make this one, but it was “assembled in USA” and is composed of a minimum 90% postconsumer recycled plastic. I’m not a big fan of plastic products, but creating a market for recycling the stuff is certainly better than letting it all go into the landfills and waterways. And Piper really seems to like it, which is the most important thing!

Spring in Fairbanks is often a long, muddy season but this year we got less than a third of the snowfall we normally get and early spring was remarkably cold. So on April first, when the temperatures suddenly rose above freezing, it was like the springtime switch had been thrown, toggling us from winter to summer. Ten days later and the roads are dry and clear, the dog yard is more than half melted out, most of the snow on the roof has turned to water and run down the gutters, and even our driveway isn't too bad.

That also means that it's summertime for the dogs, so they've got to find other ways to occupy themselves since they're not training or racing three or four times a week. As you can see on the right, Kiva and Buddy^* have already started their grueling schedule of non-stop sleeping, broken by occasional bursts of activity around dinnertime, and periodically racing around the dog yard after Piper when she plays keep-away with a stick.

As for us, it's time to start replenishing the firewood supply with five or six trips to the woodcutting area, making repairs to the exterior of our house, and getting our garden going. This year's garden will hopefully contain lots of cabbage, beets, potatoes, and maybe some leaf lettuce and broccoli.

^*The orange spot on Buddy is a bit of paint from one of the races.

It was colder on the second day, -15°F when we got up, and around -18°F when we got to the race track at 8:00 am. By race time, the sun was out, and the official temperature was up to 0°F. The wind was calm, so the sun started warming things up pretty quickly.

Andrea and the dogs had a clean run on the course, finishing in 17 minutes 46 seconds, 14 seconds faster than yesterday, and her best time in Tok. That finish time, combined with a bad tangle between two earlier teams allowed her to move up to 18th place (out of 30 teams), one second behind the 17th team and six seconds ahead of the team in 19th place.

It was a fun trip. We left Tok after the awards ceremony and made it back home around 9:30 last night.

The first day of racing is now over. The skies cleared from last night and it got down to -10°F before the time the sun came up. The six dog class started at 9:00 am, so it had only warmed up slightly when the first team went out. There was still enough of a breeze to give you a chill if you were facing into the wind and my feet and cheeks got cold from standing around outside most of the day.

Andrea drew the fifth position last night, and the racers go off at one minute intervals from each other, so Andrea went out at 9:04 am, just a few short hours after we got up for breakfast. By 9:30, the race was over for our team. Andrea and the dogs had a finish time of 18 minutes even, which was 55 seconds better than her time on the first day last year. All the dogs did really well, and Andrea was very happy with them. She borrowed Elway and a yearling named Tsuga from her friend Bonnie, who was racing in the eight dog class. In the middle photo you can see Buddy and Elway in lead (closest to the camera), Piper and Koidern in swing (the middle), and Tsuga and Kiva in wheel.

18:00 was good enough for 20th place in a field of 30, but Andrea is only 3 seconds behind the 19th place team, and 4 seconds behind the 18th place team. With a good run tomorrow and some luck, she could move up a few places in the final standings.

Bonnie and her team did really well, coming in fifth place in the eight dog class. She ran a team with four of the yearlings from the same litter that Tsuga came from. The last photo on the right shows one of them, a dog named Salix, who flops on the ground after a race to cool off.

A good day of racing. We're relaxing before dinner, maybe catching some sleep before tomorrow, since it'll be another late night tonight taking care of the dogs.

The potluck and race draw are over (Andrea goes out fifth tomorrow, out of thirty teams), and while we were in there, the wind and snow picked up. There's drifting snow all over the place, and even though it's not all that cold out (around 10°F), this wind makes it feel pretty bitter. After the draw we got back to the motel and watered the dogs, which is what's happening in the photo on the right. They'll need to come down to go to the bathroom a couple more times before they (and we!) go to sleep for the night.