Winter wonderland

On Friday afternoon it started to snow: slowly, but surely. The weather network insisted there will be a 'storm' with 15cm of snow - which made me rant about what a true storm really means.

Well -they were partially wrong. There was a bit of a storm - by the end it stopped snowing, on Sunday morning!, we had about 30 cm of snow. I still think it's not a huge deal, but after seeing the roads - I came to the conclusions that even us, Canadians, have no clue how to drive in snow! I wonder if there is any country out there where they don't shut down at the first 10 cm of snow :(

On the bright side - we had a neighbour who pulled out his snowmobile and is having fun around the white streets :)

This is how our front yard looked late last night: quiet and covered in the snow which was still falling (at times in squalls).

The colourful tree you see on the right is "William's tree". It has a nice story - when we found out we'll be parents, that fall we planted 2 blue spruces in our backyard. It just felt right to bring more nature in a world where a new child will be born. It was truly a team effort - at the time I was about 3 months along and we had some visitors who wouldn't see me with a shovel in my hand (although I managed to put in some shovel time :) ).

We moved from that house about 2 years later - and there were many times when I considered pulling William's trees out and moving them with us. But we would move in late November and I was worried they will not travel well... and while I am one of the most logical persons I met, I can also believe in 'things'... and had I known I caused harm to that tree I would have been unhappy. The tree stayed behind and while I haven't been to the old house - yet - hubby drove a couple of times by and brought me the news that our tree grew and is a nice and tall affair. Happy!

The spring after we moved in the new (which is actually very, very old) house, we bought another blue spruce and put it in at the corner of the lot. We had bought a much smaller (as in young) one - for years it seemed it grew 5 mm a year (not really, but the growths was incredibly slow). Which was fascinating for us, especially for the child, who'd measure himself against "his tree".

This year is the first year when the tree surpassed the owner in height. And it is the year we have decided to decorate it - and that's what you see: the decor on William's tree. And on the bench - we put the bench in this fall, it is, in fact, a swing-bench and we've used it a couple of times. It helps this is an old neighbourhood - both in how long ago the houses were build, and in the age of inhabitants. Old in this case equals calm.

This is how the place looked like after 24 hours (and still falling) of uninterrupted snow!

If I'll ever manage to take the cables out of this picture, I'll make it my Christmas Card :) Maybe next year we'll decorate the magnolia too!

And because we've been missing carols and songs for a couple of days - this is not a carol, but a superb song by one of the country music groups I adore, Alabama.



Enjoy!