Winter Lace

We awoke to a snowy morning here at the farm and were treated to yet another “piece of artwork” crafted by Mother Nature. She had to work very hard to produce this one I am sure. During the night she took a very tiny paintbrush and coated every little twig and branch on every bush and tree and shrub on the property. She didn’t drop the snow in clumps, she individually painted each branch and covered the countryside with intricate winter lace .

It was still snowing when I first got up so everything had a soft edge to it, but by mid- morning the sun came out and the whole landscape went into high definition and lots of detail. It was absolutely spectacular to see the intricate artwork of every black twig outlined perfectly in brilliant white!

We spent the morning puttering around the farmhouse, but it was hard to get anything done because I kept being drawn to the windows. We made lunch and listened to the Vinyl Café on CBC while we feasted on hot sweet potato soup garnished with a dollop of sour cream. Mmm, so good on a cold winter day.

We do enjoy listening to Stuart McLean on CBC and hearing all about Dave and his adventures with his family. Stuart had stories about Christmas and snow-storms on the program today so it fit right in with the kind of day we were having. The program ended at 1pm and we were out the door shortly after that to blaze a trail through the new fallen snow.

Yikes! Was it ever cold out there, –16 with a wind chill of –27. We felt the cold while walking across the open field, but once we got on the old Logging Road, we were in the protection of the trees and soon warmed up as we hiked along. We followed our old tracks along Riverside Ramble Trail and then veered off onto the North Boundary Line Path and that was tough slugging in there. This route goes through dense bush and required lots of climbing over fallen trees and blazing new trails through thick snow. We had to really search for the pink ribbon markers to guide us along this path, and they were hard to find as some of them were completely covered with snow, and others had only a little corner of pink sticking out. We managed to find enough of them to keep to the path and cut a new trail through the snow, so the next time through should be much easier. That is one thing about snowshoes, they leave a nice clear path to follow. Even if it snows again, it is usually easy to see the outline of the old route through the trees.

We came back to the farmhouse an hour and a half later with rosy cheeks and cold noses, but warm fingers and toes and high spirits. We exchanged our snowy togs for warm track- suits and settled in to enjoy a hot cup of tea and a buttery shortbread cookie or two. Yum. Such a nice treat at the end of a cold walk.

The temperature took another dive this afternoon, so we went out for only a short time. We cleared the snow around the gate and dug the car out, but we sure didn’t go for another walk. We will stay inside for the night now and wait to see what marvel Mother Nature has to offer us tomorrow.

Hope you were able to get out for a walk in the fresh air and sunshine today too and maybe even saw a lacy tree or two along the way.