BRRRRRR!!!

Last time I said that winter had arrived. Well,--it stayed! It dug in with a vengeance, and we're stuck in the deep freeze.

Just as a corrective to the green pictures in my last post, here are two pics taken yesterday morning around 9 a.m. The first is the view from the living room looking south at the greenhouses and the sales building. If you check the brown fence to the right of the sales building, you can actually see the flakes coming down.

Our country quilting group meets every Thursday, but when I saw how much snow had accumulated I called our leader to check if the meeting was still on. She had had several calls, but thought the group would go ahead. I told her I would not come, as I didn't want to get stuck in our driveway. The plow had been by earlier, but our driveway had some drifts. It really did seem the sort of day to spend at home by the fireplace, knitting, reading and drinking hot chocolate.

The second picture is taken looking west from the living room. That mound of white is on top of the brown railing, and is high enough that you can't even seen the road from the house. The snow outside the window is about 2 feet deep, slightly above the bottom of the window.

But Shirley phoned back about an hour later and said her husband had to come into town and he'd come pick me up in his truck. So I was able to get to the meeting after all. It was so good to see my friends there again. They've been holding meetings for several weeks already, but I missed them all. Around 4 p.m. Shirley brought me back home. Very much appreciated!

Tomorrow the town quilting group has an all day retreat, 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. Jim will bring me there and pick me up when I'm ready to come home, which I'm pretty sure will be before 10 p.m. I'm looking forward to receiving four more patterns for the block of the month our club is doing this year. We always have a very good time together, with lots of funny stories and shared laughs.

I did manage the hill walk three times this week, so at least I have a beginning. I've timed it, and can make it to the top of the hill in 28 minutes, and back home in 26. I'm pretty satisfied with that time as it's somewhere close to 3 miles round trip, with almost half being uphill. My main concern is to get used to carrying weight in the backpack.

Current temperature: -21ºC, with no significantly better weather in sight until about next Wednesday at the earliest. These are the dark, cold days before Christmas. Makes you want to put up the lights and get out the candles!