Little M's first snowshoe

For Christmas we gave Little M her first pair of snowshoes. They are basically purple in color, her favorite color these days, and she just loves them! It took us several weeks to have a daylight moment to go outside and help her take her first steps around the driveway in them, but this past weekend we finally had the right combination of circumstances & were able to get out just at dusk for a quick trip around the house, out to the mailbox, and down in the yard a bit.

At first, I walked behind her to keep her upright, as it took her a little time to get the hang of having to not step on the other snowshoe then try to lift it. Once she figured it out better, all three of us walked hand-in-hand which helped her keep upright, but by the end she was going off on her own, stumbling occasionally still, but she didn't have any real falls! We even got her up on the actual snowpack for the second half of our walk (the first half we just walked on the cleared path and up the driveway to get her used to walking with extra large feet!).

She did really great, and I'm excited for snowshoeing with her in years to come! I've been snowshoeing since I was a little kid, as well as cross country skiing, but snowshoeing was always my favorite. I could go off trail and wander through the woods following whatever animal track I felt like, which was always quite appealing to me.

I'm so glad we got her these snowshoes this year, as she is getting much heavier to carry, especially now that I'm pregnant. The last couple years we just put her in the Ergo pack on my back, or the frame backpack on my husband's back when we went out hiking in the winter, but now that she has her own snowshoes she'll be able to walk around herself for at least part of our hikes!

Well hello there!

When I wrote my last post (ahem) 2 weeks ago or thereabouts, and included 'slowing down for winter' in the title, I really didn't anticipate slowing down quite this much on the blogging front... But, life happens, and here it is 2 weeks later! Nothing really to report on the home front, it's been cold, and wet, and wet, and cold. And we haven't really been doing all that much at all!

Luckily the forecast is finally looking a bit more promising on the white stuff front, and hopefully soon we will be sitting cozy under our winter blanket of snow. This in between time is hard for me, all the outside chores that could be done now but could wait until spring, the damp cold, the dreary days. Snow makes everything just so much cheerier in my books.

In the meantime, I'll try and get in as many hours of work as I can manage (the office has really gotten slow in the past month, I've been lucky to get 3 billable hours a day lately, which hurts the budget (aka mortgage payoff) just a wee bit). We've been managing to stay pretty much on top of the housework, Little M and I, although the length of the house is spread with the lego's, toys, and blankets that almost 3 year old productivity entails!

Well, that's likely it for updates, hopefully it won't be quite so long until my next post here, and even more hopefully the next one will include glorious snow pictures! (we'll see - fingers crossed!)

...living in a winter wonderland...

Wednesday last week during the day light hours we got 8 inches of fresh, new, fluffy snow. It was wonderful. My very being had been craving white flakes dumping down all over everything, making the world look brand new and sparkly. It was cold out, so the snow wasn't at all packy, and it just fluffed around when you walked through it.

I'm glad I went for a long walk with the dogs last Monday, before all the snow fell. Steep slopes and a bit of hard packed snow is one thing, but steep slopes and snowshoes and deep fluffy snow is quite another! However, when I got home from work on Friday, as more snow began to fall, my husband convinced me to go on a hike with him and Little M. I ended up with her on my back, and although we took a slightly different route up to that final lookout point, we still went just as far. I was pretty impressed with us, it was a workout! It was gorgeous hiking around with the snow underfoot and the flakes falling thickly from the sky, although when snow cascaded off the heavily laden tree branches onto our heads, Little M was never very impressed!

The total snowfall Friday night was about 4-5 inches (as measured on our back deck), and then on Sunday we got another 4-5 inches. Made getting out of the driveway a bit of a challenge Monday morning, since my husband (the snow blow operator in the house) worked 3 12's Saturday-Monday, so he hadn't done any snow removal since right before the fresh 8-10 inches had fallen over the weekend.

Looking out the windows towards the conifer-covered hillside south of our house, made me realize something. There are times in the fall when my heart aches for the showy reds, yellows, and oranges of fall in the mixed forests of the Canadian Shield where I grew up. This past weekend I realized that in an equally powerful way, the winter scenes in these conifer forests have grabbed hold of my heart. Snow weighing down the dark green limbs, bright green moss hanging off the branches, big flakes pelting down, and that uplifting feeling I get when it snows. Ahhh Winter.

Last night we got another 3-4 inches, so the trend has been snow every other day... Sounds good to me!  Hope you enjoy these snowy pictures as much as I do!

'Spring' rains & snows = flower buds!

This past week or two we have been getting some weird weather. First it rains, then it changes to snow and starts sticking, then it stops and within a couple hours most of it is melted. Not too strange, but it's been doing it about every other day!

The bulb bed beside the pole carport is starting to warm up - the snow has gradually melted, and in the last few days I have been noticing little buds starting to poke up through the dirt. Last spring we had the wonderful surprise of old bulbs coming up that we didn't realize were there! It was so fun to guess at what they were, and what color the flowers would be when they opened. We ended up having a small clump of iris, several tulips, and some daffodils. I really wanted to plant some more crocus and my husband wanted more tulips, but we decided to wait since we didn't know what the plan was for that bed longer term.

The beautiful surprise daffodils!

We ended up buying some bulbs last fall when we found some on sale, but we didn't get around to planting them before it snowed. I forgot about them completely for most of the winter, but when I was sorting through my seeds from last year prior to ordering more, I found them and stuck them in the fridge! Right now the 3 boxes of tulips and daffodils are still in the fridge cooling off before we plant them in a few weeks.

The bulb boxes are near the right side of the picture, near the cheddar bunnies :)

There's nothing better than spring flowers!

True Winter

Well, it has been over a month since I last posted, and you wouldn't guess we've had warm temperatures (comparatively warm that is) for much of that time, as the first thing on my mind both last post and this post is the freezing cold temperatures we've been experiencing! In the past month we have been busy outside, as we have had over a foot of new snow and with the temperatures hovering around and above freezing the weather has been great for daytime outdoor adventures.

The garden under a blanket of snow

Now though, with a low temperature of 4 degrees last night, we are sitting well below freezing. It helps knowing that the days are getting longer, and I definitely appreciate the longer 'afternoons' - easier to let the dogs run around in the late afternoon when it isn't dark outside at 4!

I hope you have all had a great Christmas, and are looking forward to an enjoyable New Years. This was the second year in a row that we have been able to stay at home for Christmas, and have some family come to us. We are looking forward to 2011, we have some big goals set out already for the new year!

Happy Holidays!

Winter arrives in my garden!

Well, I promised a garden update, and with the snow falling and the temperatures dipping below zero, here it is!

In the past month I managed to get most of the garden weeded and raked clean (apart from around the strawberries & onions). I also managed to get straw mulch around the strawberry plants, garlic, and onions, and leaf mulch around the raspberry plants. Last week we got a couple inches of short-lived snow, then warm temps and some sunny days melted the snow off.

I had a couple days to wonder if I should try to get into the garden and get the last of the weeding done where the carrots had come out between the strawberries and the onions, then this weekend we got a serious dump of snow, and then yesterday we had a bit more, and temperatures started to drop. At the moment we are 7 below and dropping, so temperatures are well below freezing, and this will be it for gardening for the year!

I was able to get down to the garden on the weekend shortly after the snow stopped falling to get some dirt (under the snow the ground hadn't yet frozen, which was great), and I also scraped a bit of sand up, for potting things up over the winter.

I'll try and post some pictures soon of the snowy scenes that awaited when the snow stopped on the weekend, should be a good task for this coming weekend! Have a happy Thanksgiving!