We'll adjust, we always manage to given enough time, but it is getting really cold. We feel that way when the temperature is 6C with a howling wind, and I cast my mind forward several months when we'll be coping with -20C, icy wind and gathering snow. So much colder than it is now, and we'll weather the winter as we always do. We'll welcome the first lazy, drifting random flakes of snow like old friends, and by the time March rolls around, feel anxiety over the length of time it's taking for the accumulated snowpack to melt.

 

Last night it seemed more than appropriate to have one of those winter comfort meals. I had prepared meatballs out of lean ground beef, grated a large garlic clove and half an onion into the beef, sprinkled salt and pepper, added an egg and breadcrumbs then refrigerated the balls for a few hours. The last step was to chop another clove of garlic and onion to saute in olive oil, adding sliced mushrooms, mixed herbs then make a 'gravy' with flour, hot water and a bouillon cube. Into it went the meatballs to simmer, to be served over kasha with asparagus spears served in a separate bowl. It was welcome and warming, just right for a cold evening.

 

As cold as yesterday was, today has turned out colder and the wind has been howling through the atmosphere, raking down more leaves than ever from the trees. Fortunately, we left the wind to its own devices for the most part when we left the street and entered the ravine. The forest canopy now partially denuded still does a creditable job of shielding the trails from the worst excesses of roiling wind.

All around us as we trooped through the trails leaves came tumbling through the air, like dense flocks of birds. There are times, looking above us, that the impression momentarily arrives that they are, in fact birds, silhouetted against the sky. Even a sky as dark as today's was, occupied with dark streaked clouds, themselves moving at a pace the wind has designed for them.

 

 

As happened yesterday, few people in the community seem to want to voluntarily venture outdoors to encounter the cold and the blustering wind, so we had the trails to ourselves for the most part. Thick layers of fallen foliage underfoot are damp from yesterday evening's rain, and cushion our boots. It isn't so much the wet leaves that tend to be slippery but roots of trees covered by wet leaves, sending one sliding forward from time to time.

 

We haven't seen or heard geese flying southward in their fall migration at all this week; possibly most have left already on their journey to winter in more clement areas of the continent, awaiting winter onset. For that matter, on days like these there isn't that much bird activity at all, other than the occasional nuthatch or chickadees, birds of the boreal forest who remain where they are.

 

On our return home, though I had wanted to remain outdoors to continue working in the garden, tidying it up for winter sleep, Irving convinced me to wait for tomorrow and the weekend when the weather is set to take a milder temperature turn, where we might even see the sun. Frankly it makes more sense to me to do that kind of work in adverse weather. When the sun is out and the temperature rises you don't quite feel like yanking out annuals with some life left in them. And then, before you know it frost sets into the ground and the job becomes more complicated.

 

I should finish it all by the end of the month, at least. Which means that perennials will all have been cut back to await re-awakening in spring. The tiny shrubrose in the front garden is such an incredible cold-weather trooper, continuing to put out buds and to flower, that I'll hesitate to cut it back until I really have to. But the hydrangeas can all be cut back and the  hostas. It'll be tough to remove the fully mature dracaenas and canna lilies from the garden pots; their root system so well developed that the soil becomes a hard ball of interwoven roots. That certainly has to be done before the soil freezes.