Walk Along the Beach

When the calendar turns to spring, apparently it means it. Saturday it rained most of the day and well into the night, but then cleared off. Sunday after church we decided to head for a walk to one of our favorite places (we have a lot of those!) where the river channel meets the lake. Everything is very low water this time of year, held back by dams in preparation for glacial melt over the next few months.

One of the cool things in our area this time of year is that trumpeter swans rest here on their way back to their Arctic breeding grounds.



More photos are in an album at Facebook.

Winter Walk

It's been a couple years probably since I've posted a photo tour of where I walk daily. This morning it was -15 Celcius (about +5F) and the hoar frost was intensively beautiful. I waited till the sun came up (after 9) to walk Brody and grabbed the camera. We've had only a couple of small snowfalls since the first week of January. Since then, most days have been about the same temperature (cold!) and foggy and/or cloudy. It's nice to see the sun. Here it is peeking through a frost-covered tree at the end of our driveway:


Not far west on our one-mile-long road is what I call The Sentinel. Remind you of anyone you know?



A bit farther west there are trees on both sides of the road:



Our road ends on private property just beyond the irrigation channel, so it's Brody's and my turnaround spot. Here we've just turned back. The neighbors have been enjoying the speedway of the channel!



Here are the neighbor's corrals:



Somebody I know loves the snow and isn't near as tired of the cold as I am!



That same somebody loves to eat rose hips; I'm surprised there are any left on the bushes.



Just about back to our farm.



And when I look south-east again, towards the sun, I see there are still wisps of fog in that direction.



I hope you enjoyed this virtual walk. I'm sure it was warmer for you than it was for me!

Weather is something we love to hate

Who's with me on that? Last weekend (Easter), Friday was cold and windy and rainy. Saturday was sunny and fairly warm (8 degrees Celcius) which was a good thing as Hanna was taking outdoor photos at her cousin's wedding. We woke up Easter Sunday to slushy snow, but it mostly melted as it hit the ground.

The whole week has been kind of chilly for late March, but I still wasn't prepared to wake up to about three inches of the white stuff this morning. It kept coming for a few more hours, mostly melted in the afternoon, then started snowing again later.

I've heard rumors of all manner of white stuff sightings across the continent in the last week. Now really, I know *somebody* reads this blog, so if you have white stuff to report, would you pop a note in comments? Just give us a general geographic area. As for me, it's south-eastern British Columbia reporting in.

Hoar Frost

This brief essay is written in second person pov as a nod to the Effective Viewpoint Workshop we're running this month at Forward Motion



Since you started walking to somewhere, you've been dropping off your husband at work every morning--you start an hour later than he does--and, once you've parked the car behind the shop, you head out for a brisk walk. You pull your knitted headband low over your forehead and ears and tug on your fleece gloves. It's a cold one today, and you're glad you grabbed the coat that goes to your knees. It will help keep your thighs from going numb.

A damp fog settled over the valley last night, and the visibility is still low. It's not dangerous to walk, though, so long as you watch out for patches of ice. Yesterday's temperatures got several degrees above freezing, and the resulting melt-off was shocked to a halt overnight, icing over wherever it happened to be.

The air is crisp, smelling of wood smoke and frost, as you hike north on eleventh avenue, up the hill. Hoar frost graces every strand of nature. The shrub on your right has feathery fronds that reach heavenward, each minute hair delicately crisped with white. The cedar up the block, the pine across from it--each needle accentuated.

This chain link fence is utilitarian and normally slinks in the background. Today you marvel at the precision of the stark white grids, blazoning its presence. The wrought iron on the fence down the block is also covered with white crystals, giving it a fuzzy appearance.

Your cheeks and chin and nose are burning with cold, but when you cover them with your gloved hands, your glasses fog up, rendering you blind. You pause a moment, unsure of your footing until you can see again.

Your attention is caught by birds fluttering and chirping, so you hurry around the corner to see what they're excited about. You stop in awe at the sight of a mountain ash tree**, delicately painted in white frost, every twig, every clump of red berries frosted over. A bird feeder hangs from a branch, and the LBBs* are having the best time swooping from ground to feeder and back again, chittering with each other as they go.

Intended walking route forgotten, you catch a glimpse around the next corner and head over to see what new marvels await. You're so glad you did, for a majestic weeping willow stands streaming with tails of frost, hundreds upon thousands of them, each delicately outlined. In the corner of the yard, a clump of ornamental grasses at least ten feet tall has never looked as festive as it does today.

Beauty is all around you, and even though you can't wait for spring, you can't help but treasure this morning walk.

*LBBs are otherwise known as Little Brown Birds.

**Mountain Ash

Over half done Quest edit

So, the 10-12 inches of snow turned into 6-8 inches of slush. Our driveway is still bad (yay for 4 wheel drive) but the main roads are bare, though temperatures hover at the black ice stage. Whew. Survived that storm. My cold is *nearly* gone. I hate the lingeringness...

So. Quest to be Queen. I wrote this novel during Nano '04 and this is the first I've looked at it since. I have to say I didn't take it all that seriously at the time. Here's the blurb:

Teagren is convinced that High Prince Cecil desires her to be his bride, for he has bestowed upon her the Kiss of Promise. However, the King invokes the traditional Quest and a young woman from each of the seven lands of Dhaneira is chosen to participate. Each has one magical kit bag which includes one magical gift to aid them on the journey. Cecil may choose his bride from the contestants who return to Zabetha within a year and a day with a Token from each land. Teagren thinks the Quest is just a formality. Of course she will return on time...and of course Cecil will choose her.

She hasn't counted on Kosse, the bespelled prince who requires a kiss to wake him...and she can't get the token from underneath his body with him asleep. She hasn't counted on Esdras, the young hero-in-training. She hasn't counted on the vegetarian dragon named George, the needle in the haystack, or the frog who has been turned into a prince. She especially has not counted on the magical gifts of the other contestants.

Will Teagren get what she wants...or will she want what she gets?

I mean, what's to take serious about something this spoofy and silly? But I'm having great fun editing the thing up and I'll see what my pack of critters has to say about it. I've rammed through 42K of it in the past three weeks or so and with any luck can email it out just before Christmas break. Though this seems to be the week of salesmen at work, and they do cut into my time. (sob)

How the weather changes!

The picture below was taken a week ago.



Today I took the photo that has become my blog header and the one below.



Last Tuesday we got about eight inches of snow. It cleared off nicely but didn't warm up, so nothing melted significantly. I woke up this morning to falling snow and by evening I would guess we've had about another 8-10 inches of fluffy powder. Some may like this kind of snow; I was just thankful I didn't have to drive today.

I've had a nasty cold this week that has sapped much of my energy and sleep. And given me a scratchy throat. Hope to be on the mend soon. Like really soon.

Camping

Amazingly enough it is just as hot up in the mountains as it is down in the valley. The only thing that is colder is that the creek is colder than the lake. Quite a lot colder, being as it is glacier-fed (and not that far away!). However, when the air is somewhere around 40 Celcius (or over 100 Fahrenheit) there are things you do that you wouldn't normally consider. This is what I did multiple times (like every two or three hours all day long):



Hubby decided he could get cool enough by fishing in the creek. Sometimes he'd take off his t-shirt, soak it in the creek, and put it back on.



We also did a lot of reading and eating and reading and eating.



Some of you may know that a couple weeks ago we had a ferocious storm go through our valley (including a minor tornado) that killed our power for almost 24 hours. Some of the worst damage in the region was along the riverbed that our camping creek flows into. This was our first *sign* of damage as we turned off the highway: CAUTION to road users!



This shows a section of road that had at least twenty trees down across it. Pity the folks that had to cut their way back to civilization! (And why many of us camp with chainsaws as part of the rigging!)



And here is some lucky person's cabin:



So the benefits of being back home? Showers that can be any temperature I want--and don't have to be SHOCKINGLY cold. An air conditioner in the bedroom, even though it is LOUD. A fridge that doesn't have to battle the major heat against it and keeps things an appropriate temperature. Screens to keep the bugs out.

But I do love sitting by the creek and reading.

YAAAY

This morning when I looked out the window there were about twenty or more robins in the lilac bush (looking as annoyed as robins can get--scary, that...). Annoyed at what, you say? How about the snow covering the ground? It was quite a sight, actually. We had several inches, and then most of it melted by noon. If that was the worst kick-back we're getting out of winter, it's not so bad. We didn't even manage slick roads out of it.

But, I digress. Today has REAL NEWS. Today is the day we have all been waiting for. Today is the day that I make an announcement. Ready? I finished first draft of my 2-year novel, False Perceptions. It came in at about 84K, which is my longest first draft to date. I'll be able to add 10-20K easily enough by setting scenes better (description is something I really gloss over in first draft; *I* can see it, why can't you?) and then there are those subplots that I need to search out and tie off. I can think of several right off the top.

Friday afternoon. Ah. It will be nice to think about something else for a while.