I love my back yard. I would live in it if we had the climate to do so. Unfortunately, that would be pretty uncomfortable for much of the year. So for most of the year I wait for those warm days where I can putter around in the garden or sit on a bench in the sun. Such is life in Canada, where you can be cold 12 months of the year. However, living in the lower mainland of BC, we enjoy the best weather in Canada for gardening and can grow a huge variety of plants that other parts of Canada can only wistfully dream about.
During the winter months, I never actually see my back yard except on the weekends. That's because I go to work when it's dark and return home in the dark. It is beautiful on those few days in the winter when we get a heavy snowfall that blankets the yard and plants with a puffy white covering.
Our 10 year old son is ecstatic when we get a snow fall like this. It gets to the point of obsessive. "What's the temperature?" "Is it going to melt?" "Do you think we have more snow than Ronnie?" (He's a boy who lives just down the road). "Are we going to get more snow tonight?" I will get each of those questions twelve times a day when it snows. Lately he has become more philosophical, as we were driving home from Ronnie's one night and he was obsessing about the snow, as we drove into our yard he said to himself - "Remember Harrison, don't get too attached to anything made of snow".
You've got to love Spring in Canada! Here we are in Lotusland, baseball season is in full gear, the flowers and blossom trees are emerging and what else? It's snowing!!! This global warming sure has funny ways of manifesting. Last night, just after supper, huge, wet snowflakes started to descend in our neighbourhood. We were freaked out. Our 10-year-old was happy! After a couple of hours, I had to go out with a broom to knock the snow from the branches of many of the shrubs and trees in our yard. They were laden down with the sticky white piles of wet, heavy snow. The tulips in these pictures are the same.
The photo of the bedraggled, shivvering group was taken this morning. The happy orange flowers with their heads held proudly in the sun was from a couple of years ago. Note the green grass in the background. Can we please have that picture back?
