C'est L'hiver!

My country is not a country, it's the winter

My garden is not a garden, it's the plains

My path is not a path, it's the snow

My country is not a country, it's the winter

Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver

Mon jardin ce n'est pas un jardin, c'est la plaine

Mon chemin ce n'est pas un chemin, c'est la neige

Mon pays ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver

~ Gilles Vigneault

(According to The Canadian Encyclopedia, when the song Mon Pays was composed in 1964, it wasn't intended as a Québeçois anthem. That happened later. It was written to express "nationalism, solidarity and connection to the northern landscape" and it is Mr. Vigneault's original intention I prefer to convey.)

It's been a pretty cold winter here in the great white north. Bitter cold, windy and snowy. There have been days when I've opted to bundle up and take Benny for a brisk walk in the frigid temperatures. There have also been quite a few more when I've decided to wimp out and just stay indoors. It's those days which prompted the photos below - all taken from the comfort of home.

Cats are the ultimate narcissists. You can tell this by all the time they spend on personal grooming. Dogs aren't like this. A dog's idea of personal grooming is to roll in a dead fish." ~ James Gorman

Zephyr knows that it's a day for relaxing at home and enjoying a long bath.

A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg. ~ Samuel Butler

Eggs, anyone? One brown egg amid the white. Something about it begged to be photographed and so I did eggsactly that. I crack me up.

Tomatoes and oregano make it Italian; wine and tarragon make it French. Sour cream makes it Russian; lemon and cinnamon make it Greek. Soy sauce makes it Chinese; garlic makes it good. ~ Alice May Brock

Not to be upstaged by fewer than a dozen eggs, my pal Bud finds his way into most of the foods we cook around here. The eggs were probably an eggception (okay, I'll stop now).

"Hear! hear!" screamed the jay from a neighboring tree, where I had heard a tittering for some time, "winter has a concentrated and nutty kernel, if you know where to look for it." ~Henry David Thoreau

We're getting "the look" from this Blue jay because this is all that's left are those itty bitty seeds. The hoards of jays who frequent our feeders have already gorged on all of the sunflower seeds and peanut bits. I'm not kidding when I say that we have a lot of these bossy beauties coming around each day. There are probably close to (if not more than) thirty of them who screech, tap and demand their meals. I hear them early in the morning, every single day, tapping at the wall outside my bedroom window. They sound like woodpeckers in slow motion. They also tap outside of the kitchen. After a bit of research and and awareness of the damage they're causing to the paint, I learned that blue jays eat the paint off of houses in order to get calcium in their diets. They seem to need more of it than other birds because they're the only ones who are attacking our house. It's known to happen in particularly cold, snowy winters when they can't get at some of the natural grit that offers their needed intake from the soil. The solution? Eggshells. And for a group this size, we're going to need a lot of eggshells. I've started collecting them but we don't eat all that many eggs. I'm considering asking the local deli/bakery if they can save theirs for us. The raw shells need to be placed in the oven for about a half hour to minimize the risk of the salmonella poisoning, then crushed up into pieces smaller than a dime and offered up on a silver platter (or any old plastic plate will do) for these spoiled brats of the avian persuasion. I'll let you know if it works.

My fake plants died because I did not pretend to water them. ~ Mitch Hedberg

This isn't fake. It's a real Jerusalem Cherry Pepper plant which we picked up at a local store. It was looking pretty tropical sitting in the window soaking up sunshine. But I'm not falling for it, Mother Nature. Just out of view, to the left, was a thermometer which read -27C (-17F).

We humans are the greatest of earth's parasites. ~ Martin H. Fischer

Unfortunately, our enjoyment of that plant was short lived. Peering closely at it one day, I saw tiny, red insects had set up shop in it, and the underside of the leaves were housing hundreds of their little eggs. You can see a few of them here, if you squint. Into the trash it went but I kept the pot to hold my cooking utensils.

Even the woodpecker owes his success to the fact that he uses his head and keeps pecking away until he finishes the job he starts. ~ Coleman Cox

This little lady would have probably enjoyed adding a few of those insects into her diet. She's a Hairy woodpecker. What do you suppose she's looking at?

The moon puts on an elegant show, different every time in shape, colour and nuance. ~ Arthur Smith

Could it be the moon rising in the middle of the day. This was the view out of our kitchen window, one afternoon. Strangely, I'm never certain whether to call that the front or back window. Ordinarily, I'd say it's the front because it's the side of the house which faces the road. There's a small deck just off of the kitchen but it's not where we generally sit because the other side of the house (the side that I would typically call the back of the house) faces the lake. There is no entrance on that side other than sliding glass doors which lead into the house from the deck. To me, that's the back of the house. But folks around here tend to refer to that as the front because it faces the water. What would you consider the front of the house - the side with the main entrance or the side with the view?

There was never a night or a problem that could defeat sunrise or hope. ~ Bern Williams

And now that we've pondered that little mystery, here's the early morning view as seen through the lake-facing window. Whether it's called front or back, there's no denying that it's a beautiful scene with which to greet awakening eyes.

More photos coming up.. when they do.