Winter's last blast

 After a mild few weeks, the weather took a turn for the colder this week. Yesterday an ice storm came through and left a fairly thick coating of ice over everything. This morning it warmed up quickly, so the ice began to melt: we could hear it almost exploding off the roof as we woke up.

The chickens' run resembled an ice rink. And it turns out chickens don't like skating, even if they are Canadian.

Spring, all of a sudden

 The weather has just taken a warmer turn, which is just as well, as I couldn't leave it much longer to transplant my peppers, eggplants and tomatoes from the warmth of the house. I spent a happy hour in the greenhouse on Monday, potting everything on. 100 tomatoes, 33 peppers and 12 eggplants are all now in greenhouse beds or in pots waiting to go outside once the soil is warm enough. It will be some weeks before that is true!

On Saturday I was up early for a long drive to Kitchener. I had to stop on my way out of the County to grab this scene: this is at Carrying Place, with the Bay of Quinte in the distance. It was a magical moment, just before the sun came up.

The chickens are really enjoying being able to run around in the orchard again. The older Buff Orpington rooster keeps his distance from the younger one (who is Top Bird at the moment), but the Welsummer rooster doesn't seem to have any disputes with the other two. I usually resist naming the chickens, but this one looks like he should be called Kelloggs, don't you think?

Ice out

'Ice out' is when a lake is clear of ice after the winter. Usually it happens to 'our' lake at around the time of the Spring Equinox, but last year and this year it's been April before all the ice has melted. We had high winds the other night and they must have been responsible for the huge piles of drift-ice that have washed up in places along the edge of the lake. I've never noticed this happening before, but they are really quite something to see!

Excursion

Last winter was so snowy that the chickens didn't get outside for a solid three months. I'm looking back at last January's posts and remembering how horrendous it was. There is snow on the ground now, but only a few inches and there is even some grass visible at the moment. When it's very cold or windy I don't open up the back of the barn for the chickens, but today is milder and some of the hens ventured out to take the air.

The lake has been looking very pretty, reflecting back some clear blue skies of late.

 

But it's difficult to walk along our western fenceline at the moment, which is just a solid sheet of ice.

Changing colours

Autumn brings its usual changes to the scenery: morning mists and gorgeous reds and oranges.

And for us, it generally brings a dearth of eggs in the henhouse, as the chickens take a well-earned rest from laying. I've been getting one, two or zero eggs each day in the last week or two.

Today's egg harvest was two, and it wasn't until I'd got into the kitchen that I noticed one of them was not the usual Buff Orpington palish brown.

The new hens have started laying! Well, one has, anyway. The eggs either side of the bluey-green Ameraucana one are the normal range of colours that we get from the Buffs. In the dimness of the barn the Ameraucana egg looked a lot like the paler Buff eggs.

I'm very pleased that the new hens are beginning to lay. From being a position of scarcity, I suspect that very soon we might be in the position of being over-egged!

Sacred sights

I was at a work-related event in St. Catharines last week and took the opportunity to visit Niagara Falls for the first time. It's only three hours away from home, but somehow we'd never taken the time to go there, despite being in Ontario for nearly seven years now.

It's still quite early in the tourist season, so there weren't that many people around. What struck me was how mulitnational the crowd was - this really is a place that people will make a pilgrimage to from all over the world.

And with good reason - I had not realised how awe-inspiring this natural feature is.

I loved it and found it hard not to keep smiling as I walked along the gorge, admiring the views and marvelling at all the people who were there with me, recording themselves with the falls as their (literal) backdrop.

I drove home on Sunday and got delayed in traffic in Toronto for a while. But because I did, I saw the meteor which fell over Peterborough at around 4.17 on Sunday afternoon. It's been a week of wonders.

You missed a bit

 The snow is melting away in a sometimes unpredictable manner. Lumps are left behind here and there, like a man who hasn't quite rinsed off all the shaving foam from his face.

The gate is finally clear of snow, although the lake you can glimpse in the distance is still frozen.

In places, the remains of the snow drifts create artistic cliffs above the fast-flowing meltwater.

Usually there are huge sheets of ice at this time of year, but all the snow has stopped much from forming around the stream this winter. It's certainly been an interesting season, but I'm not sorry to be seeing it leave!

Another boring post about snow

I apologise - you  must be utterly sick of all the snow pictures by now. (Although not as much as I am, I suspect.)

As you can see, there's still a lot to left to melt - and guess what? It's snowing again as I type.

The depth of snow around the gate is back to about where it was in late-January.

It's funny to think that I entitled a post 'Relentless winter' back on January 7th. Little did I know...

My seedlings are keeping me (mostly) sane. Here are those little asparagus plants, growing away well.

Snowing and going

When I woke up today, it was snowing again, but only enough to turn the world completely white for a few hours ('English snow', I thought to myself). By lunchtime the morning coating had melted.

The day warmed up a bit more and now there is some serious melting of the big snow banks going on. The ditch on the western side of the farm is visible again for the first time in months as the drifts have collapsed into it.

And the gate is a bit more visible than it has been of late.

The softening snow brings new perils, however. This next picture is the deep hole my right leg descended into as I walked back from taking the two photos above. The hole that made me tumble forward, flat on my face.

With a pocket full of eggs.

Spring?

The average temperature so far this month has been -13°C. A pathetic 8.5° in Fahrenheit. The newspapers are full of advertisements for Spring products, the weather people are proclaiming that we're in meteorological spring, and yet the view from the window is determinedly wintry.

The garden gate is still comprehensively buried in its deep snow drifts.

And fences and barns are still sporting picturesque snowy highlights.

There is a chance that the temperature will edge above the freezing mark tomorrow, for the first time in nearly two weeks. The poor chickens have not been out of the barn since mid-December and they've probably forgotten that there even is an outside. In the kitchen I'm sprouting some green lentils - ostensibly to give the chickens something fresh to eat, but really to give myself something green to look at!

Volcanoes

The weather conditions this year have created ice volcanoes in places along the Lake Ontario shoreline. I stopped to take pictures of some on the north side of Wellers Bay this morning, on my way home from running some errands. They give the impression more of a moonscape than a lakescape!

Further down the same road is a patch of open water, where swans and geese congregate in large numbers.

Pastel dawn

 The clear skies and snow cover gave this morning's sunrise a peaceful pastel palette.

The solar panels were particularly pink in the first rays of the sun - with one mysteriously clear of yesterday's snow, giving the array the impression of a gap-toothed grin.

Snow-bound greenhouse

I waded through the snow to the greenhouse today, thinking about the parsnips I've still got in there and wondering whether they'd be dig-uppable. Luckily the eastern doors slide, otherwise I would not have got inside.

I took a fork to the parsnip bed, but it is still frozen solid, so no joy there. I left the greenhouse to its winter peace and solitude.

Outside, it's still just about the snow. We did get a bit of rain for a change on Saturday, which means that the driveway is back to the December layer of ice again. But everywhere else is still pretty snowy.

But the sun was shining and it's now setting well past five o'clock, so the year is turning towards summer, even if it does feel like a long way off.

Thigh-high

Just in case anyone's still interested - the gate is just visible after another 48 hours of pretty much continuous snow:

The path up to the bigger barn is impassable - I tried it earlier today but wading in snow up to my hips proved too difficult.

The dog managed to bound his way through it, though. Here he is on his way back:

Invisible at this point, apart from his tail:

And emerging triumphantly from the bottom.

...a bit snowy.

Snow on snow

If things have been a little quiet around here, it's mainly because I've been spending my spare time digging us out from underneath the snow.

After last Sunday's day-long blizzard, the gate next to the small barn was fairly well buried.

The last three days brought yet more snow and now the gate is barely visible.

But the high winds have scoured the snow off the solar panels, so at least we're back in production up there.

There's no sign of warmer weather in the forecast, although there are threats of more snow, so I suspect it will get worse before it gets better. Oh well, all the shovelling provides a pretty good workout. Who needs a gym membership?

It's complicated

One thing that has struck me about winters here is how varied they are, which is not something I was expecting before we emigrated. Snow and ice, yes, I was expecting them, but it's the varied combinations of precipitation and temperatures that makes each winter not quite the same as the last and keeps us all talking constantly about the weather (I know the British have a reputation for talking about the weather a lot - but Canadians have so much more weather to talk about).

The ice storm was a first for us, and this winter was also the first time we'd experienced frost quakes (cryoseisms) - when rapid freezing after the ice storm jolted the house in what felt like a small explosion.

After grumbling about the blizzard-like conditions on Tuesday, I had a lovely walk in the snow-drifts that were left in their wake on Thursday.

There were interesting, meringue-like heaps,

alongside coyote tracks,

and ash trees disguised as silver birches, under an impossibly blue sky. Perhaps winter isn't so bad, after all.

Today's walk was less fun. It has warmed up just enough to make the layer of December ice below the snow unstable. Every so often the ice cracks underneath your weight, maliciously snagging an ankle or unexpectedly dropping your whole body six inches lower.

So yes, my relationship with winter is complex. Just when I'm ready to call the whole thing off, it charms me back. And then trips me up again. Sigh.

Christmas decorations

I don't do a lot of interior Christmas decorations - just the tree and a few lights. But Mother Nature does an excellent job outdoors - and I'd much rather admire her handiwork.