`The Cedars’, February 1980

View of the house from the highway

View from behind the house, fields and then the Trout River just below the tree line

View of sheds belonging to our neighbour, Donalda Smith

View of the house from rear

 

I owned this house, located about fifty miles south-west of Montreal at 4359 Route 138, from June 1979 to June 1997 when I returned to live in Montreal. The house was about 100 years old when I bought it; the best thing about the house is that it was adjacent to the Trout River; an old barn (to the right of the house above) burned down around 1985 and was replaced with a post and beam barn of the same size as the original barn. We sold the house and the new owners lasted about two years and then sold it; whoever bought the house a few years ago totally demolished the interior and renovated the place, nothing of what was once there is still present. 

The perennial garden in winter

There isn't a lot to do in the garden in winter, maybe there is nothing to do but walk through two feet deep of snow and the snow over the top of your boots. Or look out the dining room window at the snow and cold and be glad you're inside and not out there. These bright sunny March days can be quite warm in the sun, you might even get a sun tan sitting outside in the garden if there isn't a cloud cover. In the shade it's cold, it's -2 C. I had forgotten that March is my least favourite month.

A perennial garden doesn't require work in winter, no skimming this years seed catalogues, no buying seeds, no germinating seeds in-doors, there is none of that. All it requires is patience and try to get through our overly long winter.  So, just get on with your in-door life, go for a walk, make supper, vacuum the carpets, and soon a mostly white and empty garden will be transformed into something so different from the garden in winter that it is one of the wonders of our northern life. Nevertheless, by late February and the three weeks of winter in March one is fed up with winter, the cold, snow, and we just want it to end. 

And then on to Meadowbrook Golf Course

We had the Polar Vortex two weeks ago, -28 C and a wind chill of -39 C, but the rest of February is supposed to be mild, as it was on February 13 and the rest of this week. It's a good walk on the hidden trail and then to continue to Meadowbrook Golf Course and home along Cote St-Luc Road. You don't want to waste this mild weather since most of the rest of the day is spent in-doors. This isn't walking just to enjoy being out-doors, to hear birds singing, to feel that spring is in the air, to feel the sun on one's face, to see the neighbourhood, it's walking to stay alive. 

A good day to walk on the hidden trail

It was a sunny morning and a blue sky, it was +2 C, it felt like spring was in the air, so what better to do than walk on the hidden trail? Good news, only thirty days to the first day of spring.

13 February 2023

Snow removal in Montreal

I thought this was a mild winter, but it's not. It's -25 C this morning and getting colder, the furnace runs and runs and runs but the house doesn't warm up. The other night the city removed 25 - 30 cm of snow that they had ploughed to the side of the streets, and then it snowed again, and it snowed last night, not a lot but a white covering on everything. We're a northern people, more northern that anything else because that is our geography and geography affects who and what we are, our attitude to life, our relationship to the world. Living here, even if you are from the Islands or South America, you will become like us, a northern people. Geography has dictated it. Seven weeks to the end of winter, the days are getting longer, and we're Canadians, we'll get through this, we have no other choice.