Another lovely day!

The Upper pond is VERY full and strikingly beautiful.

The spring bulbs planted the last two falls are starting to poke up. Neat hidden gems.

 Explored another new piece of the larger farm. The field beside Coyote Run. It has lots of natural paths in the woods leading the field. The dogs love exploring the new bits of the farm.

Another lovely day!

a lovely foggy walk and wooding ...

A lovely time at the farm this afternoon - finding trees to bring down then hiking out to the ridge to check out the fog (and the teeny tiny cabin!)

Dogs ran and ran then ran a little more.

Thea's little feet got cold so she spent a little time sitting up on the ATV seat warming up.

The fog was so neat!

Can you see Sampson?

Here he is!

The ridge. The lake was completely covered in fog.

lovely wind up summer walk at Vareharri Farm yesterday ...

We had a lovely walk - started with tidying up the path to the pond field ... to think in the fall of 2008 you couldn't see this was a lane way!

 Sally loves running in the field

So does Sampson ...

Big T takes a little break ...

The barns are really starting to collapse entirely

both big and small ...

Two boys sharing a moment ...

Brody is happy just to be with us ...

on a walk or at the schoolhouse

our lovely weather vane - so fitting ...

a lovely walk on a wild day

Another Day in Paradise

Yes, I should have been planting or at the very least cleaning up the garden but who can resist a trip to paradise? We had the entire beach to ourselves (over a kilometre) and it was gorgeous.

nearly the shortest day of the year ...

and it's PITCH black @ 5:15 here - I often wonder how folks who live way up north manage months of virtual darkness - I need the light and the sun!
We had a short but lovely walk around a field this afternoon - very weird to hear the coyotes yipping and yammering at 2:30 ...
Seed catalogs have started arriving so holidays can be spent arranging my garden - at least in my head ... I usually use Vesey's but William Dam is tempting me this year somehow ...

babies are all doing well ... phew

I will post pictures soon the oldest ones really look rabit like now

happy easter

Another lovely pair of walks .. the pond is full..you can see forever right now. Promise is in the air and it's exciting! Took a picture of a fence made of old stumps - it's a thing of beauty. I cannot imagine the labour involved in making this fence. Well that's not quite true I can imagine it having dragged and chopped the tops of trees and worn myself out. The effort to get the stumps out of the ground does rather boggle my mind though!

We worked a lot on clearing the barn debris but the dogs took things a little less seriously today. Thea did her best horse impression!

a lovely, sad, walk

Ashlynn G. Porter

Hank, Sally, Brody, Big T and I went for a long walk at the land today. It was beautiful. Really cold but really lovely. We walked places we hadn't walked before - including some serious bush whacking through the back of the woodlot. We have wood for years just waiting to be cut. We also have posts and rails for the whole property.

I spent much of our walk wishing my aunt Ashlynn would be able to see it some day. However she died on Christmas Day. She was in palliative care in hospital for a week. She had known her cancer had returned last spring but doctors were optimistic that her cancer would be manageable and chronic in nature. Her death was peaceful and calm and she knew she was much loved right until the end but that really doesn't help those of us she left. I'm glad she's not suffering but the ache is amazing. I ache for my mum who is all alone now - no family in her generation at all any more (and she's watched most of them die - her mum, dad, aunt, baby sister, and now little sister). I grieve for Ash's daughter. Another only child (like me), at only 23 she's way too young to lose her mum and her friend. I am saddened for me. Ash was my aunt, like a big sister too (only 12 years my senior she was the same age as my hubby's oldest brother) and a dear friend. She called and left messages often on our answering machine - just cheery little 'notes' saying hi and keeping in touch. I have a collection of physical notes from her too. She made sure people knew they were important to her and she included her immediate family in that effort. She had such a positive life force - she is in large part responsible for Mum and I taking on our crazy projects.
She loved to ride - I'm sure I was allowed to ride because of her efforts. She inculcated me with her competitive spirit as well as the need to be gracious in victory and defeat. I realized today I had been looking forward to riding horses on our property with her in the future.

Life is just not kind sometimes.