Rural

Albert Camus: In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer. Mid Winter...the point where many people either flee the country for warmer climates or hunker down and try to get through the rotating snowstorms without expending too much effort wielding the snow shovel. We're neither fleeing or hunkering...yes it's been bitterly cold. There was a snap happening...not the crisp green garden pea plucked from a green tendril kind of snap. It was alternating blowing wind, multiple power outages, chilling temperatures, and masses of snow that seem to be flummoxing even the most hardened Okanaganer's resolve. That spell is over now...and here we are settling into the depths... Watching the snow fall off in mini avalanches of fluffy meringue from the dark trees standing tall outside the ice-covered windows. Looking out at the snow covered landscape, where for a few days hardly anyone ventured out in the intense cold. The snow co...

As winter drags it's ragged edges together to curtain the shortest day of the year... ...I'm sitting at the computer.  Reminiscing, thinking....warming up ...  Chai tea giving off a steady waft of heat, heavy with cream.  Steam from each sip fogging my glasses blurring the sight of the heavy wet snowflakes falling insistently outside our windows.  Bella's tucked up cozily in her basket. Warming up after returning from her escorted day trip outside into the cold.  Now curled up in a catlike semi-circle, grey polka dotted tummy hidden under a turquoise blanket. The glow from reflected snow lights up the inside of the house at this time of year, but it comes courtesy of the white carpet outside.  The unusual warmth accompanying this current snowfall is melting the icicles on the roofline. Our dreams of a short winter have allowed us to be fooled into momentarily thinking it might be February instead of December.  Wi...

The forest calls and the woods whisper...                                        ....they beckon come in,                                                                               spend some time. Sunlight glistens on tiny droplets turning them into diamonds before rushing over to streak between towering trees in a race to the ground. Mushrooms lie in wait under nursery logs, clinging like crowded crowns filled with fungi jewels on the edge of the slippery wood, hidden under dripping cedar fronds. It's magical and hushed in the woods, a delicate dance of light and shadows flitting across the path. Silence presses against the rugged bark of the fir tree, a fitting hiking c...

It's only the second day of Autumn, and all puns aside.. I've Fall-en in love with this season all over again... The soft warming tones of russets, and golds, the way the colors on the trees have just barely started to glow. It's beautiful and favors us with a glow. It's as if the trees are teasing us by tossing their leaves secretly behind our backs...twinkling down so quietly. Autumn is a graceful ageing process, the reverse of spring when everything is reborn, now it's dying, falling, leaving us...and yet across the world, there is renewal. We're still in the honeymoon stage of this season, it's all new, and oh so beautiful. Remarkable, and remarked upon by nearly everyone. Chock full of a colorful texture that will stay for a while, until suddenly the landscape will reveal it's self as an empty house...bereft, forlorn, windows gaping open sadly. The branches will tighten up with the howling wind, and the once vibrant jewel...

Summer's departing moving forward into the next season... Days hot, nights too warm keep us sleepless...that feeling that there is no end until you look back and realize these were the last days. It feels as if you will always be this hot... forever...as if the golden-tinged morning light that tickles bare feet walking around the garden will last endlessly. The weather laughing at our strong Autumnal longing to wear sweaters and long pants...to throw the shorts into the back of the closet and forget them for a day...or more. Until one unexpected day...it's all over, and we realized looking back that yesterday, that last glorious sweaty hot night and deep stillness signified our summer for another year. For now, the leaves start to turn colors not seen since last Autumn, crisp edges shattering, colors on a spectrum that is as spectacular as only a land that is so hot and dry and then so cold and long of length in winter can present. During the warm days th...

Maybe you clicked on a pin and came over from my Pinterest board.. or you're a blogger who's dropping by, or you're curious about what Rural is. Rural is not just a place in the heart, it's for those who... ...have an innate love of the mountains, the outdoors, and the joys of gardening, it's all about our connection with nature.  Rural is the moment that the setting sun glides with a golden glow across the fading fields, while the birds sing from the branches, and the bugs buzz around your head. It's in that deep breath you just took. Rural is the bumps under the wheels of a bike travelling down the backcountry road, and the startle of a pheasant calling from the underbrush. It's in the marvelling of the intricate craftsmanship of a bird's nest, and the unfurling of a fern. Rural is in the crunch of hiking boots on gravelly rocks as we travel up the mountain path, breath measured, legs working hard. Rural...because you...

We hiked upward as the trail wove its way through the cedar and bushes in the moist areas and walked between giant moss covered boulders that must have been perched there for centuries, silent sentinels at the head of old logging trails. The ground levelling and then swelling like waves in the ocean... until a flotilla of nodding yellow petals with bright chunky green leaves glowed on an otherwise barren landscape plateau. Filling our gardener's post winter weary hearts to overflowing. Color, and masses of it, bright, cheerful, and exotic enough to make us pause for as long as we could. Glacier lilies...are a wildflower known to grow even under a coat of snow, these dainty yellow lilies are native to the Okanagan, and various other areas in the region. They're hardy, little plants surviving the cold temperatures we get here down to  -35 C or colder in our Canadian winters. They're even rportedly local bear's first meals after waking up from hibernation. ...