It is now mid January. Two weeks ago we had a big snowstorm. We had
45 centimeters of snow fall in 24 hours. Being Montreal, the city was
not paralyzed. It took a week and a half to clear the mountains of snow
off the sidewalks and roads, but at no time were any roads unpassable by
a single car no matter how small. The ski season kicked off early,
including cross country skiing which relies on real snow, unlike the ski
hills that have back up snow making machines. Sales of sleds, skis and
related equipment did well.
I meant to take photos but
I was too busy shoveling four feet of snow off the roof of my parent's
home in the Laurentians and skiing to bother. I thought about blogging
after the roads were mostly cleared, so I am sharing a link of some footage from Montreal
instead, and some of my mom, Sandy Cytrynbaum's photography from the Laurentians.
http://live.montrealgazette.com/Event/Montreal_snowed_under_Dec_27_2012?Page=0
Before the big storm, the temperature went up and it rained, then the temperature went down and the trees were coated with a thick layer of ice. After that the heavy snow pushed the branches down to look like a straitjacket on all the evergreen trees. The same applied to the roof of my parents' country home, which required a great deal of digging out to prevent it from collapsing on our heads. The night scene is the roof before...
We had a couple of fun days throwing down so much snow that the distance between the edge of the roof and the top of the snow pile was small enough for us to jump off the roof. To my children's disgust, I chickened out and used the ladder, but the rest of them and my husband Josh (part of whom you can see sticking out of the snow pile below) had a great time.
My parents are not really into garlic. I had given my mom a few heads of our garlic last summer. We easily ate a couple heads of garlic a week, and had none left by October from our harvest. My mom still had two heads of our garlic untouched up north, which we were delighted to cook up and quickly used up while visiting over the Christmas week. I missed eating really good fresh garlic. Even five months past harvest, that stuff is infinitely better than anything you can buy in a store.
No matter how we try to capture the magical beauty of the sun shining through the layers of ice coating the branches of the naked maples, birches and beeches, it never really comes out in photos. We still keep trying.
You can see the sparking snowflakes in the sunshine up close. From a distance, the sun tinged everything gold. I skied across the lake (below) and it was breathtaking. At -15 Celcius, it doesn't take much to take your breath away but this would have worked at any temperature.
So my mom asked me why I am putting these photos on my garden blog. Simply because at this time of year, my garden (and my mom's, and Chloe's) are completely buried under several feet of this stuff. The world becomes white and silver and grey with hints of gold and even blue. Nothing is green. Even the "evergreens" are buried and struggling to lift their arms.
As much as I love the cold and the winter (and skiing and tobogganing), at this time of year, I MISS MY GARDEN!!!!
