Gateway to Big Sky Country

Yesterday I went for my very first snowmobile ride. Imagine writing that after living in SK for over 30 years?? I find the whole process of moving the machine to the road, unloading, etc., etc. a bit too time consuming - I'd rather put the skins on the skis and start hiking. The smell was a bit offensive, although it gets better once the ride begins. My rookie driver (Dave) had a bit of difficulty on a couple of the turns - just way too much snow, even for Bombardier. We jumped off twice to avoid turning it over on ourselves and had to dig it out of the snow once. However, it did get me up 8 km on the Blue Ridge FS Road and we snowshoed another 3 km. The sun actually came out and we had fabulous views. Starting at the bottom, I wouldn't have made it up that far.

The ride down was good. I'm enjoying the new "shoes" but like all modern inventions, they don't work as well in deep snow as the old beavertails. They are great for climbing over all the snowpiles banked up along the roads as I "shoe" into and out of town.

Happy Christmas, Happy Solstice

For the very first time we celebrated Solstice as "christmas" and today has been a quiet, unassuming holiday. On the 21st of December, we opened presents with Mum, Dad, Andrea and Demitri, had a ski/walk, cooked a wonderful Ferraro's Foods (in Rossland) fresh turkey and ate ourselves silly. Today, December 25th, we got up at our usual time, had a light breakfast followed by a good walk. After a very "Christmasy" lunch of cheese, crackers and seafood, we've been sleeping, reading and enjoying the fire. There will be cold turkey with all the trimmings (TX beans about to be put into the oven) and perhaps a couple of games of crib to round out the day. Happy return to longer days to all!

Yes, Hell Really Is Freezing Over!

This is our latest purchase - last Thursday we went to Sears in Nelson and bought our very first dishwasher!! The sales were good and last night we actually tried it out. It's very quiet and seems to work. There's still dishes to do, of course, and I feel a bit guilty about all the water we'll use. These newer models are supposed to use a minimal amount of water. It does make the kitchen look much more finished and we only have to add a couple of rows of tile to complete the floor. Now if you don't believe hell is freezing over, read on to the next post about Dave's recent purchase.

Toys for Boys

If you can't tell what's going on in this photo, it's a picture of Dave making adjustments to his recently purchased second-hand ski-doo!! Even though I totally disapprove of skidoos I can't complain too heartily because Dave has purchased very few toys for boys over the 36 years of our marriage. Some people here have told me I'm going to love it because we can get above the "lid" of the mountains and get up into the sunshine. I'll reserve judgement for a wee bit yet.

The Clothesline

I couldn't resist taking a picture of my clothesline yesterday - it was a perfect day for drying clothes, although the long shadows that occur in the Koots at this time of year do not give much opportunity for sun to shine north of our home - the location of my clothesline. We had wind, though, and most things dried partially.

Last night we had our first killing frost and I'm afraid that the pots are gone. The raccoons have been enjoying coming to the bird feeder that is posted on our deck railing so we need to remember to bring it in each night. They spent part of their time last night picking sunflower seeds out of the flowers in one of the deckpots. A late and lingering fall has been most enjoyable.

Lookout to Loki

As the last week of November begins, you can see that we finally got some clear skies in the Koots. This is Mt. Loki across the lake in the Purcells; it is one of the most distinguishing mountain landmarks in the area. Dave managed to climb it this summer but I have enjoyed watching its many moods. This picture was taken Wednesday while on the Wednesday Walk with 15 other keen hikers. We walked above Fletcher Falls along a ridge with lots of open views of Kootenay Lake and the Purcells. We then tramped through woods to an Old Growth Forest - I found that a bit hard to do on a sunny, cloudless day - give me my sunshine!

Interesting to observe the garden as well, during the waning days of this dreary month. My lavendar continues to bloom, 4 deck pots still look pretty good and a couple of my groundcovers have a few flowers on them. I did pull out the sweet peas - not because they were frozen, but simply because they were receiving so little light the blooms wouldn't open. We carried leaves from Mirror Lake to cover the garden beds, but I refuse to cover the last remaining vesitges of summer on one perennial bed: it still just looks too fine!

A Step Back in Time

Municipal elections just took place in B.C. this past weekend. I worked as a scrutineer for the encumbent Regional Director for the Central District of Kootenay. It was refreshingly archaic as all the votes were hand counted and we had to wait around for a couple of hours to find out the final tally. I'm not sure how many polling stations were actually "out there", but I believe it was four, plus the advanced poll. Kaslo poll was by far the largest of the 5 polls. No one could find any results for our area on the CBC radio carrying the results or on their website. We waited until nearly ten o'clock for a phone call (to some this might be considered using technology) from "up the lake" to receive the poll results from Argenta and Meadow Creek. We then added up the total votes en mass - in our heads - just like elementary school! Our encumbent won handily; in B.C. elections like this winning by 150 votes is considered to be a bit of a landslide. Last time he won by 12 votes. Our candidate is pretty "green" and two more people of the green persuasion were elected to the Board of Directors of RDCK. As well, community planning seems to be alive and well in this part of the Koots.