Spring! Oh Joy!

First Day of Spring, March 20, 2015.

Lovely shadows cast by the morning sun

The promise of a beautiful day

The latest pile of snow

Morning of the second day of Spring, March 21, 2015; Wally gets on Forget Me Not  Cabin roof.

Dragging His Scoop Behind Him

Assessing the Situation

I catch Wally's eye

Tentative smile before the task ahead

The Mighty Scooper

Push Off

Another Push Off

The cabin doesn't seem so high nor so large

with the snow swallowing it up

Another Pass

Almost Done

Man on a Roof

Done

Preparing to Dismount

Arbeit Macht Der Lebn Zees

a saying my father used to say, and now we say it all the time:

"Work Makes Life Sweet"

The Cabin Roof shoveled 

And for our friend, Jane, Wally makes a snowman after shoveling the garage roof.

That was yesterday.

This is today:

The little snowman buried

Our Third Day of Spring

I'm beginning to think this week has brought half our winter's snowfall

The Ash Tree to the right of the driveway,

 up to her armpits in snow, the top of the hedge peeking below her 

Five fingers of the Japanese Maple tepee poking out of the snow pile 

The back hedge bowed once again under the weight of a wet snow

More like a Christmas card than a happy Springtime bouquet,

we're enjoying this beautiful gift.

(and it's still snowing)

I don't know who said,"Things you take for granted someone else is praying for,"

but I am feeling ever so grateful today.

spring dreams

We knew it was coming.
A little bit fell yesterday evening but stopped within half an hour, and the night was calm.

Dear Muji waits for love as I get ready to take some pictures.

This is the look that originally won me over.  I call it "kitty mind control"

Then I'm off to take some pictures out the back window. This is the accumulation of Sunday's and today's snow after a substantial melt early last week.  Let's just say I'm not as enthused as I was at the beginning of winter...Then the phone rang.

It was Wally saying he was let off work early. It really is an insane amount of snow considering there is no wind, though I must remember that today's dump is sitting on top of Sunday's windy blizzard. This is the view down the side deck.

and out front before Wally returns. 

Because we are on a main route to the highway, sure enough the first ambulance has gone by. My intention always was to keep Wally close to home so he wouldn't have a long commute to work, and not have to take the highway which, indeed, has worked out that way.

We got these highly perfumed hyacinths last week to cheer up the drear of winter.

Yes, I love winter, but a change would be welcome. I'll have to do something to amp up the festivities around here, once a lunch of hearty soup is over. I can see Wally heading back to put the snow blower away for now so I'd better put a pot on the stove.

spring dreams

a short reprieve from Winter's harshness

What do we know about usual, it being our 3rd winter in Nova Scotia, but here we are anticipating yet another blizzard tomorrow after just getting through one on Sunday. The snow we lost during last week's thaw has been replaced.

A little late with my spring photos from last week where the birds were flying about in happy throngs. A few crows came to visit like this handsome fellow.

doin' the crow strut

Wally hates it when I feed wild animals, but really- it has been a harsh winter

Up on the garage roof, calling his friends in

the next afternoon is gorgeous, a little colder

(That's the venetian blind twirly-thing hanging in the window)

I like to look at the hills beyond the tree-lined ravine

and, oh, another early visitor: a plumped up flicker

He turns to listen to Misty, the terrier next door

please excuse my poor exposures

then we move to the front of the house.

"What's that you see, Babu?"

a crow in the ash tree

Babu continues window shopping

Well, that was a blurry set of shots. Chalk it up to my poor camera and limited photo-shopping skills. Still, it's a slice of winter life as March takes a break from its blustery roar. 

I don't know who first said,

 " The first step to getting what you want is having the courage to get what you don't (want)."

In light of that, I am continuing my purge. This week it's magazines and letters and cards from friends that are no longer in my life. It is a wistful time, best done in short bits before it gets to be too much. I like to watch minimalist videos to spur me on, like this one:

and this one:

I hope these might be as inspiring to you.

our life, kitty style

Are you, like I, surprised to find yourself in the middle of the month already? Tomorrow will be the 2nd Friday the 13th in as many months.  Intrigued with the seeming coincidence, I realized that this 2nd Friday the 13th has come about because February ended on the 28th this year, which means it was exactly 4 weeks long, something no other month has, therefore the days of March would match the days of February until March the 28th. Are you still with me? I wish I had had an arithmetic teacher when I was a child who would have set me up with a love (and trust?) of numbers. Usually they swirl around me like a vortex of stars, one indistinguishable from the other.

It's been about a month now since I have done anything artistic, my creative energy going into the re-situating of the kitchen. I'm excited about my idea of a kitty litter/broom closet in which to contain this necessary but annoying aspect of our lives. We're quite inspired to get on with things so I was surprised to hear Wally suggest, in the wee hours this morning, that we go to Halifax this weekend.   It is understandable, after all, that he's needing a break from his grueling job and a long winter.

On the bright side, we've been saving our pennies to pay off our commitment to buy a Quebec made hutch and buffet that we found very reasonably priced but unaffordable after Christmas. We left a deposit but then  there was that business with the snow blower breaking down just when we were about to pay off on the buffet. Thankfully, we were given a reprieve by the store and finally paid it off on the weekend... and brought it home.

Suddenly I heard a noise and when I came in I still couldn't imagine how Muji, with his lame right shoulder, managed to get up in there.

"

"What are you doing in there?" I asked him

 From the looks of him, I wonder if he's expecting an argument.

Funny little guy, always looking for an escape hatch... through cupboards, down the basement door, out into the cold front porch. And I'm always asking him, "Don't you want to stay with us?"

Of course, he does; he just wants to get outside into the fresh air and the freedom of it as he obviously was once an outdoor cat. But we are on a busy road and there are some pretty nasty feral cats around here. My gentle Muji wouldn't last too long in the big bad world. He was definitely made for royalty.

 taking ownership, kitty style

Prince Muji listens. He is really quite smart.

Funnily, Muji hasn't been back in the cupboard since I took these shots on Saturday. The novelty has already worn off.  But not for me and Wally. We marvel at it, and ironically, I don't even feel a need to put anything in it. We just like looking at it. And it's in the bedroom after all; until we can get on with the reno, there's no use in adding more to what we'll have to move.

A few days later I find the boys in one of their creative sleeping poses.

As quiet as I can be, Babu wakens

A yawn from my sleepy boy, then back to sleep.

It's sunny and warming up here. The thaw is definitely on.  I hope you're having an easy shift into spring, or fall if you are viewing from that far away. It's such a small world after all and we are lucky to have this human experience of it if only we can keep it simple and sweet. 

peace

Quietly slipping into March

The last two weeks are a bit of a blur to me now. I have pictures here that span most of it:

Starting with February 15th, I am looking out the bedroom window toward our buried vegetable garden and the hayfield beyond, now officially called the snow field.

 

Along this same deck looking towards the big ash tree at the front of the house

 

There won't be any getting out this back door for a while 

Wally clears a path for the oil man to access our delivery,

and for eventually blowing out the back deck.

 

The following morning

 

At our driveway entrance, the ash casts its shadow across the street

 

Babu watches the world with me

 

A picture of Babu 5 days later, fast asleep

 

Meanwhile,Wally finally has time to get at the back deck that morning.

Our car is dwarfed by the snowbanks. Eventually Wally blows out this deck too.

The next evening, a gift

 

the sky on fire

 

Muji shares it with me from the stairs.

(Yes, Muji has a bum shoulder, but you should see him move when he chases Babu!)

 

And so it goes, or should I say, and so it snows.

 

Sometimes Wally has to come home from a long day of work and snowblow after yet another snowfall. My evenings are bunched up with meal prep, keeping to Wally's new diet, which isn't as easy as the old days now that we have excluded potatoes and pasta, sugar and minimal salt. 

 

The hedge completely buried now.

 

Often Wally tries to accompany me for a walk in a big box store that is not so treacherous as the icy hills around here (if you don't include the off-gassing from so many chemicals), but on nights like this we stick to the business at hand and live a quiet (not including the snowblower) life.

 

After almost 2 weeks of sorting through the possibilities, necessary to justify our new workbench that will serve as an industrial twist on countertop, we have scrapped our plans to keep a 2 piece bathroom incorporated into what will be... the new kitchen. While the bathroom would have been accessed through another room, saving door swing, it needs more space than I imagined.

 

We've decided to borrow space from the traditional dining room of this old house that we are presently using for office and food storage. Ironically, my ego was discombobulated to give up all the work I'd done to try to incorporate the 2 piece (which I've since decided must allow for a vanity large enough to hide the kitty litter box) into the new kitchen space that must also allow for dining and the hidden space guzzler, traffic flow. The new plan makes so much more sense. It will allow for a small pantry. We are both eager to get at it, but that won't come until we can move the bedroom upstairs... and the upstairs still needs a lot of work.

 

So with that I wish you peace and joy in your own life. I hope I will be able to share some creative work with you soon. Until then, I hope you can bring some creativity into your own life, so good for the soul..