My lovely garden

Cauliflower is so lovely!

Broccoli without chemicals!

I am blessed with a beautiful yard with an abundant garden and  huge wrap-around flower beds.  I am also very lucky that my husband also loves to garden and takes a  pride in keeping our yard beautiful. We also don't use chemicals in our  garden but rely on sustainable practices like composting to grow our vegetables. 

My Japanese peonies are huge!

My roses are blooming like crazy, as are the peonies and sweet william.  My mock orange bush in the front of the house (my header picture) is completely covered in fragrant white blossoms - it is truly the most bodacious I have ever seen it!

I love how these are so petite yet so lovely.

My garden is starting to take off now that we have some heat.  It was such a cold wet spring that I thought for sure that my garden would not do well.  It is starting to produce far more than I ever expected!  I can hardly wait to start enjoying fresh produce from the garden.  The only thing that isn't doing well are the beans - it was too cold for them to germinate so they are off to a late start (I think most rotted.) and are just starting to peak out of the ground. My cucumbers are also a bit challenged as we had a wild wind shortly after I planted them and it destroyed most of them.  The rest is wonderful and flowering and just bursting with life!!  I love gardens.

Isn't this rose exquisite?

The Downside/Upside of Winter

We are now totally in the grip of winter. It is a gentle, beautiful vice of magical, glittering diamond sharp snow that surrounds us. Already, we have more snow than we have had in November in years. The temperature is hovering around -20 Celsius - the perfect temperature for winter. At these temperatures, the roads are not slippery and we know we have to dress properly or we will freeze. The rivers and lakes are making strong, rock hard ice as I write and soon it will be time to drag the ice fishing shacks out to the frozen water bodies.

I woke this morning to the kind of sharp frosty air that pulls at your nose hairs when you inhale too fast. Unfortunately, I had to stay home sick with a wicked sore throat. That was the downside...but the upside is that I can enjoy the lovely view from my window. The sun is shining brightly through the absolutely clear morning air, the kind of crystal clear air that you only get when the temperatures fall. The hoar frost is thick on the trees and there is a gentle wind that is just starting to blow it off. It falls through the sunlight like magical crystals, fairy dust that flashes cheekily as it twirls and rotates in a happy eccentric dance to the ground.

I can see Squirrely Magirly hopping along the fence and then pausing. She digs daintily in the snow until she unearths a treasure. It is a small pinecone that she gives a decisive shake to. Now she starts to peel away the layers to get to the delicious pine nuts at the base of each cone scale. The dog is going nuts inside because she can see her on the fence but Squirrely Magirly remains completely unperturbed as she snacks away in the sun.

And to think I would have missed all this if I wasn't at home sick!