Winter is upon us.  It was menacingly frigid out there today, but yesterday was relatively mild (-12 or so?) and we went for a family trek up to the fields and woods behind our house.  I love it out there, and feel so fortunate to live here, in this quaint, wild part of the world, that nevertheless possesses a kind of steady-yet-crumbling culture, evidenced by ancient (by Canadian standards)  buildings like our own house, which has stood (more or less, ha) since the late 1800s.

*

Everyone came on the walk/sliding trip, including Oscar, our cat, who always eagerly joins us on any sojourn around the neighbourhood unless he has been accidentally left indoors (he is a 95% indoor cat–he loves to hang out in the garden in the summertime, and to accompany us when we go up to the field, but stays inside the rest of the time.  He’s not much of a roamer).

*

We have three dogs, which is, for the most part, three dogs too many, but we love them all.  Curly is the best dog in the world–calm, patient, good-natured, well-behaved, and lovely in every way.  Loki is a bad dog, as his name suggests (yes, I know, no such thing as a bad dog, only bad parents).  He’s actually not all bad, but he has a propensity for chewing and eating everything, which gets tiresome, and he’s generally silly and adolescent about life, which can also  be fun, of course.  Dogma is a tiny Havanese, and her favourite thing to do is to run madly into the cow pastures, barking furiously, with every intention of slaying each and every one of her bovine foe.  My granny, who died about four years ago would have loved our dogs.

*

We had so much fun out there.  Everyone was happy, and I even attempted to do a run down the hill with Cosmo on my back (please, before you write in to tell me how dangerous and foolhardy I am, we were going at about three miles per hour, and my decision to take on that risk was fully informed.)

*

The hedgerows and forest edges, and the bright blue sky and barren trees were so beautiful.  Fields of ice and snow.  I cursorily inspected some of the branches of the plants for signs of bud, sap running, but nothing yet.  It’s hard to believe that everything is still alive, and moving, underneath the glassy surface of things.

*