We're in the deep depths of winter cold, with temperature falling to -27C and -29C at night. Making snuggling into bed at night for all of us under the depth of a winter duvet pure pleasure. What hasn't been too pleasant is deciding to remain at home the last few days, foregoing our usual daily traipse through the forest trails in the ravine we access up the street from our house.

Just too cold. -19C with wind has had Jackie and Jillie zipping quickly back into the house from the backyard when they go out to evacuate. One of us always accompanies them and when it's this cold it's just as well. Often they don't seem to realize how cold it is and they want to play in the snow together, run after one another, do a little bit of stand-up boxing, and then the cold suddenly hits them and they freeze. Literally.

And that's when they don't seem to be able of their own volition to even move. We swoop them up and haul them back inside. The snow invigorates them and the extreme cold turns them into little frozen statues, the realization sneaking up on their awareness that it's suddenly too old to even move because the cold is painful.

They adjust to being at home instead of having a break outside, but when the weather relents enough to enable us to get out they're overjoyed at the freedom they're faced with in the woods to race about and catch up with anything they may have missed.

This is the kind of weather where you want to have a hot, aromatic bowl of soup to restore your creature comforts. Which means we've been having quite a lot of soup lately. Jackie and Jillie pass on the soup, but they're keen on the vegetables that go into soup.

Today's 'warmest' point of the day was late-morning/early-afternoon when the temperature sat at -12C, slightly colder in the ravine. If we waited to later in the afternoon it would be around -16C, so we decided to nip out a little earlier than usual. The wind was to our faces walking up the street to the ravine entrance, and it was amply cold, but the sun was hard at work trying to temper the wind's influence, until we got to the forest interior and both sun and wind effects were diminished. 

The forest creek is completely frozen over. In most places snow has billowed over the frozen creek so it cannot be distinguished from anywhere else on the forest floor. In areas that are slightly more open to wind, it sweeps the snow away and the ice can be seen, white and opaque.

Wildflowers that were the last to bloom in late fall remain dry and upright through all the storms that hit in the winter, ferocious as some of them can be. The vegetation remains defiantly upright, their flowers turned into clinging little nettles that like to burrow deep into little dogs' haircoats if they get the chance. Those that asters produce are particularly prickly, looking for a ride home on unsuspecting dogs.