221117 winter begins

Nov. 17

The witches are wearing white. The old witch looks the best because she has so many branches. I want a hat that looks like her!

Yesterday was like Christmas day, endless and snow-blown. I had a holiday feeling all day, while it snowed and snowed. I have forgotten, almost, what it is like to have snow. Soon I will not be able to walk across the meadow and through the woods. When the snow is deep, I walk down to the farm, or go up the camp road, if the camp people have been up with a vehicle and made a track, or I can put on my snowshoes and cross the meadow to the ridge and beyond. I am mentally a long way from putting on snowshoes! It was barely a week ago we were enjoying a late warm spell, out in the sun without our coats!

Rain and Fox spent the night, because the road was not going to be cleared in time for them to come up in the morning. (Rain works here, on-line, and I help with the baby.) It has been cold today and feels cold in the house as well. We have had the fire on this afternoon. The heating is electric and expensive, so we don't put the thermostats up very high, and must depend on a fire and extra layers of clothing to keep warm. We have lots of firewood, at least!

(Rocky wanted the porch mentioned so his picture
would be in the post.)

A woodshed, and wood stacked along the porch. This is what is has been like for people here for hundreds of years. It is the main work in October to get wood piled and safe from the elements, against the coming cold. Normal, but for a city dweller like me, raised in the heart of Etobicoke, it is extraordinary, storybook, almost religious. Like growing food and then drying, fermenting or otherwise storing it up, to keep through winter, it is so basic, first-hand, survival. "The closer to your food source that you work, the healthier you will be, mentally and physically." - an old Mumma Yaga adage. If you are the farmer's tractor repair person. or their children's teacher, (or the farmer!), that's close.

It is Friday at last. It has been a long week. Rain thought so too, said it seemed like we had several Wednesdays this week. Must have been that endless day when it snowed and snowed that made it seem longer. I look forward to a couple of days to myself. First up is some work on the Blue Cave mosaic project. Fox is very tall and can already reach the tops of the tables, so I have moved the Cave and all its broken china pieces up to the loft. Fox doesn't go up there as it is too dangerous for a toddler, with its open staircase and steep stairs. (The stairs Fig, the dog, fell down in 2020. *)

We are supposed to be going home to Toronto next weekend, for the winter. We are not sure just now, when we will be able to safely get down our hill and onto the highway. We do not have our snow tires on the car. They are in Etobicoke! I had not expected to be snowed in so early in the year. K is worried, but it is what it is. We will wait and see. Whenever there is a safe window, we should probably take it and go. The highways should be clear as long as it is not actually snowing.

We have been in Quebec two years now, and Ontario allows only one two-year vacation out of province before they discontinue health care coverage. After that, one must be in the province five months of the year, to retain health care privileges. So home we go. We could switch to Quebec health coverage, but we both have doctors in Toronto whom we like, and care in English, which is not a given in Quebec.

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BTW, (by the way), health care should be a Canada-wide thing, not provincial. We are too divided in this country! We share a beautiful country, we should share more, we should not be divided, we should be encouraged to get to know each other. I have been across this country coast to coast, several times, and think of it as one country, not provinces and territories.

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The winter is beautiful here, clean and bleak and exciting, but also cold. We will return for the spring and summer. Rocky, who has lived his whole life in this valley, will have to get used to city ways, leashes, other dogs, roads and cars. He will miss Blackie and I suspect Blackie will miss him. It must be nice for Blackie to have a friend on the hill. K and I will miss Rain, and Fox.

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Before the snow fell we had our first sub-zero morning and I discovered this extraordinary phenomenon. It appears that water froze in the capillaries of the plants and extruded, as it expanded, to form these amazing sprays of ice.

These fragments are imitating birch bark.

We also looked more closely at these blue-paint graffiti marks which I have noticed before on one or two trees. But we stopped to ponder them and saw that there are numerous trees with these splashes of blue, more than a woodsman would ever mark for cutting. We decided it must be a fungus or lichen, pretending to be graffiti! It is an amazing powder blue, which is a rare colour in nature. Perhaps the chickory blossom comes the closest.