Since November, the fella and I have been on a very great adventure; leaving our easy, breezy, and rainy, west coast village life and moving to the chilly, rolling, countryside of southern Ontario. We now live up above the Niagara Escarpment, in a pear orchard where my step-grandfather used to grow Bartletts, Anjous, and Boscs. They still grow here but are farmed by a local fruit producer instead.
The rest of the property around us is vineyard, rows upon rows of grapevine stretching from here to forever. I can't wait to see them leafy and dripping with shiny purple and green globes. There is lots of room for a good vegetable garden and the seed catalogues are ordered but right now, with a blanket of snow on the ground everything moves inside the little modest bungalow that seems huge to our old tiny yellow duplex.
Life in the country has a steep learning curve, our well is full of bacteria and our cistern needs a liner, the wood furnace is a hungry beast and we are rushing to find enough wood to keep it satisfied, the snowblower won't work and a blizzard roared in last weekend... There are days when we wished we lived in our nice cozy city apartment again, but most days we love the country side. The quiet, the views, the birds, the forest at the end of the dirt track..
Winter blew in early this year and I couldn't be more pleased. One of the things I missed most about the West Coast was the lack of wintry days, well - never again!
I'm very happy to be a housewife this winter and have been puttering and decorating with my favourite vintage ornaments. Christmas greens have never been easier to get - just walk out the back with my clippers and a bushel basket.
Here's our little Balsam Fir all decked out for the holidays, just waiting to have brightly wrapped packages underneath.
