The News from Kenabeek

Snow has arrived! First, last week, one morning we awoke with about an inch of lovely, wet snow coating everything. All the trees were frosted with white and it really looked like a winter wonderland. It warmed up during the day, and it was mostly gone by the end of the day. We have been having relentlessly cloudy weather for about six weeks, as one low pressure system after another squats over northern Ontario. Lots of rain, and in the last couple of weeks intermittent snow showers or flurries with no accumulation, until this first real snowfall. Today we are having another one – woke to about 1 ½ inches of lovely wet snow. Wet snow is much prettier than dry, which tends to be powdery. We have yet to see my favourite kind of snow, though, which is when flakes of wet snow clump together as they fall, so you have lovely big lace doilies of snow drifting down. The weather report (always, well, approximate) said we might get as much as 8 or 10 inches, but it’s been a mild day, so although it’s kept snowing I doubt we’ll get anywhere near that much. Of course, we had to drive into town for breakfast and the Saturday paper, but the roads had been sanded and were just slushy, a bit slippery here and there but nothing. On the way in we reminisced about the truly scary drives we’ve had over the years, including white-outs (I drove into the ditch during one a few years back). Given the weather reports, I harvested the rest of the carrots. They’re tough, and will keep quite nicely in the ground, but if we did get all that snow I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find them for a while! I also cleared out most of the plants in the sunroom/greenhouse, leaving just a few with peppers or tomatoes still ripening. It’s awfully nice to be able to see out the windows again – before I replant I will have to do some research, so I will get more fruit and less plant next year. We are having lots of bird visitors lately – blue jays, whiskeyjacks (aka gray jays), even a woodpecker, and of course chickadees. At least one of them has figured out that on the little feeders (still the only ones up) they have to hand upside down from the perch, because the little seed hole is underneath … but they still chatter at me regularly, telling me, I’m sure, that it’s time to put up the big feeders. I try to explain that we like to wait until we’re sure the bears are all in bed. My Christmas cactus is in bloom! Rushing the season a bit, but perhaps it was inspired by all that snow …