Gratitude Sunday

Today I'm joining Taryn of Wooly Moss Roots in her Sunday tradition.

This week, I've been grateful for...

-Stepping outside at dawn to see that the clouds had cleared off to reveal a slender crescent moon, with Venus shining just below.

-P being able to take Tuesday (my 29th birthday!) off of work. We spent the day at home doing a bit of clean-up in the yard, but mostly relaxing and playing with the babe.

-Going out for a delicious dinner Tuesday night, of wild salmon and roasted local farm veggies.

-Someone giving us a box full of moose meat. I am so, so glad we'll be able to eat some wild meat through the winter!

-Someone else giving us cabbage, spaghetti squash and fingerling potatoes from their garden. I'm making moose-meat cabbage rolls for dinner tonight, with a side of roasted spaghetti squash!

-Aedan taking longer and longer naps, without me having to be in the bed with him. It gives me some much needed time to myself! And I'm also so grateful that we allowed him to reach this milestone at his own pace, instead of sleep-training him.

-Forest walks with golden leaves falling all around.

-Waking up to the sound of rain on the roof this morning.

-Good conversation with like-minded friends.

-All of the love I feel every day from friends and family.

-Being given such a wonderful, unexpected opportunity to embark on a homesteading journey. More and more I realize that's where we're headed...we've got the space to do it. It just feels so overwhelming at times, and although I've always had vague notions of "making a living simply living", I've never put much thought or research into what that entails. I look forward to a winter of doing lots and lots of reading and research!

-Walks to the spring to have a drink.

Gathering rose hips

After a morning of grey skies and rain, the sun broke free of the clouds and cast its warm rays into our yard, illuminating the birch and poplar leaves, and making the damp grass glisten. The wild rose hips, a vibrant red and a little shriveled from the first hard frost, hung like precious jewels from the prickly rose bushes.

I left Aedan playing contentedly on the porch while I filled my little bucket with these juicy, vitamin C rich wild fruits. I could hear the Sandhill cranes winging far over head, their grr-oo call softened by the distance. The golden leaves were falling silently around me: such a peaceful autumn moment.

I was surprised to learn that 3 rose hips contain more vitamin C than an orange! It's so strange how we immediately think of oranges when we think of vitamin C...but there are many rich sources of this important vitamin! In her book "The Boreal Herbal", Beverley Grey writes that rose hips are antispasmodic, and can be used in a decoction to treat menstrual cramps.

The seeds inside the hips can be irritating to the digestive tract...traditionally, they were used to help expel parasites. People sometimes call rose hips "itchy bum" for this reason!

I'm drying my rose hips to use in tea over the winter, but they can also be used in jams and jellies, or made into a syrup. I might try that next year!

On the Verge

The last time I wrote here was to talk about the arrival of spring in the Yukon. 

And now, here we are at the tail end of summer, with autumn creeping in.

It comes first on the air: a chill in the early morning that lingers until close to noon:

the day warms, 

and the damp earth gives up the scent of 

dry grasses, over-ripe berries, mushroom forest floor.

Before long, the leaves begin to turn. 

Always the willows first, 

their pale green leaves turning brown--harbingers of the season's change. 

Then, patches of birch and aspen flash golden:

a single bright flame in a hillside of trembling green.

On the forest floor,

unexpected colour:

the fireweed's leaves turn red,

its purple hips release their seed on the wind. 

Wild rosehips and bearberries ripen red, 

and the tart, highbush cranberries await the first sweetening frost, 

their leaves a deep scarlet red.

The days are noticeably shorter, the sun a little lower in its rounds.

The nights are dark, now,

and the moon is faintly visible in the sky.

I welcome it back,

welcome the darkness and the cool.

Spring swells

This past month, my blogroll has been filled with stories of harvesting wild nettles, of crocus and daffodils and trilliums blooming, of green things growing in garden beds, of the reopening of farmers' markets. Here in the Yukon, spring arrives at a much slower pace.

The season has really begun to unfurl now, though...

Earlier each morning, the sun crests the horizon, and the birdsong swells in the tree tops. 

Added to the familiar chatter of the whiskey jacks is the monotonous song of the dark-eyed junco. The boreal chickadees call to one another with their nasal tsk-a-day-day. From the top of a spruce tree, the robin warms up and then bursts into his beautiful, warbling melody. 

For a moment, the other birds hold silent as the robin takes center stage. 

The sun shines brilliant over the trees now, and the day has begun.

All over the territory, the snow that has laid a hush over the ground since November melts. 

Temporary stream beds swell with the run off for an afternoon, and then lie empty once their source is spent. The roadside ditches are full, making an unlikely stopping place for returning waterfowl, and water rushes through culverts. The creeks are mostly all open now, running fast and high; by contrast, the ponds lie still under a diminishing crust of ice.

Most spectacular are the rivers. 

For weeks now the river ice has been rotting, and over the last two weeks, it's begun to break. Small leads of dark water flow up onto the ice, creeping forward and widening with each day. Soon there are large swaths of open water, disappearing beneath what remains of the frozen surface. Creeks and streams rushing to their source create pressure against the stubborn ice, until it can't hold any longer. 

The river bursts free. 

The ice breaks into huge, thick pans that crash into one anther, and heave up onto the banks, crushing last year's growth of scraggly willow. Inevitably, the ice jams. The river swells behind these jams, low-lying shores flood, until eventually, the ice gives up and the river pushes through again. 

One river meets another, dark, icy cold water pushing its way north, bringing spring to the myriad animals and small pockets of people waiting, watching...

A reminder

I've been feeling rather blue today, down about a few different things. As I walked along the trail late this morning, Aedan snoring in the carrier on my chest, I was lost in my head, picking over my sadness and holding up the worst bits to the light. My internal monologue was bleak, and I was hardly paying any attention to the forest around me.

Suddenly, I stopped. Before my eyes, a strand of lichen, like long, course black hair, was draped over a low hanging branch. Pendant upon the lichen was a crystal of ice. As I stood staring at the sunlight glinting off the ice, I heard the territorial drumming of a woodpecker echoing through the trees.

I stood, listening for a time, completely pulled out of my melancholy.

The nagging chatter in my head was silent.

The ache in my breast subsided.

I was abruptly brought back into the moment, and reminded that this life can be so simple and so beautiful.

Autumn approaches....

Not even the middle of August and already I see the signs of fall all around....

• Changing foliage...on the drive to and from Whitehorse earlier this week, we saw a few birches that had gone completely yellow already. The ones around the house look like they're on the verge. The willows have been turning a burnt orange and brown for awhile now, but the colour seems deeper, somehow, these days.
• Berries! Raspberries are definitely over, but with the temperature hovering around freezing in the early mornings, I'd guess it's almost time for cranberries and rosehips, too.
• A definite chill in the air. I love this about autumn...especially on a bright sunny day, when the temperature is around 15 degrees C and there's a bit of a breeze.
• Dark nights, stars in the sky, a big, beautiful full moon lighting my way to the outhouse...soon the aurora should make an appearance!
• People working their final shifts, making plans to leave town, getting ready to go back to school...
• Fires in the woodstove! We lit one two nights ago and are still getting some heat from it. That's the Blaze King for ya...

 

• ....and, of course, the number one sign that autumn is approaching: my growing belly! I'm 35 + weeks in this photo, taken at Miles Canyon in Whitehorse. I'm getting anxious to hold my baby in my arms, to get him or her home and settled. To get bundled up and go for walks in the woods with the doggies. 

I'll be heading down to Whitehorse for my "confinement", as I like to call it, on August 29th. Holy smokes, baby'll be here before you know it!! 

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Well, it's been far too long since I've updated, but I'd like to get back into a regular habit. Mom, I'm sure that'll make you happy!

First, a quick update of the past few months. Back in April, when I last posted, I started to have a bit of a melt-down over the uncertain living situation. I felt very unsure and unsettled, and came to realize that what I really needed was a full commitment from P : namely, to be co-habiting. I reasoned that if we were going to be together and raise a child together, it only made sense to be in one place. I was reluctant to move in to his house, partly because he was reluctant to give up bachelorhood, and partly because he lives 40 km outside of town. Our closest neighbours are about a 7-10 minute drive down the Klondike highway in either direction.

We took the plunge mid-May, and things have been going surprisingly well since. P is adjusting really well to sharing his space with me. I absolutely love living out here. It's beautiful, peaceful and full of potential. I am surrounded by nature's beauty. At night I fall asleep listening to the wind in the spruce trees, or rain on the tin roof (lots of that this summer), and in the mornings I wake up to the thrushes singing in the forest that surrounds us.

Did I mention the rain? It seems that's all we've had this summer. The wild grasses are insanely high around the house....I've got plans to clear it all out and next year put in a proper lawn (which I may live to regret, but I want a soft place to lay out a blanket and play with baby!) and some gardens, too, flowers AND vegetables!

Another thing the rain has brought about in abundance this summer is FUNGUS! I took some pictures of the many kinds growing in the woods - not an easy feat with a curious puppy trailing along behind me.

Meet Pete, the newest addition to our family!

On to the fungus:

Those are just some of my favourites. I'm amazed at the variety in size, shape, colour and texture! Some of them look like coral to me, and are actually classfied as "coral fungus" in my field guide. I love to see them poking up through the detritus on the forest floor, slowly and surely nudging aside the earth and the carpet of rotting leaves and needles, unfolding in the dappled light. 

I'm not sure how I feel about the AutoCollage program, but I guess it's a nice, compact way to display a bunch of images!

Okay, enough of the computer. Time to enjoy the sunshine! So far, August has been beautiful...sunny, breezy, no rain in three days!