November and December are usually the rainy, cloudy winter (or late autumn) months, whereas January brings the sunny winter days. Days like today. No clouds in the sky, the sun rose from behind the horizon like a fireball. The days are getting longer in leaps and bounds; the length of our day is almost eight hours again. Moving toward the spring and summer again <3
With that little snow fall last week the world is nice and fluffy white. It's still been too cold to really snow more, but every now and then the sky has been full of shiny little ice crystals slowly making their way down, fluttering, making the world glisten in the January sun. I am stuck inside what with the recuperation from my surgery 11 days ago, and will be, for approximately ten more days. For once, I'd really love to be able to go outside... now that that has been taken away from me.
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| get well roses from my employer and pals at work |
The weather started freezing a bit over a week ago, during the weekend. When I went to the hospital last Wednesday morning, it was cold but there was no snow. Today, I came back home, and the snow had come while I'd been gone, and the weather had warmed a bit. Still below zero's but not -20C anymore, more like -6C or so. The rosemary and thyme on our porch still seem to be alive, though. The bonsai has dropped its leaves.
We had already started to think that winter was canceled this year for good, but yesterday the temperature went below zero and some snow came down. Not much, only a couple sentimeters and a couple degrees, but enough to make a lot of the ground white and frost the puddles and edges of the litlle ponds on the glof course. Streams have snowy levees, but it's not cold enough to freeze them yet.
The best ski tracks in town are in Paloheinä, but obviously so far this winter there's been no tracks anywhere. Yesterday, with the freeze coming in finally, they started helping the nature with snowing machines, to get the ski tracks done as soon as possible.
Today I woke up to birds chirping when my husband opened the bedroom window. It sounded like spring! The sun came out for just a little bit, but enough to encourage all the birds to go chirping in a full blown spring concert as long as we had daylight (which currently is all of 6h and 7min in here in Helsinki).
I was listening to this concert as we went for a longish walk with the dog in the early afternoon. On our walk, I noticed a bush, that actually is pushing out new leaves! I mean, not only buds, but they are turning into actual leaves! And this ditch is growing new weeds of sorts. The ground is just green all around again. And it's only January. How strange!
This winter is crazy. I remember one like this some 5 or 6 years ago, when snow came in the beginning of March, only to melt away the same week. So far, we've seen snow for a couple days in early December, and ever since the temperature has stayed on the warm side.
The grass is still growing on the meadows, and as green as it was in August. Pussy willows have popped out like it would be spring time. The nature is all confused. One friend of mine even reported crocuses peeking up from the ground! None on our yard so far, but I wouldn't be surprised.
