To a Happier 2022

My mini friends and I got together electronically on Wednesday, as the pandemic is hitting new highs in terms of infections. We had been warned that things would likely get bad post-Christmas and New Year, but 2,500 new cases in a province with less than 875,000 population is very alarming. Too many people out there have not gotten their vaccinations....

While I  did get some mini work done Wednesday, it was unspectacular; installing the light poles on the corners of my market stall base (geez, it is hard typing with a cat on your lap!), and sealing the pavement, as well as a little painting on more stuff for the stall.

This is the sun coming up on Tuesday morning, through the birch and hemlock trees, and our small, south-east facing,  front garden apple orchard. It is too bad the sparkles on the new-fallen snow don't show. We are having a snow storm, that is, 30 cm (a foot!) of snow is forecast, along with 70 to 80 km wind gusts. The snow started about twenty minutes ago, and is supposed to continue tomorrow (Saturday). It is the kind of very fine, powdery snow that tends to swirl up into serious drifts....

This is the view from my living room windows, across our back garden, much of which we have left natural (or wild!), over the Saint John river valley across to the bank on the north side of that river.

The local people call the river, Woolastooq, and there is a movement to give it back its original name, rather than the one given to it by an early explorer. (It may have been Samuel de Champlain, who hung around in these parts.) The mouth of the river empties into the Bay of Fundy at the modern city of Saint John, the river likely getting its name for being "discovered" on St. John the Baptist's feast day, several hundred years ago.

It was cold on Tuesday, -16C, and when it gets that cold and the sun is out, our sky is the most beautiful shade of turquoise blue, sometimes greenish at the horizon. This wonderful winter light is what makes this overly long cold season bearable for many of us.

May the New Year be a better one than the two that we have just endured, and happy mini-ing!