Marching on….

January 2019: unseasonably mild and spring-like. February through March: nearly two months of cold, mostly clear weather and the ground frozen solid. Much snow fell on other islands, on other parts of the province, but here we’ve had hardly any precipitation at all for most of the winter. Not a good thing.

Forest Bathing….

Forest Bathing, or shinrin-yoku, is a relatively modern term first coined in Japan by health and wellness advocates during the 1980’s. Humans have been practising forest bathing, perhaps not always consciously, since we first started interacting with the  forests of the earth many thousands of years ago.

Farewell to Fine Friends…

Last  you heard,  I was rabbiting on about the new outhouse in the back garden. There has been a long silence since that episode, but I did not fall down the hole! As a good friend pointed out recently, there has been a dark cloud hanging overhead this year. This might explain why I have been feeling a little under par, a little short on creative energy, why I have not written for so long.

Six on this Springtime Saturday….

I’ve been away on holiday. Thought I would skip the end of winter and hop back in just in time for spring. However, the freakish, equinox-ish weather continues to rave. Yesterday we woke up in a blizzard, by the end of the afternoon most of the snow was gone and we had also experienced torrential rain, howling wind, hailstones, sleet-ish squalls and sunshine.

Merry Christmas…

Here on the Pacific west coast, autumn is coming to an end and winter will soon be upon us. So far the weather has been the complete opposite to what we experienced this time last year, green and mild, not frozen and white. That leaves me feeling pretty jolly for the most part.

Bored in Paradise…

November has never been my favourite time of year. The rapidly shortening days combine with deteriorating weather systems to create a cloud of doom that shrouds my days.

Oh, Rubarb….

Although spring is officially here, the weather continues to be cold and wet. The vegetables are getting planted, both seeds and starts, in dribs and drabs, slowly but surely. The heat-loving tomatoes, peppers, squash and basil are still indoors, under the fluorescent lights, getting bigger and bigger, just waiting for warmer temperatures outdoors, so they can get into their permanent locations under the cloches in the vegetable garden.

Saving Seed….

Last Friday morning it was snowing again as I set off for town. I was on my way to the annual Words on the Water writer’s festival. Every March for the past sixteen years I have attended this local cultural event. When I returned late Monday afternoon I felt rejuvenated. Some seeds of inspiration had been sown at the W.O.W. festival!

While I was away the robins returned to our garden, pecking and peering about on the ground for excited worms. It seems they  have brought spring  with them. Although it is still chilly, the sun is shining and buds on the flowering shrubs are  plump. The grass has begun to grow again and the first daffodil  is about to burst open.

Black and White…

Snow…

Winter has arrived. Snow covers the ground like a duck down duvet. Snow hangs from the boughs of the trees and snow is beginning to fall again. It is a winter wonderland out here on the islands.

C.’s brother N. is visiting from the city. He came up to the island to help butcher the big mule deer that C. brought home from the last hunting trip of the season. Three days ago it began to snow and now N. is stuck here for the moment, trapped by the snow-obliterated road on the next island that leads to the outside world. This morning I called the fellow who maintains the roads there. He cheerfully told me that he had just got the grader repaired, and that he probably would not be able to get plowing out to the end of the road until Monday; too much snow to be dealt with first on the south end of that island. He had already been part way out by truck and had removed a fallen tree that was also blocking the route.

Chance of Showers…

It has been one of the wettest autumns I have ever seen anywhere. I think. These days my memory seems to play tricks on me, so perhaps I’m just not remembering a wetter October and November in any of the places I have lived, in several places on this planet, during my lifetime.

The other morning the weatherman on the regional CBC morning radio told his listeners that there was “a chance of showers for all areas”. I was looking out the living room window at the time, watching a veritable wall of water descend from the heavens above as a solid stream of water poured from the broken gutter onto the ground below. “You don’t say?”