I’m not tired of snow yet!
The first winter I was here, a nice lady said “You might say ‘I love snow’ right now, but by March you’ll be like ‘Yeah, you can go.'”
By March, I was like ‘yeah, you can go’, but only because by that time it can’t hold on much longer anyway, and I don’t like the icky melty phase.
Right now it’s still beautiful, fresh, crisp snow, nicely packed.
Rather than sort through for pretty pictures, I just stepped out on the porch and snapped some new ones.
Our place was priced low and now we know why. It has its own microclimate. We’re on the back side of a little hill, below a bigger hill that blocks the morning sun, and in winter the sun never gets above trees we don’t own. There’s one big splash of sunshine across the ground in the middle of the day, thanks to a gap in the trees, that lasts about an hour.
Our place is snowier and freezier than everything around. The bulbs are coming up in the valley, while our ground’s still frozen. My daffodils are long since dead. I’ve never lived in a place before that you don’t just put bulbs in the ground and they multiply. I planted some out here when we first bought the place, hoping to see them when we came back again. Nope.
It’s okay, at least there is a little sunshine above us! It’s far better than the other side with the dark, grey, wet blanket hanging just above our heads all the time.
Having my very own home is still a big deal. I had a formula that I recited for years: “I just want a little square somewhere with my name on it, where I can plant flowers.”
A funny shape is okay too 🙂
And I have every right to plant here. Wish fulfilled!
I never bothered to wish that they’d flourish very long or come back next spring XD
It’s okay if I have to wait until April to plant peas. Annuals are cheap at the grocery store and I can plant em here. Last year we got started super late, but some zinnias grown from seed got flowers on them. Yay!
I planted some strawberries from the hardware store and the berries were so inexpressibly delicious that we just couldn’t even believe it. ONE of those berries was a legit dessert. Fantastically better than the strawberries from the store, or strawberry ice cream. Now I know what they meant about food tasting better long ago. In old times, it was grown for taste, now it’s grown for being able to survive a long journey on a truck.
I moved those strawberry plants under cover last fall, so there’s a slight chance the plants might be alive.
Tiny strawberries grow wild out here. I never once got a berry, as the critters eat them all, but someone told me that a few years ago there were so many berries that she got a bowlful from her yard.
There’s our doggie basking in front of the stove. Life is better with a little big black dog stretched out across the floor.
(She’s not a very big dog, but she’s larger than a medium dog. I think it’s nicer to have a little big dog than a big medium dog.)
That’s our source of heat. Next, will I whine about not having a power bill each month? It gets dark and chilly but the savings do add up XD
Our dog loves snow, too. We clearly got the right dog.
She doesn’t love water. We took her to the lake and tried throwing a stick into the water. She went in once and came out looking like a pathetic drowned rat, and dropped the stick at our feet with an attitude that reminded me of the story of the knight, back in the time of chivalry, whose lady threw her glove into a ring with lions just for the fun of seeing her courtly lover retrieve it. He did, and returned it to her, then dumped her in front of everyone, for her foolishness and lack of regard for life. The dog looked at us like that.
We threw the stick into the water again, and she turned around and stared at us like, “What is wrong with you?” then tiptoed in, reluctantly, to bring it back.
Nope. Not a water dog. But you can see her snow expression, above.
I’m not a water girl, either. I agreed to marry my sweetie and go to Alaska with him! And it would have been fun because he’s so sweet. But everything else happened instead, and that’s okay. I like this better.
When we lived on the boat, I rowed the dinghy around the marina by myself a bit just for something new. The thrill wore off quickly. Okay, I did that *checks that box*
I’ll tell you a boat story. I came across these in my picture folder. One day in summer, we left our little boat home to go run errands, and it was hot, so we wanted to leave plenty of things open.
Of course it’s up to Jeff to decide. But, as he was opening the little rectangular portholes, he said, “Nobody could get through there, anyway.”
I said they certainly COULD.
He was sure.
I said, “I could get through there!”
Observe the clip light next to the window, and the kleenex box, for scale.
I don’t remember who asked what the other one wanted to bet, first. Jeff wants to bet five hundred bucks that I couldn’t crawl through that window.
I definitely could crawl through that window. Betting won’t make any difference, because, where does he even think he’d get $500 that isn’t already “ours”??
“Your cuss jar.”
Oh. Yes. There’s that. So now it’s not just a random “hold my beer” moment, it’s a penance. It’s a chance to be right, and clear my conscience, at the same time.
The top half of me was easy. The bottom half took a bit of wiggling, one side and then the other XD
Half an inch of pudge on this err… “side” and then squeeze another half inch of pudge on the other side.
A random person stopped to wonder what on earth was happening and make sure everybody’s okay.
Jeff told him it was a bet. He asked how much. Five hundred bucks? That’s legit. He approves, and will stay to be a witness.
I won. And you can imagine how a skinny teenage boy could slide through there in half a moment! So the porthole was closed.
I’m looking back through my pictures just to post something. It’s not healthy to go silent.
My baking isn’t fancy looking, but that’s fresh spelt flour and ceylon cinnamon and cream cheese with honey.
Jeff wondered if it was about Christmas. It’s not. Just happened that as Christmas was going on, I spotted an A-frame gingerbread house and my outlook changed. I’d long since given up on those things – fun though they are, at any time of year – because they’re so fiddly to get them to stay together. But, A-frame! Two long rectangles. Genius!
Get on with eating it, it’s not going to sit around here collecting dust until any certain magical date.
Oh, another not-Christmas thing I treated myself to was a string of red lights. I happened across Andrew Torba’s “Fix the Lights” site – sadly, the site overrides dark mode, displaying light brown font that is very hard on the eyes against a white background – where he points out the damage blue light does to your system. I knew it already, but sometimes you need one final input before actually taking action.
I bought some of these. Here’s the product image because that looks so much better than my results. All I did for my interpretation was put up several cup hooks and divided the string of red “fairy” lights into several loops from each, which is stupid but works. I find my metabolism much happier with gentle red-toned lights in the dark evenings and dark morning.
Hit Publish. Do it.
Not gonna sit in drafts for months! Wow! Just POST SOMETHING, anything!
More to come.