Checking for damage

It certainly was a good idea to complain about the cloudiness publicly: the sun decided to join us for a couple of hours the very next day.  For once, it wasn’t an enormous effort for me to go out of the door as there was proper light therapy to be had there for the first time in weeks.

We have so much snow it’s impossible to walk anywhere else than on the roads and other areas that have been ploughed. This is something I dislike in our kind of winter. Even if you saw something wonderful you’d like to go to, to photograph for example, you can’t because there is no way you can get close to the subject of interest. You can’t even wander in your own garden. I feel winter limits my freedom. That just might be one of the reasons why I prefer to stay indoors.

There are skis of course but as I’m hopeless as regards exercise, and Nordic winters in particular, I haven’t been on skis in I don’t even remember how many years. Perhaps I should buy new skis or a good pair of snowshoes for next winter. Not that I’d expect I would actually use them – and mess up the beautiful fields of white – but I might be happier if I knew I had the option.

I took a stroll around our place checking whether the recent period of snowfall and temperature zigzag above and below freezing point have caused anything we should worry about. The old cow house and barn seemed to be intact, or more precisely put no more harmed than it has been for ages. I even spotted the first faint pussy willows behind the building. Naturally, they were out of reach but the photo revealed this was, in fact, the case.

So only cheerful news about the barn but I am anxious about the lilacs. They suffered from last winter and didn’t bloom as richly as earlier and now the burden of snow is making them lean towards the ground on both sides of the long hedge. Something must be tried to save them. I guess I’ll have to repeat the lilac rescue operation once again – even if it will mean messing up my undisturbed white blankets.