Off The Beaten Path

A solid month has gone by since I wrote last. Time has a way of doing that. We’ve made SOME progress in that time. We celebrated another birthday The kids’ garden beds have been assembled, filled and planted Two linden  and 3 sour gum trees, several hazelnut and hardy cherry shrubs, two goji berry, a…

April showers bring flowers, so the saying goes, but mostly in my experience, they bring mud. So much mud. We nearly got stuck in our driveway the other week, because it had dried out enough to drive up, but the it rained quite hard overnight and turned it back to gumbo. We got out but…

The spring planting season began here today. I had a tree order and a bulb order in, and the ground has finally thawed, so we spent several hours with grubby hands this afternoon. SeaHolly, Crocosmia and Siberian Iris into the youngest child’s (newly created) bee garden. We dug the hole for the fencepost upon which…

This is the weather of march. Up to 10°, down to -5°. Up again to 7°, down to 2°, plunge to -10° and round and round we go. Last week, things thawed off nicely and we were set to plant the peas and spinach and lettuces this past weekend, but when we went to do…

We’re 7°C today amd brilliant sunshine. We’ve been JUST above or just below zero for a couple weeks now, and tomorrow we’re supposed to hit 12°. It’s probably false spring and false hope, but it’s welcome all the same. This was a couple weeks ago. March is bird nesting season, and one of the things…

Well, if they say “In like a Lion, out like a Lamb”, then the end of March will be horrific. Today is beautiful. Bright sun, not too cold, very little wind at the moment. Apparently the wind is supposed to pick up by nightfall. The nice weather is great for the mental health, bad for…

So, we walked out after the fire, got to mom’s and got snowed in. That lasted 2 nights. This morning things had settled down and the roads were normal-for-winter again. So we packed up and headed home by way of the the grocery store and the hardware. Basically, today was expensive, although I ended up…

Why is it that things always get exciting at the worst possible time? Winter has been relatively unmemorable. Some good weather, some very cold weather, not a ton of drama. Until this weekend. Extremely high winds, with snow, mixed with rain, and then a freeze again. Messy messy messy. Remember when I replaced the door…

Having begun the month (and year) warm and sunny, we had a few middling weeks of single-digit negative temperatures. It rained on the weekend, quite prodigiously. And then yesterday, the temperature took a giddy plunge into Manitoba temperatures. We hit somewhere around -35 with the windchill last night, and today and tomorrow are supposed to…

It isnt entirely common for us to begin the calendar year at 10° above feeezing and raining, but the weather does strange things at times. It was warm and extrwmely wet for several days, and now it is quite cold and windy. This has upsides: we can use the driveway for the nonce, and downsides:…