Category Archives: Winter

No Winter Lasts Forever…

…No spring fails to appear.

Our last door wreath had seen better days so we picked this one on our last trip to HomeGoods in Spokane.

Last Thursday, Friday and Saturday we were able to spend time outside clearing some dead growth in several of our planters. We got a very good start but aren’t finished, yet. It was encouraging to see signs of Spring growth in those planters.

Columbines

Daffodils

Rhubarb

 

I changed up my plate hanger with these dishes, Dreamtown Made in England by Johnson Brothers. I have 4 dinner plates. They were a thrift store find.

Soon I’ll be pulling out the Easter bin and changing things up again with lots of Spring accents.

Are you seeing signs of Spring in your corner of the world?

Woody Came to Visit

Our birdfeeders attracted this Northern Flicker and he tried his best to twist his body to get some seed.

We had more snow over the weekend and now we are having rain. On Saturday we realized our hot water tank was not heating our water anymore so parts have been ordered to fix that problem. Until the parts come and the non working parts are swapped out we are in camping mode. Thankfully we have a quiet week ahead.

Hope all is well in your corner of the world.

First Weekend in January

The first weekend in 2024 proved to be a busy one. On Friday we enjoyed a last minute open house at the home of our friends and met some of their neighbors. On Saturday a big pot of borsch was cooked from scratch with broth from a seven bone roast. A few quarts of borsch will be shared this week. One small pot was delivered to our neighbor.

On Saturday evening we attended a Karaoke party for a friend from church who turned 50. We met another couple from our community and had a nice time getting to know each other. There have been lots of predictions of snow that didn’t materialize until Sunday in the wee hours. We woke up to a pretty blanketed landscape.

The following collage is photos of our ride into church on Sunday morning. Our series in Colossians continues to be excellent.

We didn’t have anymore snow on Sunday but they are threatening us with more starting Monday Evening into Tuesday. Time will tell if they are right.

Under the Pier

The beach in winter is a favorite of mine. These were some photos from our time at Huntington Beach during our family vacation in January that I haven’t shared yet.

I find the underside of a pier interesting and love watching the waves roll through.

Our niece Debbee and Lenny were married in 2013 in Huntington Beach and they took their engagement photos here so it was fun to try to recreate that moment.

This day was also Lenny’s birthday.

Today we are nowhere near the coast and we still have that white stuff on the ground and it’s not beach foam.

Our Colville kids are coming over for dinner tonight. Speaking of dinner, tonight will be the third dinner in a row that I’ve made. It’s a Notable February for that reason and others, too. Wednesday we had an Asian Stir Fry with actual vegetables. Here’s the dinner we had Thursday night. Leg of Lamb with vegetables in my Jamie Oliver Retro Roaster. We like lamb and I know many people don’t.

Tonight we’re having Oven Baked Tilapia with rice and vegetables or salad.

Speaking of food, 18 eggs were $4.24 at our local Wal-Mart on Wednesday. They were not the brown eggs, or free range eggs, or Beverly Hills Eggs, just the white caged bird eggs.

What have you been eating these days? Happy First Friday in February.

Feather Variety

Wednesday Hodgepodge is taking the month of January off. It will resume on February 1st.

I’m going to speed up the rest of my England posts and finish them off in the month of January.

We continue to enjoy our bird sightings.

This was our first viewing of the House Finches this winter. The others have been daily visitors.

It was fun to see the red feathers thrown into the mix.

January has started very quiet around our Country Bungalow. That suits me fine. I’ve started another puzzle, much harder than the one we put together on Katie’s birthday. We enjoyed watching the Rose Parade on RFD TV. I found their coverage so much better than the major stations. The college games droned on in the background as I worked on the 1,000 piece puzzle.

Hope 2023 has started kindly in your corner.

Boxing Day 2022

On Monday, Boxing Day, the travelers loaded up and braved our Colville kids mile long snowy driveway for some fun in the snow. It was above freezing and they wanted to get some sledding in before things got too mushy. Baba and Gramps stayed home and had a quiet recuperating day until dinner time.

Uncle Andrew and Uncle Josh used their muscle power to speed up the fun. Daddy was at work this day but he groomed the trails anticipating this fun day.

Addy wanted the snowman to be super big! Olaf the snowman is super big. Great job everyone!

When the fun was over they had a wild ride back to our Country bungalow through all the slush and ice. We enjoyed leftovers for our meal.

These are all Auntie Lolo’s photos and I love this shot of Main Street Colville that she got looking North towards Colville Mountain. The shot of the beautiful sunset is from her phone, too.

One more post coming of our time together celebrating Auntie Katie’s birthday.

BTTP (Back to the Present) It’s snowing again this morning. Our road has been cleared nicely of the snow and ice from the previous storms but the city side streets are still a mess with bumps and ruts and sheets of ice. It made for a very interesting ride to get Dear to Occupational Therapy yesterday. Our Westside kids all are home safe and sound and their snow is not an issue anymore. We had a couple of days of rain and above freezing temperatures that left us with a clear deck but today it is white again. Temps in the 20’s are predicted again for the first week of 2023 so our views will continue to be white for a while longer…

How are things in your corner?

Deep Freeze

Winter has come in frigid.

We venture out for a very short time and only if necessary. Our faces start feeling the freeze almost immediately.

We did venture into town today to the post office and to the grocery stores. Since we were in town we decided that Chinese Food would be a treat and something different for lunch. Back home safe and sound. We have our interior doors to the bedrooms all shut including any other room that has a door to conserve our heat to our sitting areas. We continue to throw out seed for our feathered friends.

On Wednesday at dusk we were startled by a large bird landing on our deck and taking off quickly with a fat quail in it’s claws! It was a huge hawk. We were stunned. Birds of prey need to eat, too.

We are hoping our kids from the west will arrive safe and sound on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We’ve got some wrapping and a little baking yet to do. We’ll also mop and steam the floors that have seen the worst from snow covered boots here and there.

Hope you all are ready to enjoy this joy filled time of year.

The Birds Are Back

Bay Breasted Warbler

Watching the birds makes me realize how much our windows need a good Spring cleaning!

Happy 11th Anniversary to our daughter and son-in-law! God bless you with many more!

Looking forward to this weekend. Do you have plans on this Spring forward time change weekend?

Winter Puzzle Finale

This will be the last puzzle I complete this Winter.

This one has oversized pieces which makes it a lot easier than the last one.

Spring is coming and there will be projects starting around our country bungalow!

Sunset last night. When driving through town last evening we were so surprised to see that gas prices have gone up over a dollar here in one weeks time. Yikes.

Time to work on our schedules to make our drives into town worth it.

Birds in Winter

It felt like a great accomplishment when I put the last piece in this puzzle.

We haven’t seen a lot of birds yet in our back acres and the ones that stop by don’t stop for long.

We’ve put out seed and then we’ll have another inch of snow fall and it covers the seed.

We are having a bit of a warming trend this week with rain so everything will be slushy and dirty.

Goodbye to February. We hope that March brings good news abroad and at home. We started our church service yesterday pausing and praying for all involved in the war in Ukraine.