Last Friday’s snowfall was beyond beautiful. The trees were covered and all was quiet at first light. The beauty did not last long, as is often the case. Soon snowplows were causing gray and then black slush.

I have a love/hate relationship with my stand of bamboo. It’s beautiful and does the job of offering privacy as well as hiding unattractive yard items. It tends to spread with no mercy. It will march across the lawn, threatening to come into the house if not constantly battled.

Friday’s snow toppled a large section of it and broke a few of the clotheslines.

Lucky for me it ruined the outdoor roosting area for some of the pesky chickens. They finally went into the hen house at dusk without effort on my part.

Speaking of chickens, as soon as the light changed imperceptibly after Christmas, they started laying again. Nature is grand!

I went on a fruitless search for a bag of field peas. I know I put them somewhere safe (from me, apparently). I promptly bought a 50-pound bag. I’m never confessing to how much I paid for them. There is no doubt they will last the rest of my life.

I spent some time separating them into ziplock bags for the freezer. Then I got the propagating mats up and running and started several flats of pea shoots. They should be ready to eat in a few weeks. I leave them in an unheated greenhouse and they don’t seem to mind. Our family loves them for salads instead of lettuce at this time of year.

After a few cuttings, I give them to the chickens. They seem to enjoy them.

A Robert Smith from Hartford, Conn. sent a couple of articles to me in care of the Gazette office in November. I guess it was returned to sender — repackaged and sent again to the wrong post office box. A woman in the Vineyard Haven post office parking lot followed me to the car with it. It was in her box that day. What are the odds?

One of the articles was a very interesting history of canning. The French government offered a reward to someone who could find a method to preserve food so it could be sent to Napoleon’s military. Over the years many mistakes and then improvements were made.

Both world wars were reasons for the practice of canning to take off. The Ball brothers of Muncie, Ind., as well as Alexander Kerr of Portland, Ore., are early pioneers in the glass canning jar industry. I still use both of those jars today.

During the food rationing years of World War II, extra sugar was given to homes where canning was practiced.

In the spring I received a back order of spigelia plugs. By the time they arrived, I was too busy to properly care for them. I put them all into a large pot. Amazingly they lived and bloomed, albeit in a jumbled mess. This fall I hauled the pot into the greenhouse and promptly forgot them. Other items were piled up on them. They were discovered during the field pea search.

I dumped the entire pot onto the potting bench and found every single one of them had a little shoot of potential growth.

I spent a good deal of time worrying the roots apart and replanting each in its own pot. This is a perennial worth having. It takes a lot of shade and blooms an interesting bright red and lime green.

The one-year anniversary of the attempted coup at the Capitol was celebrated by honoring the Capitol police. Only Liz Cheney and father Dick represented the Republican party. A time traveler from the early 2000s would think I made that up. What a world!