Tuesday is always a lazy morning for me. I luxuriate in time stretching before me that hasn't been urgently tagged to get things done. I relax with my husband even more, lingering over breakfast, with no urgency to get up and going. This is because the day before, Monday, is cleaning day, the day when I go through the house dusting, mopping, vacuuming, washing floors. It's all done!

For another week in any event. So all I have to do is prepare meals, clean up the kitchen and the powder room, tidy up the bedroom, and the rest of the day is mine to do with in leisure as I would.

This morning I decided that I would prepare a cole slaw salad to accompany the stove-top baked beans I meant to cook for tonight's dinner. To that end, I had soaked white pea beans overnight in water so I could use them today in doing just that.
     

And then off we went into the ravine, for our daily woodland hike, my husband, me, our two little dogs. After a spate of icy days albeit with no snow events the past two days, today's high went all the way up to minus-four Celsius. Unfortunately that more moderate temperature came with a brisk wind. And we also knew that it might be best if we got out before mid-afternoon, because that's when we were informed another snowstorm would be expected to start.

We're expecting another ten centimetres of snow, to top off the considerable snowpack already down. Surprisingly, we found snow that had fallen on earlier days, continuing to cling to the forest trees, despite the wind. No complaints, it makes the landscape more beautiful.

But we did note that the creek, briskly moving along, had frozen at its sides closest to the banks, while the middle portion remained open, the water moving businesslike down and onward, and looking cold, very cold indeed.

Also notable was the amount of detritus from the forest trees surrounding us. The extreme cold and the wind combined to make them more brittle, and so branches, some dead, others with ample green needles firmly attached, have continued to litter the forest floor.