Plant-inspired Solstice lanterns!

Happy soon-to-be longest night everyone! 

We are preparing for the winter Solstice with our herbal mother-daughter group this week, by making plant-inspired lanterns.  The simplest form is leaf and flower shapes punched into tin cans; the next is pressed leaves modge-podged onto glass mason jars - lovely!  The last is seen here, a slightly more elaborate lantern made with a twig frame (in our case grape vine) and pressed leaf "window" panes to let the candlelight through.  So beautiful!  There are many easy DIY lantern ideas out there, the best I think is using materials you already have around the garden or home.  Happy Solstice!

Longest Night Celebration & Neighbourhood Lantern Walk this weekend

Happy solstice!  For the longest night of the year we love to gather outdoors with friends, with candles, lanterns, a bonfire to warm ourselves, and some wood-fired baking from the cob oven.  How will you celebrate the longest night? 

For anyone here in town, don't forget about the annual  neighbourhood Lantern Walk on Dec 21.  Anyone is welcome!  Bring a lantern, and join a slow wintery walk around the snowy streets.  What a lovely idea!  Here are some beautiful ideas for making your own lanterns.  And 10 more ideas for making your own simple lanterns from jars, coloured paper, brown paper bags, paper mache, and more recycled materials.

Icy morning garden

After the late night freezing rain the garden looked like this! All that lovely packing snow has melted and the world outside is now a sheet of ice.  I headed out first thing to take a look.  Absolutely stunning!  Every seed, pine needle, twig and stalk completely and perfectly encapsulated in ice.  Drops of water frozen as if in mid-motion.  Beautiful, but treacherous.  Everywhere branches are cracking from the weight of all the ice.  You can hear tinkling like glass chimes when the wind blows and the branches sway, and then the ominous slow cracking as another large branch comes down and crashes in the yard.  Power seems to be off and on today too, with ice or branches falling on the nearby power lines.  This kind of ice storm comes at least once a winter to us here in southern Ontario.  Today will be a mostly indoor day!

First big snowfall!

A few days ago...finally!  The first real snowfall!  In the morning it was so pretty topping each dried flower stalk, roof line, and tree branch in the yard.  Our daughter thought the echinacea garden looked like a jaunty field of little gnomes with snow peaked caps. Snow shovels are out and the piles have been started for snow fort building...just waiting for a little more snow.  The hens are not sure if they like it.  We spread straw sprinkled with sunflower seeds & buckwheat (their favourite snack) on the snowy ground to coax them out from the coop just so they can stretch their legs.  Luckily, all the hens who molted in October now have their new winter feathers grown - but just barely.  If it would have been this cold a few weeks ago they would not have fared so well.  Surprisingly, they are still laying eggs.  Usually by solstice they are slowing down with egg production (presumably reserving all their extra energy for keeping warm instead).

This Moment

{This moment} - This moment - an end of week ritual, no words, just a special photo to remember, savour, enjoy. 

December garden

December has been a busy month.  We've had our craft sale, been preparing for the holidays, watching the days grow shorter (and nights longer), and just winding down.  We've taken many wintery walks, and I took a few photos the other day when we were out enjoying the snow in our garden (which has all melted again by today - funny southern Ontario weather!)  I think the seeds heads are so beautiful when they are covered by a thin layer of fresh snow.  We leave most of our dried plants standing in the garden as birds enjoy these seeds over the winter months.  In our cold frame we still have kale, arugula, dandelion, tatsoi, and parsley going strong!

Solstice garden!

Chilly day with brilliant sunlight reflecting off snow drifts, sliver of a moon in a crisp dark night sky...freshly chopped wood, baked apples stuffed with cranberries and almonds, a long leisurely winter walk through the woods, cozy dinner of local potato-leek soup with fresh sourdough bread and steamed kale uncovered in the garden, friends dropping by unannounced their arms filled with holiday treats, time to relax with other mama's sipping fantastic homemade eggnog as the children played...the solstice this year from start to finish was a glorious day, and now we look forward to longer days as we move into the new season ahead.

Some of our favourite garden catalogues just arrived in the mail (William Dam, Cottage Gardeners, Greta's Organic, West Coast Seeds...) and we anticipate spending many of our long winter nights infront of the fire, while paging through these seed lists and drawing up plans for next year's garden. Wishing everyone all the best for the solstice, holiday season, and new year ahead. Here are a few photos of our solstice garden and house. The crooked little white spruce will become our indoor festive tree this year, for only a few days as it needs to be put right back out into the cold to overwinter before it's planted in our yard next spring...