Frosty days

It’s cold here in western Canada….

There’s been no wind lately, so it’s incredibly beautiful, with the trees rimed with frost.  Look carefully at the picture above…. how many birds can you count in the pic?

See that band of light just above the low trees on the hillside?

That’s the sun…. that’s how high it gets these days….

just above the horizon.

The light is spectacular these days. It’s almost liquid, and shimmers in the frost and the trees. You can see where the idea for lacemaking first took hold in the human heart!

Jim and I were out with the tractor and chainsaw in the grove of trees up on that hill. In the fall, we had spectacular wind storms that shattered hundreds of trees.  We have been hauling the deadfall in and chopping it up to burn in the wood burning stove.

We never cut down living trees, and we plant lots more every springtime, plus we compost the horse’s poop, so we are constantly enriching our soil.  So, we feel like we are living in a fairly balanced way.

Cutting wood keeps you warm several times over: When you are gathering it, moving it, chopping it, moving it, splitting it, moving it, and burning it. Did I mention that you are moving it a lot of times?

At one point, I was trying to pull down a large chunk of snag (broken tree) that had gotten caught in a smaller tree when the wind sent the big one smashing  and crashing to the ground.  The branches of the standing tree were covered in thick frost and fluffy crystaline snow. When I katwanged on the snag, the entire snowbank in the tree cascaded down on me.  The snow found it’s way into every little place it could!

Oh brrr! but, kind of wonderful, too…. It was an amazing sensation….

time to go put another log on the fire……….

What a lovely way to heat the studio!