February Challenge
Five Pics Which Summarize Your Life This Month
I don’t know about you, but where I live in The Frozen North (ie Canada), February is, to say the very least, cold. Maybe you’re lucky enough to live somewhere sunny and warm — today, I woke up for a dog walk at -36 degrees Celsius, feeling like -41 with the windchill! Tomorrow it’s going to be +2. That’s just cruel.
Of course, Valentine’s Day provides a brief, chocolatey respite mid-month. But that doesn’t do much to assuage the other 27 long days of unmerciful weather.
It’s also Black History Month, with a grim legacy of slavery, Jim Crow laws and systematic racism, but also celebrating the achievements and heroes of the African Diaspora. This year the theme in the US is “Resistance,” and in Canada, “Ours To Tell.”
Whatever you’re celebrating or surviving, SNAPSHOTS would like you to summarize your own experience of February 2023 in just five pics. Let us know what this month is like for you.
February in Almonte
As an example, here are the five photos I’ve picked. You’ve seen the frozen cow above (no, it’s not real!). The poor dear stands stolidly outside our veterinarian’s office, even in the worst February can throw at her.
Our eight-month-old Saint Bernard puppy Finnegan is definitely better equipped for winter. While I’m trudging along the sidewalk, all bundled up against the cold, he happily wades through deep snow, his head snuffling below the surface as if he’s searching for a lost skier to rescue. Here is he, comfortable and cuddly indoors.
Fortunately, there are lovely indoor escapes for us humans. This is at The Sterling, the newest restaurant in Almonte, where we enjoyed delicious cocktails and charcuterie boards. Yum!
Now that I think about it, it’s really not so bad outside. February dresses nature in frosty loveliness. Here’s a shot of a beautiful waterfall nearby, which used to run the wheel at one of Almonte’s woollen mills, now converted to condos.
Finally, February is a time of dreams — of Spring’s warmer days and songbirds returned, heavy winter coats hung up, newly unfurled leaves whispering in the wind. Most of all, for my family, there’s a hankering for our new life at another converted woollen mill on the river. We’re moving at the end of the month, so there will be wretched hours of downsizing and packing ahead. But here’s what’s giving us hope this February—our new patio!
