Dec 28, 2019

Christmas at our Place

Hello All! 

We hope you're having a wonderful holiday season. 
Ours is extra special this year, as we have recently welcomed our first grandchild into our lives. His precious presence added an extra sparkle to our family's Christmas. 

Here are some of our decorations this year. Perhaps next Christmas I'll be creating a little village for my grandson to play with!














  

We hope your new year is filled with sparkle and happiness!



Jun 4, 2019

Spring at our Cabin

We've been spending most of our spring weekends up in the mountains at our cabin. 


Driving up to and back from the cabin is always a treat because the beautiful landscape is always changing. Spring comes to the mountains of Idaho much later than it does in the high desert of Boise. When it finally does arrive, it seems like the brown winter meadows turn emerald green almost overnight.
  

This was the view from our car window on a recent early spring morning.  
A full moon glows over the snow that's still frosting the mountain tops, and the misty fog is drifting over the lakes and through the lowlands. Soon the meadows will be the summer pasture to thousands of grazing cows. 
  

Every spring there's a thrill to arriving at the cabin to see the last drift of snow has finally melted from our driveway. 


Just like in the mountain meadows there's an explosion of new green growth all around our property. One of my favorites spots is this corner of the driveway where these soft little green plants spill over the rocks, and I just can't make myself cut them back. One of my goals this year is to learn the names of the wildflowers growing all around us. 


The mountain ash might be my very favorite native Idaho mountain tree. They get creamy white flower clusters in the spring and have bright red berries in the fall. This one next to our cabin was almost dead when we moved in with just a few withered leaves hanging on. I watered it twice a month last summer, hoping to bring it back. Our deep winter snow knocked it completely to the ground and covered it, and then my husband walked on top of it while he was shoveling snow away from our windows. I thought for sure it would be a goner, but here it is reaching for the sun and half covered with leaves and even tiny flower buds! This is one tough little tree, which makes me love it even more!


We only had one bloom last spring from dozens of daffodils we planted the fall before. This year almost every one bloomed, so this fall we'll add lots more. Now that I know they will thrive here under the trees, I aim to plant drifts of them.


These pretty little low growing white wildflowers are one of those I hope to identify this year. Anyone know what it is?


The return of birdsong is one of the best parts of spring in the mountains.


We've been super busy for the past two weekends planting new plants and trees all around the cabin. I hope to share more of them in another blog post. For now, here's a first glimpse of the new plants on the sunny south side of the cabin facing our fire pit area. We're starting out slowly to make sure the plants we've chosen will survive here before we add more.


Spring has been so welcome here where we had such an enormous, almost overwhelming, snowfall last winter. We were so happy and surprised to see that, as each new snow drift melted away, all the trees and bushes we planted last fall survived and are thriving. With each passing season we love our little cabin even more! 



Feb 25, 2019

Our Snowy Cabin

I keep hearing on various blogs and on Instagram that spring is just around the corner, but at our little cabin in Idaho it's still snowing buckets full!


This was our cabin last December. It was our second December and we thought it was a fairly normal snow year. 

We weren't expecting much more snow than what you see in the street view of our property above. 

 We sure were wrong! This is the same street view from last weekend. I thought you might enjoy seeing what our little cabin looks like in a good snow year. We had no idea it snows this much in McCall - it was a complete surprise to us - but we sure are loving it!



We have our driveway plowed for us, but we have to shovel our way to the front door. 







We are so glad we had our leaky roof replaced in time for this amount of snow.





Our back door is down in a hole.

This is one of the Aspen trees we planted last fall. We're sure hoping they make it through their first winter. The snow drifted high enough on this north side of our cabin to bury the windows. 

This is the living room window from inside.

This is the kitchen window from inside.

My husband spent a day shoveling to the front door...

...and moved the mountain of snow away from the north side windows. 

This summer we'll look into getting storm windows or maybe even boarding up this side of the cabin for future winters.

This is another new little Aspen tree behind our cabin. The snow is so beautiful all around our property!



Our neighbor's tree fell under its heavy snow load onto the back part of our property. Luckily, it couldn't have chosen a better spot to fall and didn't cause any damage. Finding this made us so glad we had our own weak trees thinned out a couple of years ago. 



During big storms the city can't keep up with plowing all our side streets.

Which makes us thankful for our trail rated Jeep - it just laughs at deep snow!

We're also thankful at the end of the snowy day for our snug and warm little cabin. 

I guess we're a little different than most people since we're in no hurry for winter to end and spring to come. We're loving every moment of this beautiful Idaho snow!

Stay warm!