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I’m not a winter person, but I get more knitting done between the months of December and March than I do the rest of the year combined.

The fireside and knitting go together very well, except when I knit so late I’m in peril of nodding off and falling into the flames.

I also get more baking done in the cold months. And crock-pottering; winter and slow cookers go hand in hand.

I simmered up a pot of these flageolet beans, with a few additions (smoked paprika, cumin, and chili powder).

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I made these into cinnamon rolls with my discard sourdough starter.

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I’ve even finished a hat and a cowl, started a shawl, and begun swatching for a sweater.

The garden is calling. I’ve been fussing around with garden sketches, trying to work out a plan for spring planting. There never seems to be enough room in the garden for what I want to plant.

One reason for that is the berry problem. Two berry problems, really.

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I let some blackberry plants get out of hand and they won’t stop coming up in my vegetable garden. They’re the thorny kind and they don’t play well with pant legs, keep trying to overtake my beds, and pop up everywhere.

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The other berry problem, if you can call it that, is renegade strawberries. It started out with my plan to tuck one little strawberry plant at the end of several of my vegetable beds for some perennial pizzazz and to have somewhere to put the runner overflow from the strawberry beds. But they’ve done their runner thing so well now I’m overrun and losing ground.

While they’re not hard to pull up, I’m having a tough time psychologically bringing myself to remove them. I keep remembering the big, syrupy berries they produce and don’t know if the veg I’d plant in their place could surpass the contribution of the strawberries.

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I’m loving these Osaka Purple Mustard Greens. They’ve sprung back so well from the frosts, freezes, and our one little snow. And they look beautiful next to the happy collards, too.

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That’s my February. Waiting for spring, knitting while the fire glows. How are you spending your February?