In the great, wide out-of-doors the sun warms and comforts us on frozen winter days. It does amazing things to the landscape, illuminating everything it falls upon. In our interior spaces we have to rely on other wanna-be suns to do the comforting and warming, and nothing does it quite like a fireplace. Any kind of fireplace. We happen to have a gas fireplace. It's a conversion we undertook as soon as we moved into this house of ours thirty years ago. Neater, tidier than a wood-burning fireplace. Just doesn't have the authentic fragrance...

So the fireplace warms our exterior selves, and we look about for something to suit our tastes in appearance, promise, fragrance and texture, to be placed on the dinnertime table. Nothing, absolutely nothing does it quite as well as a bowl of steaming hot, fragrant, delicious soup crammed with vegetables and an assortment of beans. And to help it all go down, fresh-baked bread with its heavenly aroma, crisp texture and mouth-watering taste, fulfilling both our sensuous and nutritional needs. 

When I'm rolling out the bread dough and slathering it with butter (or margarine), a thick sprinkling of sesame seeds goes over and then a good grating of sharp cheddar cheese. Folding and rolling out again and spread and repeat and repeat again does the trick. Sitting around relaxing after a good trek through the forest trails afterward, the soup bubbling away on the stove, the croissants in the oven, is the ultimate anticipation of good things to come.

A dessert-bowl of clementine sections each, cleanses the palate with its sweet. sharp citrus taste and that completes the ritual of fortifying ourselves to face the evening and a good night's rest. In the morning chickadees on the porch and surrounding trees informed us that they too enjoyed a hearty meal, as did the unmistakable pattern of scores of squirrel tracks on the snow.

Today turned out to be much milder than its predecessors this week. Nicely enough, it's a public holiday, Family Day, which neatly enough followed Valentine's Day. We were out in the woods with Jackie and Jillie following a light snowfall which itself had followed hours of morning sunshine. Today gave us a little bit of everything on the weather front. Above all, a high of -6C, welcome after the much colder temperatures of the last week.

Because it's a holiday and one emphasizing time with family we saw quite a few family groups out on the trails. Parents dutifully dragging sleds behind them, which their children might or might not use, since they also took advantage of the natural option of sledding downhill minus sleds. We watched as one man walking alone slid wildly downhill, just managing to catch and right himself as it looked toward the end that he might keel over.

And it's awfully hard not to note that finally the days are getting longer, they really are. No longer does twilight set in just after four in the afternoon. The sun is higher int he sky now, and takes longer, later to set. We have light longer into the late afternoon/early evening. We're now midway through February. In March, an uncertain-weather month here, we're in the home stretch to spring. And although it isn't entirely unknown to have snowstorms in Ottawa in April, even May, we think it'll be smooth sailing in a month's time.