A marshmallow world

It's a marshmallow world in the winter
when the snow comes to cover the ground
It's a time for play, it's a whipped cream day.
I wait for it the whole year round...

-- It's a Marshmallow World 

by Lou Sigman, 1949

It seems unfair to me that the song above is only played at Christmas time when it doesn't even make mention of Christmas. What it actually talks about is a day like today, when I woke up to see light fluffy snow "in the arms of the evergreen tree" and more sparkly stuff floating down, turning every upraised branch into a series of cotton puff balls.

Shadow and I walked for almost two hours, revelling in the beauty of the day. The white trees contrasted with the grey sky, and every bush was like a fairyland of crystal and lace. God's artistry is so incredibly beautiful, a little bit of heaven here and now.

A whipped cream day, indeed. For my readers who rarely see snow, here are the best of my pictures, which can't begin to do the day justice. Enjoy!

What's going on in Alberta?

I love my province too much to compare it to the netherworld, but there are lots of jokes flying around today about that very thing.

You see, Alberta has just come out of a long season of Progressive Conservative government. 44 years of it, actually, and it was starting to look like hell might just freeze over before anything changed in our politics.

But yesterday, Alberta voters did the unthinkable. We voted out the long-standing party that has had a seemingly endless history of entitlement and some rather unscrupulous ways of balancing the budget (read serious cuts to healthcare, social services, and education), and we elected the New Democratic Party with, as opposition, the Wild Rose party, both made up of many ordinary Albertans (rather than people whose political campaign war chests were financed by big business, and who gave their allegiance to the same). The New Democrats have a reputation for a social conscience -- and possibly, a resulting inability to balance a budget -- and the Wild Rose have a fierce concern about raising taxes and a determination to be whistleblowers when it comes to unethical government practices.

The wonder of it all is that almost half of the Alberta New Democrats are women (!), and several are university students, meaning fresh thinking. And with the Progressive Conservatives cut down to ten seats, their past stranglehold on democracy here has suddenly eased. After 44 years of expecting the same old same old, Albertans finally have a government which is planning to strengthen democracy (by changing policy around politics) rather than padding its ability to stay in power, a government  that is more likely to listen to ordinary Albertans instead of running the show as it sees fit.

The funniest thing about all this is how the weather is playing along. We woke this morning to a dump of snow that has continued all day.

Maybe the devil is busy learning how to skate!

Happy Almost Easter

Here's the snowman Julia and her friend Mikayla made yesterday...

Spring Break?

It's been an unusual winter. In fact, I can barely remember another winter with this much snow. When my family lived in small town Saskatchewan, there was a blizzard when I was in grade two, and it heaped snow over our lilac hedge and closed the highways for a week. My mom worked as a nurse in the hospital in the next town and had to be brought the nine miles home in a Bombardier, I think.

More to the point, I can't remember ever having this much snow this late in March. Ever. This week is Spring Break (it always seems to fall around April 1st -- maybe the teachers want to avoid April Foolery?) and here are two pictures: last year, which is what the end of March usually looks like, then this year:

Same yard, slightly different angle... It's almost depressing how much snow is still left. Edmontonians are resigned to the fact that spring is late this year, and we may have tulips into June. Sunny Alberta, as our province used to be known, hasn't been terribly sunny for the past several months, and the temperatures this year have been far below normal so perhaps we'll have a reprieve from the pine beetles that have been threatening our forests.

Really, we have very little to complain about. Our friends in Winnipeg are preparing for the second flood of the century in less than 15 years. Global climate change is definitely affecting their flood plains. Kind of puts into perspective the fact that I can't ride my bike this Spring Break, like I did last year...  but look at the difference between today's picture, and last March 30th!

Soon, soon I'll be able to get back to the bike... the sun is shining today!

Fun on the roof

Our youngest daughter and I went out to play for about an hour today. I couldn't keep up to her because she can run across the top of the crusty snow while I fall through... The snow is high enough that she realized she could probably climb up on our garden shed. So while I tried to chip away the two inches of ice that is keeping me out of my greenroom in the shed, she had some fun... and didn't want to come down. Who can blame her?

More snow

It's just not stopping out there. The winter wallop keeps walloping along, and the trees are just loaded. We're on our way to beating my memory's record of snow in Edmonton.

I took a lot of pictures on my walk to church yesterday morning, thinking I'd have a lot of beautiful things to post this morning. The only problem is that the overcast skies make the camera see grey in my photos, instead of the dazzling, beautiful whites that enthrall me so much. So I'll post a few shots here, and wait for the first sunny day to take some really stunning pictures (I hope).

See, this would be so much better with sunshine and blue sky!

But I'm afraid the wind will knock that snow down before I get the blue sky shot.

We'll see, I guess.

Nope, the camera just doesn't do the day justice. Next time I take this picture, there will be sparkles in that snow, I hope!

After church, Suzanna and I decided to have some fun with the seven foot piles of snow beside our driveway, and we spent about two hours building a snow fort of sorts. It has four doors, and seems pretty sturdy. The only problem is that there's another four inches of snow on the driveway today that I'll have to shovel over the top... filling up my path to the compost pile (if it's not already full...)

Anticipation

I took my camera with me on my walk to church this morning, intending to capture some wonderful snow pictures. I'll post them tomorrow, because this little fellow deserves a moodling all to himself. He was out on the sidewalk his dad was clearing, pedalling back and forth, anticipating Spring. I asked his dad's permission to take his picture, and the little guy turned his bike around and posed for me. I was still grinning when I met my family at church!

A winter wallop

"Winter wallop hits Alberta" says my news website. In my Edmonton neighbourhood, it's a pretty gentle wallop... the snow is drifting down gently, with just a light breeze to stir it around. If it gets windy, it will be another story entirely.

It's been a while since we've had a good dump like this. The year my eldest was born, we got seventy cm (almost 3 feet) in the month of January, and I was back in my pre-pregnancy jeans in two weeks after all that shovelling. Today's snowstorm reminds me of that January.

I have a bad cold today, but I had to go out and enjoy the snow, snow, snow, snow, SNOW! (Sung in four parts in my head by Danny Kaye, Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney and Vera Ellen in White Christmas.) I wanted to take pictures for my warmer climate friends to enjoy.

It's not often we get so much snow that it's higher than our doorsills.

It's hard to imagine the summer garden...

Only intrepid nuthatches and chickadees have been to the feeders this morning, but they've had to shovel snow to get at the seed!

There was a bit of a drift by the gate, but otherwise it was an even snowfall, a good fifteen to twenty cm everywhere, and it's still coming down.

I'm always amazed at how a snowfall like this makes the world white and shades of grey, though you can see a bit of a brownish tinge on the clematis vine.

The snow in the park is knee deep, and the branches of the Mugo pines are loaded. The kids will have to dig out their forts under the branches.

At this point, I decided to make a good old-fashioned snow angel. I put my camera in my pocket and fell backward into the snow, pouf! It was deeper than I expected, and I had to thrash around (and fill my pockets with snow) to get up again.

A very satisfying snowfall, all in all. The world is quiet and clean, there's not a lot of traffic moving around, and it's good to have a cozy home waiting for me, once I get this all shovelled!

God's fresh white gift

Remember when you were a kid, and the world turned white overnight?

Remember when you couldn't wait to get out there and make fresh tracks in the new-fallen snow? To roll in it, to catch flakes on your tongue?

What if we could take some of that child-like wonder into our winters now?

When Jesus said we have to be like little children to receive the Kingdom (which I equate with sheer joy), maybe he was talking about snow days like today in Edmonton. If we can't take some pleasure in this white stuff, somehow, we've lost the simple pleasure of living in joy and wonder.

I'm going out to make some tracks! And maybe then I'll be able to relax a tiny bit more when I have to drive through the stuff.