snowblindness....

Love the pines...well done!

Oh Lori , it doesn't look as if you will be venturing far for some time to come , keep warm and cosy it's a good job you stocked up on the logs !

great pic though glad we dont have snow this year,
hope you enjoyed your christmas Lori :o) x

Ooh that's beautiful....I can hear the silence from here...:0)))

Lorilyn57:

That's a lot of snow! It is a very Christmas-like photo!

Can you drive in it?

Thanks everyone! Had a lovely Christmas, San, hope you did too! We drove to Ottawa to spend the day with our sons, D1. Our municipality is well equipped to handle all that snow! our roads are plowed and sand/salted twice a day in this weather! Driving in snow is a skill we all have to learn. It takes a very severe storm for everything to grind to a halt. We do get them though!
We have acres of those lovely tall pine, spruce and hardwoods, Dolphin07. thanks I love them too.
oh Amy...you are sooo right! We had a power outage when the first storm hit...had to rely on our wood stove. We were cozy and warm with the snow swirling outside. Appreciate the labour now!
Hello Janey...We've had high winds and the sticky snow froze on the branches of the trees making it sound like a chorus of banshees when the wind blows~ Its much calmer today. Happy New Year all!

You DO have a REAL winter in your part of Canada Lori. Predictable it will be snowy and cold. Good planning and warmth and enough vitals will see you through. Our Christmas was super quiet, as everyone went off somewhere warmer!!! We were snug, but I felt like we were on a winter dessert island marooned somewhere wet and drizzly, and very urban, with lots of grub we shouldn't really eat........but we did. We are looking towards a better year than the last one. That would not take much...as 2012 was very ghastly in the extreme. I spent sometime reading parts of the Millenium Trilogy. Best for the summer.....as it is full of 'trolls' doing evil things. Stieg Larsson comes from a very dark place in his mind.....anyway happy new year to you and yours.

LoL..thanks Dorjac! Same to you and yours. Agree with you about 2012...heaven forbid 2013 could be any worse!
Sounds like it is down in Australia tho...the poor folks in Tasmania. We have about 2 ft of snow and more is falling at the moment! I tried shovelling some of it ...pushing it around is more like it...but no point when it's coming down so heavy that when you go back to the starting point you find that it looks like you never started!
Have been reading too. Don't know if you've read any of the Wheel of Time series. The author of the first 12 volumes died two years ago (Robert Jordan) and a young writer has been hired to complete the last volume (Brandon Sanderson). Can't give you a proper precis of the the plot..it would take more space than I have here! but...I'm re-reading the last two volumes in preparation for the last one which is due out this month! it's been 20-odd years in the completion. have to do my reading in the winter because when I read..everything stops. I've learned to read very fast so I can have a normal day and pack in as much reading as possible and it doesn't take me away from the garden.. lol...

Hi Lori. Reading is a great comfort in my 'old age'. Stieg Larsson said a 78 year old baddy was in 'extreme old age'. I find the Kindle so useful. I can order from the settee or my bed. The book is up and running moments later. Then I can lose myself for a while. Usually I read fact, but recently have tried more fiction. A paper back Bleak House my neighbour gave me. Then Dostoevsky's crime and punishment.....wow that was an effort, but I persisted. Hard back Collapse.....pure fact and scary too by Prof Jared Diamond. So I am not just 'Kindled' up to the eye balls. Stieg Larsson's nasty villain, one of many, was 78. Little did Larsson know that he would die at 50 after running eagerly up steps to deliver his Trilogy! Beware the deadly arrythmia! So no extended story of his strange heroine. His wife has manuscripts and there is said to be a legal tussle over ownership. Must look up your author and explore........thanks.

I was introduced to the Wheel of Time and Robert Jordan by my oldest son...he likes the fantasy genre and must admit the man has produced a very intricate plotline which has taken 20 odd years to complete...he died before he could finish it. I was hooked a decade or so ago... It's not Dostoevsky but I enjoy it.
"extreme old age" ....LOL!
Have been thinking about getting a Kindle for my hub...maybe I should get one for me! Living out here among the bushes...it would save a bit of driving! Isn't it amazing how much things have changed in our lifetimes?
Listening to some of the New Year prognostications I am just as pleased to be at this stage of life as starting out. Can't even envision what it will be like 20 years hence.

Hello Lori, I don't suppose anybody can predict, these days, how life will be, even 10 years from now. Change, plus innovation moves us along so fast. I was born into the thirties world that had changed from Victoriana to pre WW2 for the upper classes but not for ordinary folk. My age group, who are mostly now absent friends, have been subjected to a hurricane of change. The ones that are left are reluctant to embrace technology. So now our house phone landline does not work for the last few days, we are even more isolated than usual. Maybe we have had the best of it. I suppose most youngsters would not agree. They enjoy their binges/tattoos/twitterings and internet naughty places. In the roaring twenties 'the bright young things'. Allegedly used cocaine and partied like mad, according to the book I read about Mr Selfridge, the hedonistic shop owner recently. He partied on into his eighties! Bright sunshine today. I did my garden stint yesterday in the gloom

I guess I'm stodgy and boring but never have been a party person... ah me...but I bought myself an e-reader...it's not a Kindle..it's a kobo and I've purchased the prologue of the Wheel of Time~A Memory of Light and was disappointed that the whole book was not there for purchase. At present I'm reading my favourite Austen...Sense and Sensibility.
My son, who is of the generation you describe, is a Steig Larsson fan... and has also recommended
Jared Diamond. Will take some time to browse thro all the books in their catalogue and try to read as much as possible while the weather is bad...won't be reading much when spring gets here.
I am on facebook and have "liked" a site for a Michigan, USA firm called "Proven Winners"...I won a Seed Keeper Deluxe for liking their page, and it came in the mail today. Their mission is to produce hardy strains and new strains of shrubs, trees and perennials... Also just received my Vesey's bulb catalogue today! Oh joy...lots of pondering and dreaming over that!
It's a challenge to age and not let our generation define us, isn't it? Some days I don't feel a day over 18..but most of the time I'm constantly reminded that is not so... May we live long and prosper, aye?

Hi Lori I got into Jared Diamond because I read in a critique somewhere in the media that he had the best explanation of how Easter Island/Rapanui became a failed society. All the usual misuse of natural resources, such as using wood for rollers for those huge statues. Over fishing/ too many birds eaten/ soil depletion. One student pondered to Prof Diamond .....who cut down the last palm tree and why? They overpopulated and then went on a long slow decline. They kept chickens, made war on one another over access to birds perhaps. Made statues ever larger. Then the explorers and the slavers came and infected them with all sorts. A sad sad tale and , Diamond says, a metaphore for the way we trash the Planet Earth around us and no where else to go now! We have the knowledge to be prompted to behave better. Many choose to carry on trashing.

As you say poor Tasmania. Diamond's chapter on Australia is chilling in the extreme. Lots of things done there were and are wrong sheep/chain clearing understory. Irrigation bringing salt to surface. R. Murray basin badly salinated. Introduction of unsuitable plants and animals. A bad attitude to native population. I bet he is not 'top of the pops' in OZ. Now these terrible fires too, spreading over to Tasmania.

There is a backlash going on in Australia against the "greenies" ...I gather they have had some influence in local councils and in the gov't of the states as well with regard to burning. It has been the nature of the place that frequent burns (whether started by nature or by man) have a beneficial effect on the ecology. People have been told that they cannot burn...and adequate fire break protection hasn't been maintained in newly built areas. It's dry and it's hot summer right now and the detritus has ignited and turned into wildfire. It's a sad situation..but the holocaust in Tasmania is a nightmare.
I remember reading Rachel Carson and thinking that there was no way in hell that any of the measures she was calling for would be enacted by any of the earth's governments. The most powerful nation on earth goes to war over fossil fuels...that tells us all we have to know about the outcome. And during the Reagan administration in the US they scoffed and said that the trees were responsible for acid rain...such hubris. The accelerating changes and chaotic weather on a global scale has finally gotten our attention, but the foot dragging continues. If you want to buy an hybrid car you pay a terrible premium. The powers that are arrayed against the green movement are staggering. Big Oil and the succubus automotive industry, and even the economies of nations are trying to keep the blinders on us as long as possible. That's why I read fiction...from the 18th century!
It's also the reason I'm very glad that I'm at this stage in life...rather than just beginning. I don't want to be around to live thro the changes that are coming.
I guess I feel liberated by being old enough to say what I think. I do feel very sorry for the folks in Australia.
On a happier note, I have found "proven winners" shrubs and perennials in my newest Vesey's catalogue ...I have a large area which is meadow which I want to plant with native shrubbery...and maybe a few viburnum and hydrangea..if I can get them to grow here. Shrubs are so costly and I have a very large area to fill. I'll buy and then propagate, I suppose.
I like the combination of spiraea and peonies...the anthony waterer type with lovely foliage as well as flowers.
we are not having a "normal" winter again this year...it has warmed up to above zero for the last 5 days and then plunk!...it's minus 15 overnight...then back up to zero next day...no wonder this is a bad year for the flu.
Going to get out my kobo and read some Austen before I collapse. nitey nite!

No doubt about it that reading too much serious stuff can lower ones mood Lori. So I am reading about Les Dawson my favourite comedian. He was very droll and played comedy piano. Sometimes the piano suddenly collapsed into a heap while he was playing. He would be 82 now same as OH.
Last night it was 6 degrees below freezing, very low for this area and some snow forecast for tomorrow as well.
Lots of people I know have been unwell recently. My cousin had a terrible bout of flu and could barely talk when I rang her to wish her a good 2013.....she hadn't started it too well!