From the Weekend: The First Snow

It was very late this year!

I think it actually snowed, if you can call it that, this little skiff, on Thursday.

I made sure to run out and get a picture on Saturday, since we were going up above zero again, today.
It didn't melt.

Just in Time

Yesterday:

Four windows upstairs, two down.

Before:



After:


Then we went to my Mom's and plastic'ed up two skylights in her eating nook.

Today:
Minus 20 C right now( -4 F)
Expected high: -17 today (1.4 F).
We're not even going to mention wind chill.

I cannot say how grateful I am that a fund raising bottle drive for Girl Guides scheduled for today was cancelled. I just found out minutes ago.

Sprin-a-Ling-a-Ling

I'm so excited.
Look!
(from the back gate looking into the yard)

Here's from the back door looking left (towards the East) where we have our garden boxes.


Here's from the back door looking left (westwards) where we have the picnic table. That bush is a lilac. I can't wait for it to blossom and bloom.



And here we are, looking from the back step towards the garage.
There's the snow!


Can you believe that all last week there was a puddle all the way out to those boards? I put them down to get around it--and then, yesterday morning, I woke up and poof! It was gone. It's like the ground thawed over-night.

See that shed to the left of the garage? That's where we have our bikes. Looks like we'll have to dig them out if we want them!

Mondays in March

When I started this, I expected to see dramatic changes from week to week. I expected the snow to melt.

It hasn't. Not much. It has simply been a cold miserable month--and without any sunshine to speak of.

So, here's where we're at today:



Not much of an improvement from February 28th:


But, it doesn't quite look as cold, does it? That's a plus.

Today: Right now, it is minus 1 C--well below the seasonal norm of about 6 degrees. We've been below seasonal norms all month, if not all year. We've certainly seen more snow than usual. I really do think that this is the result of too much CO2 in the atmosphere: I read that the hydology cycle is already screwed up--and it certainly could be. That's why I blame the new super-mini-micro photo chip I just bought for the Earthquakes we've had recently in the Pacific.

Sorry. I'll get off my soapbox, now.

Forecast:

Tonight
Cloudy. Becoming cloudy periods near midnight. Fog patches developing near midnight. Low minus 5.

This week is looking good. Plus temperatures all week, at last.



I'm putting together a plan for Spring Cleaning and decluttering for April. Do you have any Spring Cleaning plans?

Just Visiting: Bohemian Waxwings

This is just a pit stop for them.

click to enlarge

As far as I can tell, they have no migration pattern, they simply roam (as their name suggests) throughout the sub-Arctic regions, in and around boreal forest habitat, all year long, in every part of the world.

In this part of the world, we see them usually in February and March.

Sorry I don't have a telephoto lens. I so rarely need one!

They travel in groups of 100 or more and they swoop and swarm all over the neighbourhood. They move fast, too. Today my daughter and I watched them swoop from tree to roof to sidewalk, dozens of them at a time, in a blink of an eye.

And so noisey! Because they aren't territorial, they have no "song" but boy, they do talk!


How many do you see in the tree?

I loved seeing and hearing them today.

Mondays in March

This photo was taken today, I swear! I know it looks exactly the same as last week. Things just haven't been melting much, lately.


But I think that's about to change.

Today's weather:

+3 degrees Celcius
Tonight
Clear. Wind west 20 km/h becoming light early this evening. Low minus 6.

Things are warming up, though, finally. These temperatures are closer to seasonal norm than we've seen for a while!


It seems the city is anticipating the warmer weather, too. These green flags and pink x's are on nearly every corner:

(Yep, that's our place from the front.)

We figure they're marking the location of our storm sewers for clearing out.

Mondays in March

I really did take this picture this afternoon.

Hooray for sunshine!



My husband was out raking the roof and since most folks won't have a clue what that's about, I thought I'd show it to you:



It's simple, really. The roof rake is basically just a long shovel on a telescoping rod and you just pull the snow off the roof. When there's a lot of it, he'll get on a ladder to reach as far as he can.

We do that so we don't get ice dams at the edge where the eaves troughing meets the roof. Nonetheless, you can see one here. Actually, all you can do is try and keep them small. You can't prevent them entirely.

I took this from the ground looking up at the edge of the roof. Click to enlarge.

Without proper eaves, the ice dams do damage not only to the roof, but to our walls inside, too. I'll spare you the photos.

So--as for the weather today (temperatures in Celcius):

current temperature at 3pm: -13

Tonight
Clear. Low minus 21.

This week? Sheer Craziness --in other words-- typical March weather!


Just for fun, here's last week's post.

Mondays in March*

At the Home Depot yesterday. This is a "snow mountain" made from clearing the parking lot over the winter.

Eliot may have pronounced April the cruelest month, but I doubt he was familiar with March on the Northern Canadian Prairie. Technically, we tend to get more snow in this month than we get the entire winter--something which would be hard to do this month, though with the snow fall yesterday and today, we're off to a great start!

By months end, we'll be sloshing through puddles. It's the month of great transformation. I thought it would be interesting to do a post each week showing you my back yard and giving you the weather.

Unfortunately, today, there's really not that much to see. I snapped this yesterday from the back gate during a rare moment when the sun was shining.



The weather (from Environment Canada, temperatures in Celcius):

Today
Periods of snow ending late this afternoon then cloudy with 40 percent chance of flurries. Amount 2 to 4 cm. Wind north 20 km/h gusting to 40 becoming light this afternoon. Temperature steady near minus 24. Wind chill minus 36.

Tonight
Cloudy with 40 percent chance of flurries. Low minus 31.

(Please hurry up, Spring!)


*OK, so technically, it is still February. But it's close enough, don't you think?

Flowers on Friday

I recently discovered a new blog--from Canada--called Maillardville Manor. The blogger has impeccable taste and she's decorating a new home. Inspiring. It doesn't hurt that she's from Canada, either! Though she is in Vancouver which in February can be hard to take as most tend to gloat over their greenery just waking up and poking through the ground about now. (Not the blogger from Maillardville Manor. I don't mean to imply that! This Vancouverite from Meet My Ugly Baby was planning her balcony garden yesterday, though!) We, however, still have snow. Piles and piles of it. More expected, too.

A view of the yard taken from the upstairs bathroom. The roofs are bare because we shovel them with contraptions called roof shovels. It is, actually, above zero today which is nothing more than a cruel joke.

Anyway, I ramble. The point is, she thought of this first, and I'm stealing it. This Friday, at least. I may not have flowers next week, or I may and forget to take pictures of them. Who knows? But these tulips were beautiful and I wanted to share.

It was my daughter's idea, actually. She convinced my husband to get them for me--and I'm sure she picked out the colour.


Purple is her thing.

I hadn't realised how much tulips droop. Nor how they open and close with the sun.



I was utterly fascinated by the colours inside.



Look at that orange! That teal blue! It was amazing.



That was a week ago, of course.


They have died and they're gone now.

But I was glad to have them.

Nagging Tasks

I admit it.

I'm falling behind on keeping my January resolutions.

This may have something to do with my lethargy:



(Snow, everyday. Minus 20C or so, every day. I caught this shot yesterday from the driveway as my son was coming out to shovel, poor kid. I had to give him my hat.)

One of my resolutions, a la Happiness Project, is to do one of those "nagging tasks" every day. You know--that thing you keep thinking you really must do--but then forget about until you trip over the supplies or are inconvenienced by its not-being-done-yet, once again.

One such nagging task was to clear off this mantle, scrape up all the wax, put away the lingering Christmas schtuff, give it a good clean. You know the drill.



And so, before heading out yesterday, I did it.


It's nuts how motivating it is to post what projects I get done, so please, lets hope there will be one a day this week.

That is if you can abide such nonsense.

Here's the next task:


What's wrong with this picture, you might ask--other than the stuffing falling out of the pillow, the unmade bed, the basket of Christmas things not yet put away and the messy shelves? Remember minus 20? Yeah, well, that. The task is to get actual curtains up on the window of my daughter's room--and hemmed. I do have plastic up on the window. Still. Embarrassing.

Hope you are keeping warm wherever you are, whatever your weather!

Snowday!

Taken at 8:40am after waiting 30 minutes for the bus.
Temp: -14*C (wind chill -21*C)

I told my daughter she could stay home today.

An Uninvited Guest

I hope he doesn't stay too long.


I need some plants here with winter interest, I think.

(I just realised this morning that with Daylight savings time, now, the way it is? We have to live through November mornings twice a year. It's cruel and unusual punishment, that's what it is. This was taken at 8:20am.)

Last Sunday

Dawn. About 8:15 am. December 13, 2009. Minus Forty C (or colder).

Sorry about the fuzziness at the bottom of the picture.

That's because of this:

It is a Bit Early....

One of my not so brilliant ideas in the past was to "paint out" all the trim on the house. I did this because I'd read somewhere that it would help make the house look larger.

This summer, I decided we needed to refresh and energize the place: so we'd paint all the trim white. Of course.

Well, I don't happen to have a proper "before" picture of the back of the house. You can get an idea of just how awful my original idea was when you see this, though.



Of the front, I have last year's picture of the first snow, Nov 11.



Here are the pictures as of this afternoon.

Of the back:



and the front:



and the first snow of the year.

Of course, we're not done.

I suspect the snow is here to stay, too.

Of course.

Plodding

I have been busy.

We bought our replacement vehicle on the weekend. That seemed to take a lot of energy and time, somehow. The living room remained in limbo until yesterday when we finally took out the old thermostat. In the interests of documenting history here it is.

(The Canadian Government introduced the Metric system one unit at a time. They started with temperatures in 1975. Notice the dusty mercury bulb. We made a trip to our local hazardous waste site with it.)

That of course, left us with this which took the entire day and much ingenuity to fill. I really didn't mind.

Our annual heat wave has hit. It feels downright silly to complain about temperatures hovering around the 30 degree mark, but honest-to-goodness it's, it's difficult.

Aurelia and I taped and washed the walls and I did the first round of cutting in before bed last night. Then I got up at 7:30 this morning, before the heat hit too hard and spent about two hours applying the first coat. The paint is thick and uncooperative.

I took this to show you the difference in the colour. I feel like I have stripped the room of depth and character. That oak trim, hiding under the green tape, sticks out. It's no longer integrated into the scheme and looks like a marital dispute. (Which it is.)



The upper bit, above the trim and below the stuccoed popcorn ceiling, thus, needs to be a miracle worker. It must provide a bit of colour and intergrate the wood trim without making the room top heavy. Any suggestions?


We're still on track to leave for the mountains on Sunday. (I think. We got the tent trailer out of storage last night and one of the tires is flat and needs repair.)

I wish we'd already left.

The Holiday Weekend

This is the first holiday weekend of summer.

Or, rather, it is supposed to be.



When I lived in Ontario, it was known as the "Two-four" weekend.

Why?

Cases of beer come with 24 bottles (or cans) in that province. Get a case and barbecue. Or head to the Beach. Or both. We didn't do any barbecuin' this weekend.



Here, it is known as the "Gardening weekend."
Why?
It happens to correspond with our first frost free date.

Usually.



But there was one small drop of hope.