Wild Flower Bounty

 On a short hike today, there were lots of wild flowers.   This particular trail looks different in every season, and different with whatever trail or paths you follow. The terrain goes from field, to woodland, to wetlands to lake side, with softwoods, cedar, pines and some deciduous areas as well.   The fields on both sides of the trail were full of wild poppies.  They were so pretty and the little dots of red, with the white clover and purple alfalfa.   There were pops of bright green spurge as well.

Canada Anemone was blooming all along one of the riverside trails.  It was so very pretty.

The Fleabane has started flowering there, well before anywhere else that I've seen this year.  I don't think that fleabane actually deters fleas.  It sometimes takes over a bit in places in my garden, but it's pretty, so I don't mind too much.

I think this is some sort of Coreopsis, but I don't think it's a wild flower.  However there used to be a pollinator garden plant display, so I wonder if some of these flowers have been seeded from that garden.  There are a couple that seem more like garden plants that wild flowers.

Like this Dianthus, or Sweet William, which I think must have been seeded from the old pollinator garden, or someone sprinkled some wild flower seeds, or other flower seeds in some areas last fall.   

Ox eye daisies were blooming on some of the sides of the trails in sunny areas.   I remember making daisy chains as a kid and braiding them into my horses mane and forelock.  He was a very patient pony! The walk today was so much fun with all the flowers.  I'm sure hubby was a bit frustrated at times because I stopped an awful lot to take photos.  It was so lovely to see the pops of colour along the trails.

This is one tiny part of one of the fields of wild poppies.  The spurge is a bright green, in behind the poppies.   It seems like something I should try to paint, with all the greens and pops of reds.   

An early spring hike

 It snowed again.  I woke up to low, lead grey, snow clouds and a wintery sky.   There was a light dusting of snow on the ground.   It doesn't feel like spring today!   Yesterday was another cool day, however we had a short reprieve from the incessant wind.   We took advantage of that and went for a hike.  The trails were in pretty decent shape all things considered, with only a few muddy and slippery spots.   That made it a rather nice day out.  I was worried I was over dressed, with my parka and a hoody on underneath, instead of the liner jacket, my double wool toque and thick wool mittens.   However, it was cool enough outside, just above freezing that I was comfortable the whole trail!   

It wasn't sunny, although the forecast suggested we should get some sun.  It was however, brightish out, which was nice enough.   The dark, foreboding skies we've had most of the winter do get a little bit much sometimes. 

The river was flowing fairly quickly.  With all the snow melting over a few days and some rain in there, and now more snow, I was amazed that it wasn't higher than it actually was.  It's usually this brown, silty looking water.  The difference with the view in the springtime is that you can easily see the water.   Once it warms up a bit, the foliage from the trees and the ground plants will obscure the view because they are so lush and full.

This white birch and a yellow bird house were the real spots of  brightness on the trail today.  Even the new growth of the pine trees didn't show brightly enough on this dull day.   However, the walk was pleasant enough and the terrain wasn't difficult due to icy or slippery, muddy conditions, so that has to be considered a win.   It was great getting outside for a bit too, without being scolded by birds.   Also, I saw a robin!   I haven't seen one at home yet, and they are another sign of spring.  

This is a true sign of spring.   A small patch of crocuses started blooming a couple of days ago.  They made me very happy.

The daffodils and tulips are just starting to grow, with their green leaves pushing up from the ground just a few inches.  The hyacinths are still under a small patch of leaves and snow - snow that I'd missed, along with the snow on the other side of our fence line!   Please go away snow!

A Sunday hike

 

trail beside the river

We went for a walk yesterday.  It was relatively mild, although breezy and grey out.   The temperature topped out at 9C or 10 C, but the breeze made it feel a bit cooler.  We bundled up and went for a lovely walk in an area where there is a lake, a river, and it feels like you're walking from one type of terrain to another.   The trail meandered along a river, through some fir forest, up through an aspen and poplar grove, up through an open field and then through a large stand of cedars before we ended up near the start of the trail.  We traversed a small piece of preserved railroad track, by the 2nd lookout point for the lake, not the one I usually take pictures from, and saw a lot of browns, with occasional splashes of colour.  

This is the side view from the lake.  Usually I take photos from the right, where the shore line curves around and the lake ends, or begins I guess.   There used to be a lovely picnic table here and we used to pack a lunch and eat looking over this view.  It was lovely.  Then they moved the table.   It's now in the middle of the V where the trail breaks off into 2 different routes.   Nobody eats there lunch there because there is no privacy from all the people and all the dogs.   They did replace it with a very large, long metal girder or beam.   If you don't mind sitting on the metal, hot in the summer and cold the rest of the time, then you can still sit and view the lake.   It's not quite as easy to share a lunch there now though.

There was this single vine of bittersweet, with red, almost fuchsia husks, with the little orange berries.  It was almost the only bright colour outside of some very limey greens from very young pine trees.    

All of this scenery would have still been stunning if we had blue sky, but we really get a lot of pale, grey and almost white skies during the late autumn and the winter.  A few years back, one horribly grey January, it was recorded that we got a whole 14 hours of sunshine in the month.  

Gah, we have another wasp in the house.   There is some type of wasp that is wintering over in our stacked winter wood.   It's larger than a yellow jacket and at least it's fairly calm.  We're getting several a week, maybe every other day or so.  It's both frustrating and irritating.  As a bonus, this weird, unseasonably mild spell, has brought houseflies back inside.   There should definitely be no flies and wasps in November!

End of August update

The river on a late summer hike

 This morning had a bit of unexpected excitement.  When I put my glasses on when I woke up, I realised that they were broken!  They were fine when I took them off at bedtime.   Of course without my glasses I couldn't see what was wrong with them, although I did find the missing lens and knew that the frame was unattached at the earpiece thing.   Luckily hubby figured out that a tiny screw had fallen out and by disassembling an old pair of glasses, he was able to fix mine with the scavenged screw.  I was so happy to be able to see clearly again without old glasses or sneaking hubby's glasses, which worked okay in a pinch, although not perfect.

Yesterday I harvested some garden tomatoes.    They are finally starting to ripen.  I've eaten a cucumber and cherry tomatoes for lunch for half the summer, which was lovely.   I've gotten 1.25kg of blackberries in the freezer.   I could easily get another 1 or 2 pickings in,  but I'm not sure it's worth it.   This time of year the seedy berries sometimes get even seedier and they are smaller pickings, for the same amount of work.   I have more than enough for a good batch of jam.

Last time I made blackberry jam, I pressed all the berries though a sieve with a wooden spoon. I've been looking for a Foley's food mill to make that job easier but they don't seem to be available any longer.  These are the metal cone mortar and pestle shaped ones.   The last time I saw one in a store a couple of years ago, I was very tempted to buy it as I've wanted one for years, but the price was really crazy high.   Amazon has one but it's fairly small  and almost $100.   I'm not sure I want to spend that much for a tool I'll only use a few times a year.

 Second choice is a grinder type food mill.   They are more reasonably priced.   When the kids were young, a friend and I would get together a couple of nights in the fall to freeze corn and make apple sauce.  It meant that we each had a freezer full with only a couple of hours of work and fun.    She had a food mill, which was old but really sturdy.  It ground up the apples in no time.   I'm hoping to find one as well built as that.  

I'm ticked at myself for not buying Plums when they were in the store.   Prune plums make spectacular jam.  If you chop them fine enough, you don't even have to peel them, as the peels will dissolve while cooking.   Maybe there will be some left at the market.

On a grey, damp day we went for a walk through the antique mall.   One booth had a few copper moulds in it.  One was $25 and another shopper and I commiserated over that being a ridiculous price for a jelly mould.   She would only pay $5 for one, and because I will pay a couple of dollars more if it's one I really like and don't have, I found these 3.  The strawberry one had some gunk on it, which the $25 one, the same strawberry mould didn't have.   I paid $8 for these and the gunk washed right off the mould with no scratching, discolouration or residue.  I was happy.   

Crazy busy times post

I've been trying to sit down at the computer and post an update. Between other computer things taking up my time, some weird updates at the most inopportune times,  crazy amount of meetings and events, it didn't happen.  I had it all figured out. It was some sort of poetic drivel about the early spring greening up, with the trees showing a green haze.   It's actually amazing to see, with the green just showing on the trees, especially in the neighbour's bush lot.   The colours are so bright and fresh!  However, we have baby leaves now, and it doesn't seem quite so appropriate.   Instead....

This is a Mock Angel Food cake from a cookery book dated 1914.   It looks great!   It tasted exactly like an Angel Food cake but only used 2 eggs.  I deemed it a failure in the end though, despite the taste and the look.   The texture was off.  It was almost sticky and wet.  I tasted it and couldn't eat it.  My men folk didn't like it.  In the end I tried to feed it to the chooks, but they weren't impressed either and left half my offering untouched.    I'm not posting the recipe since I don't think it would be worth really trying.

There's been some rumour of the Trilliums being out early this year.  We went for a walk looking for them.  I found a single red trillium in bloom and only 2 very tiny clumps of trillium leaves with no blooms.  Still, it was a nice walk. The weather was fresh and cool, but there was some sunshine which made a difference.  The folks who look after that trail had been in and took down most of the dead ash trees, so it was looking a bit apocalyptic in places.  The trail was clean and easy to walk though and with the early spring, it was very pretty.

 The hyacinths are looking a little bedraggled this year.   We've had a wild mixture of weather this spring with so much rain, wind, frosts, snow and even a few days of sunshine.   The hyacinths came up looking  a little worse for wear.  It's not been a still enough day to enjoy their scent but I've been able to sit out with my tea, and a book or my banjo and soak in the good weather.   The nice thing about having no neighbours is that I can practice the banjo outside and nobody complains at all!

I made a thing!  It's a Circular Sock Machine novelty item which has been going around the csm community the past couple of weeks.  It's a Yip Yip, like the Muppet aliens from so long ago.  It was definitely fun to make, although a bit fussy.  I wish I had some solid coloured yarn for the inside of the mouth and lining, which would give a bit more contrast and a better look, but this was from scraps.

 

 

 

Walking and Weaving

We had a lot of rain a little while back, which was on top of snow.   If the snow pack is deep enough,  it will absorb a lot of the rain and hold it.   It wasn't though, and the temperatures were unseasonably mild, so a bit of rain made the snow heavy with the extra moisture.  Then the excess rain started collecting and running in little streams on top of the frozen ground.   Then, because it's been above freezing the snow melted, creating more water running.   The water ran from the fields beside our house, through our back yard and into the chicken coop soaking their bedding and then out to the neighbour's fields on the other side.   This is now the second time this winter we've had to change out the wet  bedding.

  Usually we use a deep bedding process in the chicken coop, where the chook droppings mix with the bedding and slowly start to compost, giving off a bit of heat in the cold. We just toss in a bit of fresh shavings periodically to cover eveything.  Not this year though.  Luckily chooks are pretty hardy animals.   They don't like the winter, that's for sure.  I let them out to free range and if there is no snow on the ground, they run to the bird feeder to see if there is a snack for the on the ground.   If there is snow, they barely peek out of the barn and they won't leave the area to feed anywhere else while the ground is cold.   

We went for a walk down one of our favourite trails a few days ago.  All this rain has left the area rivers and streams running high and in low areas there has been flooding.  This part of the trail was impassible due to the flooding.   You can see that the water level has already started dropping by the dark, wet marks on the tree trunks.  The water is flowing quite quickly too.  

Today we were at another trail, which has a much higher elevation.  There were a few muddy bits and one shady area which was a bit icy because the sun hasn't reached there yet.   Mostly though, it was easy to traverse.  We had sunshine today (gasp!), which was lovely.  We don't get a lot of sunshine here during the winter, so the trail parking lot was full of people out enjoying the weather.  The little lake is still mostly frozen.   There is one area that is open and another where you can see it starting.   It's not safe to walk on or play on although it can look deceiving. 

 I bought some pretty yarn a few days ago.  It was on sale for a good price.  It was purples and blues, with a silver metallic sparkle running through it.   I got only 2 balls because I'm pretty sure this won't sell or be a hit, but I really wondered what it would look like woven up.  The yarn is good acrylic and has a lovely hand: soft and drapey.    I separated all the colours and did a stripe to make a checky pattern.  I think this might have been better served leaving it as it was and just having random stripes as the amounts of each yarn varied.  As well some had a clear demarcation between colours and others had a long transition with the colours blending.   There was only enough of the teal to do those thin stripes, while there is tons of paler purple left.   I'm doing random weft stripes of the light purple and the darker blues, with a couple of the purple/red colour in between.  You can't really see the purple red stripes in the busyness of the other colours and all that freaking sparkly silver.  There is so much of it.  It sure didn't look like that in the skein. I'd be all over this yarn if it didn't have the sparkly ply because it's so easy to weave with.  I think so much sparkle takes away from the lovely colours and how they work together, and the softness of the yarn.

SO MUCH SPARKLE!

A day can make a difference

 December was an odd month.   We went to a concert in November and a few days later, we got sick.  Really sick and it was into December before we were well again.   Non-contagious, but still had lingering effects for even longer.   It ticked me off because we'd had our jabs updated several weeks before, so should have been protected.   I shudder to think what it would have been without those jabs.  Anyway,  I ended up not getting all my seasonal cards out, which was too bad because I was really happy with them.  That being said, everything else went okay.  I got socks made for all my kids.  I also dug out a few things that didn't sell at the guild show and the kids scooped up the hats and tea towels very quickly!

The meeting of two water sources

Yesterday we went for a walk along a local trail.   Half the trail is by fields and a little bit of bush, but the
other half meanders by the river.  It's simply beautiful and I always feel like I've wandered into a fairy tale when we walk that half.   It's a circle trail, but we walk the river side part way and then turn around and come back, missing the boring side completely. 

  The river water level was  really high and had flooded over the banks, due to all the rain we've had.  You could see the water marks on the far trees which show the water levels have dropped at least 30 cm..  The path is raised and there was only one little boggy area where we had to walk around a puddle.    It was interesting because there is a stream which flows into the river.  The river is running quite fast and is very silty right now, so you could see exactly where the two water sources met.  It was really interesting to watch the flow and swirls of the currents.  The clear water is the stream and the brown, murky water is the river.

The ground was damp because we've had a lot of mild temperatures and an awful lot of rain.  We were driving to a family gathering and I was truly thankful that the temperatures were warm enough that it was rain, because if it had been cold enough for snow, nobody would have been going anywhere!

The different between yesterday and today is amazing.   Yesterday was yet another cloudy, dismally grey day.   It was crisp and cool but still a nice day to go walking as there was no wind. Today however, we stayed home!  The weather was definitely a little different.   I snapped this photo when I locked up the chicken coop for the night, at 4:25 pm.   These are the blackberry canes.  They're very resilient though and always seem to pop right back up when spring comes and the snow melts away.

  What a different a day can make!

Great Blue Heron surprise, and garden stuff

 One of the trails we like is a circle trail, in that you start, and walk the whole trail and end up back at the entrance.  However half of the trail is fairly open.  It's a nice enough walk, but not nearly as nice as the rest of the trail which meanders beside the river.   This time of year that part of the trail feels like you're walking through the happy part of a fairy tale.   The trees reach across the path creating a green arbour in places.  Huge swaths of wild flowers flank the sides of the trails.  Right now it's Queen Anne's Lace and Dame's Rocket, with just a pop here and there of Buttercups.  It's stunningly beautiful.

It's just on the edge of a fairly populated area, so it's amazing that there is quite a lot of wildlife which wanders through the trail too.   Of course there are song birds.  There were young robins looking for treats and hopping ahead of us as they weren't quite confident at flying yet.   There were squirrels and chipmunks and a big old raccoon wandered across the trail in front of us, down to the river, without a care in the world.

We had walked to the end of the river side trail, and turned back to walk to the entrance, thus avoiding the
other half of the trail.  We were close to the riverbank when there was a bit of noise coming from the few ducks on the water.   This great blue heron landed right in front of us.   They are very large birds and usually fairly timid.  This guy though, let us snap some photos and watch him for a few minutes.  Eventually, it was either the ducks, who were still making a bit of a fuss, or maybe he tired of us watching him, or the very noisy, loud kids who were just tromping into the area scared him off.  Regardless, it was a lovely treat to be quite that close to a blue heron.  They are majestic birds, although the noise they make doesn't quite match their looks -  GRAWK!

The garden is almost all planted.   There is some space for a second planting of beans and some space that I left for succession planting of greens.   However, they aren't always successful with the way our summers have been so hot, so I'm second guessing myself now and thinking that maybe I should plant something else in that spot.

My spinach and arugula went weird this year.  I'm guessing it's the late frosts we had.  Both of them went to seed before they were even large enough to eat.   I've replanted the pots though.   In one I've put some summer savory, since the chooks scratched through my last patch and in the other some catnip.  It used to grow wild, but there was none around last summer.   Everything has been watered, fed and what's large enough to have a straw mulch, has been covered.   If I can find a replacement pepper plant for that tiny pepper that hasn't grown since Easter, then I'll replace it.   It feels good to have most of the work done.  Now it's just watering, feeding and weeding if necessary until harvest.... yay!

Down Time and Relaxing

 The SCA event FOOL was last week.  It's always tiring, and having put so much into it before hand, the week after is my time to recharge.  It really felt like I did nothing all week.  I got my camping laundry done and put away.  Luckily it was sunny and dry, so the linen tunics dried quickly on the line.   I finished up another crochet hat and started another.  I think I'm getting the hang of keeping my rows even now.    I planted a few seeds, weeded the blueberries, or at least started weeding them.  One evening it was warm and still.  I enjoyed my tea outside while the smell of the lilacs wafted through the air.   It was lovely.

I found the mistake on the loom before I went camping, so took the time to fix it when I got home.  I had to re-thread a quarter of the heddles because despite counting each bout twice as I threaded it, I missed a thread.  Now to just finish tying it on.  I'm hoping that weaving the 3 towels won't take that long.  This is because there is currently a fly strip hanging over my loom.  All of a sudden there have been a lot of flies outside, which means flies inside. 

I've been doing a lot of research on circular sock machines.   I really do think that I need one of these amazing machines. I've no idea what kind that I want though.   New?  Old?  If new, which one because there are advantages to all the different ones, and different price points as well.  One way or the other it's a huge investment, and one I'll only make once, so I really want to make the right decision the first time.  

 I read a couple of trashy novels in my down time.  I went walking out on some trails and just my usual trail in the back yard. I'm getting caught up on my Historical Food Challenge group bi-weekly cooking tasks as well.

 I also found out today that I've taken an extraordinary number of photos this month.   This is one of our favourite trails.  It isn't long, but has lots of side trails that you can use to make every time feel different.  There used to be a picnic table at this spot, where we would eat our lunch.   It's been moved, and we were a bit sad because it was lovely to eat look at this view.

I puttered in the garden.  I filled the last of the large planters and totes with dirt and compost, and top dressed the new raised bed.   I planted 2 types of cucumbers,  another zucchinni and some carrots.  The one tomato that got frost bitten was replaced with savory.  In a small planter bag, I put some nasturtiums.    This year the only flowers are marigolds for both bug repellent use, and for dyes, nasturtiums because they're edible flowers and a single hanging basket with pink geraniums.  The two jalapeno peppers are doing well, but the serrano pepper is still as small as it was the second week after Easter.  I'm hoping that it's putting out roots.   It's been under a cloche, so at least the day temperatures have been warm and the tiny pepper plant has been protected.   With the summery blast we're getting this week, I'm hoping it helps it get growing.

Our apple tree was loaded with flowers.   I'm not sure what effect the late frosts had on it.   They were light frosts and hopefully at least some of them got pollinated.   The other tree only had 3 flowers this year and I don't know if that is enough to give us an actual apple harvest this year.    This tree looks a little wild now because I wasn't able to get out to prune it this winter.   I'd love to have enough even just to make a single pie or apple crisp.

Hmmm... I guess I accomplished more than I realized last week.  Regardless, it was a lovely, relaxing week, which was very nice. 
 

Missing month of May

 It's been a busy month.   The weather has been up and down.   We had a stretch of milder temperatures with no frost for several weeks.  I took the opportunity to get much of my garden in.   According to the Canada Natural Resources we are in hardiness zone 6a.    Our last frost date is supposed to be May 11 according to OMAFRA.   I lost two pepper plants last night because it got really cold and this evening I just covered all my tender plants and put feed sacks and straw around the tomatoes.    Sadly, I don't have enough sheets and covers for all the planters on the deck, so hopefully the patchy frost which is forecast for tonight, will not get to the deck.   There are two tomatoes at the back which don't have cages to support them yet, so they are just buried in the straw which I'm using as extra mulch over the cardboard.

The straw bale garden experiment is doing quite well.   The lettuce has loved it so much that I've already harvested our first salad.    The cucumbers are doing okay and beans are already coming up.  Again though, the tender new leaves are being snipped off just as they come up.   I've had to put a ratty whirly gig, faded but still spins, and some hoops over the bean seedlings to hopefully keep whatever is eating them away.   

I've seen some pretty spectacular photos and reports of straw bale gardening success, and an occasional report that it doesn't work.   I've heard of issues with bad straw, or people using hay and getting lots of weed growth.  Also, you really have to condition the bales to jump start the internal composting in order to actually have them sustain the plants.  It also requires keeping on top of watering.   Since I don't have a drip system for my bales, it means I have to go out and give them a bit of water once a day, or twice on really hot days.  It's totally not a no work garden this way.   But way less weeding, is what I'm finding.   I've been weeding the raised beds multiple times and it seems the weeds pop back the next day.  I've the Japanese Indigo bed covered, so my fingers are crossed that they'll be okay with tonight's weather.   I usually put them under cloches, but with the early May weather being mild, I didn't bother this year.    Next year for sure, as I won't risk it again.

We've been walking the local trails.   Once thing I've noticed is that some of them look so different in the spring.   This trail was unbelievably different looking with the heavy hardwood tree canopy and lush fern covered forest floor.   It's a joy to traverse the trail while we still have few mosquitoes.

Canadian geese seen yesterday.   They are huge birds!   These didn't have babies with them, which I'd normally expect to see in the spring.   Still they were a joy to watch while they paddled along until they spread their wings and headed off with a lot of honking and fanfare.

Colours of Early Spring

These Scilla flowers are the prettiest blue.  They are naturalizing in areas, carpeting the lawn for the time they are in bloom. 

Glory of the snow?, I thought they had another name too, but whatever they're called, they are beautiful.  I had to wait to the evening to photograph these because the white centres were difficult to photograph, without washing out completely.

Coltsfoot is a lovely splash of yellow.   I found these on the side of one of the local trails.   

 

Wild violets just starting to emerge.   Again, from a local trail and not my garden.  Because they can be invasive, I'm not unhappy about that. 

 

I saw these on one of the trails too.  I think they are bloodroot.   They aren't that common around here, so it was a nice treat to see them.  The roots can be used as a dye plant, but since there are so few of them around here, I haven't experimented with it yet.

 

New Mittens

 I decided to make a new pair of mittens.   There was nothing wrong with the ones I made a couple of years ago.  They were still in good shape and were still two of them, which seems to be important :)   I was a bit concerned that I'd be in a bit of a bind if I lost a mitten when on a trail, or getting groceries.  It's happened before, but I usually have a couple of spare pairs lying around.  However this was the spare pair before and I haven't replaced them, so it was time.

I had a bunch of Corriedale roving bits and pieces, so I dragged out the blending board.   The blending board is a fun tool.  I have mine because it was a lovely gift.  My first introduction to the blending board was a demo one of the students did at a class.   She brought out the board and a gazillion bits and pieces of fibre, piled them on the blending board haphazardly while poking them down once in a while.  Then she pulled off a single, gigantic, messy rolag.  I couldn't understand why anyone would want a tool which produced what was likely a difficult to spin, chaotic mass of fibre.    Luckily there are a myriad of videos out there which show how easy it is to make functional rolags on a blending board.    I wish I'd taken photos of these rolags, because they were much prettier than the resulting yarn!

This is a soft, bulky yarn, using  purple, raspberry, navy and pink colours. I used the rolags and a long draw to make the Corriedale soft and airy.  The yarn is thicker, on purpose, than I would normally spin for mittens, but I was looking for something warmer than my current ones.   By spinning the yarn thicker and then planning on knitting it on smaller  needles, I could create a dense mitten fabric which held the heat better, and let less air whistle through on blustery days.  I've done this before and they are great mittens for scraping the snow off the car, walking and general outdoors activities.  Not so good if you need to manipulate a camera button or other things that require a bit more precise finger action.   

The mittens were quick to knit up because of the bulky yarn.   I was using bamboo double points, 3.5 mm and I was worried one would break, but they did just fine.   The mittens fit pretty perfectly, which is nice but of course I did have my hand easily accessible for when I wanted to try it on while knitting.    I didn't use a pattern because I've knitted a lot of mittens over the years and a plain mitten with a thumb gusset is pretty formulaic.   I just had to play around with a couple of gauge samples before I started to knit for real.

It's a good thing I had them finished and ready to go.   On Friday they were calling for a crazy amount of freezing rain.  The forecast I checked showed about 8 hours of freezing rain and another 4 of snow/freeing rain mixtures.   We'd battened down the hatches here, gassing up the generator, bringing in 3 days worth of wood, scrubbing and filling up buckets with water.    We're on a well and if the power goes out, so does our well pump.  I didn't want to run out of water for the chooks.

It ended up that we had a limited amount of freezing rain.  Just enough to make the world sparkle.   On Saturday, when the temperature was warming up, we went for a hike.   I brought both pairs of mittens for some reason, which when we got to the trail, turned out to be that my sweetie had forgotten his thick gloves.    Now he has my old mittens and I have these new ones.  Not horribly pretty but happily, they are really functional.

The world was beautiful with a crystal sparkle.   Because the temperature was just hovering above the freezing mark, we did get dripped on a bit.  The trail however, was snowy and not icy at all.  The sun shone for a bit, which made it a spectacular and fun short hike.

Friday morning hike

Today's weather has been amazing.  With a high of 19C and sunshine, it felt almost summery, instead of November!  This morning we took the time to take a short walk on a trail we hadn't done in a couple of years.   All the paths have been groomed and made accessible.  It made for an easy ramble. 

  However, the number of trees which have been removed made it feel like a whole new area.   I'm guessing they had to remove all the dead and dying Ash trees.  It's quite open now and much less like walking through the bush.  It's still a pretty walk though since much of the trail follows a winding river. 

 Being a weekday morning, there were few people on the trail.  We did follow the markings of what turned out to be a little 2 year old toting a huge stick, all around the trails, with his mom and a gigantic Newfoundland puppy, which weighed more than the two of them put together.

 

There was a lovely grassy area; a green oasis in a forest of browns.

A little pond with lots of algae and growth, looked so pretty.

           

   It was nice and relaxing to watch the river flow by.
       

There were ducks on the river.  They were in small groups here and there, rather than one large flock.  However, I didn't have my big girl camera with a good lens, only my phone, so I was too far away to get reasonable photos of the ducks.  Still, I have to say I'm happy to have an alternate camera for when I'm in unexpected situations, so I can at least still take snap shots.