One of our second-floor rooms is angled at an inside corner of the house so that during the cold months of the year when the sun's trajectory and position in the sky early in the morning penetrates so fiercely, entering the double windows on both corners that from the hallway it looks exactly as though we've left the light on overnight. This is a room that is also open to the double-story foyer below, like an atrium. When we moved into the house Irving lost no time lining its walls with B.C. lodgepole pine, and building bookshelves on all three full-wall sides of the room. Our library.

Over the years we've amassed a considerable number of books reflecting our interests. History, the arts, geography, literary classics and everything in between. Irving had built a refectory table and it sits along one side of the room. Long before we bought the house we had bought a painting depicting the Globe Theatre and on stage one of Shakespear's plays was being enacted. It has pride of place in the library.

A few days ago I ordered a few new books for the library and they'll join others that go a long way to making that room a treasure-trove of reading. Once we've read a book that has a firm place in our memory we're loathe to send it on its way. It found its way to our library and there it will stay. Dispensable books like contemporary novels can be disposed of and sent along where other people can take advantage of them but books we treasure are the bulwark of the library and our sense of the rightness of things literary.

Last night we enjoyed a beef stew served over kasha with green beans on the side and persimmons for dessert. Perfect for a busy day that kept us both bustling, and in particular a day that was extraordinarily windy and extremely cold, After dinner last night I thought what I might want to do with a package of fresh baby spinach I'd bought and it occurred to me that a combination of rice, spinach and cheese might make a good meal.

I remembered a bed and breakfast we had stayed at several times in Waynesville, North Carolina. We had a tiny log cabin to ourselves on the grounds, and the main house had the large dining room where guests would gather for breakfast and dinner -- no lunch served. We'd stayed at a lot of bed and breakfasts in various places over the years, but this one served the most nutritious, scrumptious meals we'd ever had anywhere. One of the dishes I recalled was a combination of spinach and rice. What I've prepared is a little more elaborate since it includes a lot of parsley, chopped green onion, eggs and milk as well.

Today turned out really cold. We're expecting an icy -3C tonight, so we're glad that we finally got just about everything wrapped up for winter. We had done the grocery shopping first thing in the morning and were free to take Jackie and Jillie a bit earlier than usual out to the ravine for our daily ramble through the forest. Yesterday's bellowing wind gusts had brought down quite a lot of detritus from the forest canopy and bits of branches lay haphazardly everywhere.

Surprisingly for an extremely cold and windy day there was quite a few people out and about -- not everywhere, but in certain places where trail hikers tend to favour, mostly on the higher ground above the ravine. That meant that a greater number than usual of Irving's admirers raced through the trails to catch up with us here and there. Good to see them all, they're such good fellas, large and small. And it often seems they know one another fairly well; not surprising since most of them are taken out regularly to course through the ravine. We often hear their humans faintly calling them or whistling for them from a distance.

Once we return back home again after our circuit, we no longer linger in the garden. There's really nothing to see. It all looks rather abandoned and more than a little forlorn. Awaiting their long sleep. An unfailing design that has served them well, waiting for the return of spring. A lot happens to us in the time between.