January Light

Nightjar has been stalking the light with her camera again and here is her feature for the month of January.

January Light can be as bright as it gets when the sun is shining and dew is reflecting sunlight in all directions. The first three photos show this very well and illustrate what sunny January mornings are like here. But January can be rainy and cloudy too, with the subdued light and soaked forest producing a very different mood. On rainy days colours aren’t bright, but they are quite saturated and rich as the last three photos show. Whatever version of January Light we get, green is ubiquitous and irresistible.

©Nightjar, all rights reserved

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Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

As expected, we’ve had several days of temps well above zero. Today it’s 9º C and almost all of our snow has melted away. The creek at the park is running high, everything is boggy and the season of mud has set in early. Oh. joy. The weather forecast is looking pretty strange, too. Today and tomorrow it’s expected to be about 10º C then on Wednesday we go down to -2º C with snow and then Thursday and Friday up to 12º C with rain. About a week ago I said it felt like the month of March had come early, but already this week it feels more like the month of April.

Some Bullfinches

On Tuesday I will get the stitches out, and hopefully I will be able to write again without constantly tripping over my fingers. But I had some luck at the feeder finally, maybe because we have plenty of snow and it stays on for a month by now. So here are some dapper pictures from this week.

© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.

Harakka in Autumn: Chapter 1

It’s time to go for a walk with Ice Swimmer in the latest chapter of his series.

Chapter 1 – Rocks in the South on Saturday

The Path on the Rocks in the South. ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

On Harakka, humans are supposed to be restricted to the roads, paths and other designated areas. On the rocks, stones or painted triangles mark the paths. [Read more…]

Jack’s Walk

The Thames River, ©voyager, all rights reserved

It’s a beautiful, sunny winter day and the temp has climbed to -14 C which feels downright balmy compared to the minus thirties of the past few days. We took a slow, longish walk down by the river and didn’t stray from the path today. I’m pretty sure I know about where the beavers are, but there’s so much snow that getting there would be difficult and dangerous. I’m not sure you could even see very much because of the deep snow cover. Instead, we sang a few of Jack’s favourite songs, did a bit of dancing and pounced and frolicked our way around the park.

Jack’s Walk

Bright and cold, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Well, it’s another cold day here. The actual temp is -17 C, but with the wind chill it’s -28 C. Jack and I don’t stay outside too long on days like this. I can dress for the cold, but Jack can’t. I do have a jaunty red coat for the boy, but the only protection he has for his feet is a vaseline-like “dog boot.” I’ve tried real dog boots on Jack and it was hilarious for about a minute, which is how long it took for Jack to remove them. Sigh. Oh well, a shorter walk on a super cold day isn’t a hardship and at least today the sun is shining about as bright as it ever gets in January. Tomorrow promises to be the same, but Saturday the forecast is for +3 C and Sunday it could go as high as +10 C and then stay that warm for a few days. It’s all very confusing and I hope this weather won’t affect the maple syrup crop this year. It would be a shame for the trees to wake-up early only to be knocked on the head with a quick and lasting freeze again.

Harakka Island in Autumn: Introduction

We’re starting a new series today from Ice Swimmer. It’s a follow-up to his series last fall Harakka an Island and it’s full of colour which has been missing from my part of the world for months.  I invite you all to sit back and enjoy as Ice Swimmer takes us on a tour.

Introduction: Approaching and Arrival on Saturday

This series is about the island Harakka in Helsinki. I revisited Harakka in October 2018, about three months after the first visits in July 2018. As in July. I actually went there twice. The first visit in October was on Saturday afternoon and the second was the next day, Sunday, also in the afternoon.

1. Harakka in Autumn. ©Ice Swimmer, all rights reserved

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Jack’s Walk

HappyJack in his element, ©voyager, all rights reserved

Jack and I went to the lake this morning and frolicked in some virgin snow.Well, Jack frolicked and I trudged, but we both had a good time nonetheless. We didn’t stay out very long, though. The temp this morning is -22 C with a wind chill of -31 c and the forecast says it’s going to stay this cold until Friday when temps are expected to climb to +6 C with rain. That’s a temperature difference of 28 C in the space of a day or two. That’s just crazy weather for around here. I hope the weather makes more sense where you are.

Jack’s Walk

©voyager, all rights reserved

We had about 10 cm of snow overnight and the day began brilliant white and fresh. The sun even shone for most of the morning making the snow twinkle like a scatter of tiny diamonds. Jack and I decided to visit our little forest because the path is well used by dog people and their dogs and we were hoping it would be tramped down enough to make walking easier, and it was!  We had a slow walk, side-by-side and tried to revel in the sunshine, but today this thin, weak January sunlight only makes me weary of winter.

Tree Tuesday

This lonely Norway Spruce lives on top of Falufajallet Mountain in Sweden and is estimated to be about 9, 550 years old making it the worlds oldest tree. According to Atlas Obscura,

Located in Fulufjallet National Park, Old Tjikko began growing in this harsh tundra shortly after the glaciers receded from Scandinavia at the close of the last ice age. To put that into perspective, this lowly shrub was growing as humans learned to plow fields, domesticate the cat, and—2,000 years after it first took root—our ancestors begin learning to smelt copper.

Old Tjikko is part of a clonal organism and its age was determined by carbon dating of its roots. There’s a small path that leads to the tree and park rangers give free guided tours. It’s preferred that visitors not go unaccompanied. I’d say that people shouldn’t be allowed to visit at all except I’d like to go myself.

I may need to start a new bucket list just for the trees that I’d like to visit.