The transition from winter is both exciting and frustrating. It is lovely to have longer days but the receding snow brings its own problems. The repair work on the burned road was not done until late in the year and the road did not have time to settle properly. (Note green in the trees – most of these have been burned on the bottom and will in fact die.)

A prettier sign of the coming spring.

But everywhere in BC the spring has been long and slow.

The trail camera picked up a coyote trotting along the road.

The road became really bad in places.

And I had to resort to using the ATV again to travel back and forth to the highway.

But the redwing blackbirds arrived,

The first chipmunk appeared,

And a moose was kind enough to walk in front of my trail camera.

It snowed again.

The first open water appeared.

Pussy willows started to show.

Hooded mergansers are almost always the first ducks to show up.

Snowed again. The juncos now numbered about 35. They are ground feeders so I scattered seed on the deck. They scratched around like chickens.

The pond ice began to go.

It was now the middle of April. Time for the full moon.

The full moon brought clear skies and the pond froze again.

The moon shrank.

Bad weather hovered

And then Alyssa arrived. She was a volunteer here in the fall of 2020. She is a tree planter and world traveller – hikes, climbs mountains, kayaks, cycles, and runs marathons. She is an incredible hard worker. In one day she dug all of my garden.

And the next day we had 15cm of snow!

Back to brushing the solar panels – a job Pepita loves!

The pond had a setback.

And the mountains brooded.

But the birds kept arriving. White crowned sparrow, gold crowned sparrow, and purple finch.

The snow did not last long. Alyssa worked so fast I figured we could start on something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. An outdoor kitchen. The logs had been prepared in the spring of 2020. Like everything else in the covid era, the project had to be put on hold due to lack of volunteers.

Alyssa also helped make a big dent in the woodshed filling project.

This post ends abruptly as it segues straight into the next one. I had too many pictures to put in a single post.