Lately the weather has been cold, grey, and wet. I suppose it’s like this every year around this time, but this year I’m finding it particularly cold and grey. This is the first year I’ve had not working or in school since I can remember, so I have a lot of time to observe changes in the weather day by day. While it’s true that the snow is melted, birds are singing, and flowers are starting to come up, there’s a chill to the wind. This damp coldness makes me want to sit inside with a cup of tea, a warm sweater, and do cozy activities like making bread. I find it hard to believe that in a month or so the world will explode with colour.

When my son was born in mid-December, my friend dropped off a lovely package of homemade bread, soup and hand-knit baby bath towels. I was completely in awe of the bread, it was so beautiful, with a perfectly crisp crust and a soft fluffy interior. Recently when I saw her and thanked her for the bread she told me “Oh you can do it! All you need is four ingredients (salt, yeast, water, and flour) and time!”. While my spare time is limited these days, I do have spare moments where I can put together some dough and plenty of time to wait for it to rise. So far I have experimented with making basic white bread, seed bread, and raisin bread using my dutch oven. All of the recipes require very limited kneading so are quite easy to make!

The gardening centres are starting to open and I’m itching to go. We ordered a number of fruiting shrubs and plants that will come in early May to continue to grow out our pollinator garden including grapes, raspberries, quince and blackberries. We’re also going to continue working on converting our lawn space into clover. I’m also planning on getting some more shelters for pollinators including a bat house and a solitary bee nest. I can’t wait to spend time outside and to introduce my son to the outside world.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying seeing the bulbs we planted in the autumn transforming into little flowers – our daffodils, tulips, and crocuses are beginning to emerge. I’m also working on growing some vegetables by seed, however, I’m uncertain on how successful I will be! So far I have sprouts for okra, broccoli, garlic chives and tomatoes.

In the next week, I plan on going to order our hanging baskets, and going on some short hikes with my son. In the garden I hope I have some time to cut back our shrubs and work on aerating the grass and clover.

I’ll hopefully write again next week!

This weekend we were blessed with beautiful weather and we enjoyed taking long walks throughout the village. On Saturday we celebrated the opening of the seed library, an initiative started by Sustainable Merrickville-Wolford and sponsored by the local Lions Club. The goal of the seed library, is to provide locals with free seeds that they can use to grow their garden. Locals donated seeds they collected before the winter to the library over the past few months, then on Saturday the library opened. I picked up some brown-eyed susans and echinacea that I’m looking forward to planting. The library in the village is very beautiful, it originally was owned by the Recreational Canadian Canoe Association, and became the library in 2008. We were also happy to see some Canadian goose on the Rideau River floating on the melting ice.

We’re looking forward to getting started on our garden, and building one of our raised beds (and maybe a greenhouse!) this weekend.

Lately we see many animals. We saw both deer and foxes in our backyard, a coyote by the river, and countless birds. I was surprised this morning to see a massive flock of Canada geese flying overhead. To me, Canada Geese are a sign of changes in the seasons, and I found it odd to not hear them when I lived in Japan. It’s quite amazing that they learned how to fly in v-formation, a pattern that allows them to save energy and travel longer distances.

Lately our garden is starting to reveal itself and since this is our first spring in this house, we’re not sure what to expect. The gardens around here are quite different from those in our previous neighbourhood in Ottawa. They seem more wild with lots of moss, rocks, and spreading coniferous trees. I plan to use as many native plants as I can in developing our garden, and it seems like the previous owner of our house was of a similar mindset. So far I’ve found a native elderberry tree and milkweed amongst countless (as of now) unidentified plants. We’ll have to see what pops up out of the ground over the next couple of months.

We also have been getting different visitors at our bird feeders. We put up some of our bird feeders near a line of trees by the side of our house. Birds, especially smaller birds, require shelter in order to protect them from predators and weather. While it took a few weeks, we now have many visitors including downy woodpeckers, red-breasted nuthatch, dark-eyed juncos, chickadees and lately a pair of cardinals. We also put up an owl nest – although I’m not sure if an owl will take residence there.

This weekend we plan to start looking into how to convert some of our grass lawn into a clover lawn. I will post about that soon.

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been almost two months since we moved from central Ottawa to a little village. We didn’t anticipate moving during a pandemic, or moving at all really, but we always dreamed of living in the country. One of the silver linings of 2020, is that it gave both my husband and I the opportunity to work from home. Working from home has it’s own challenges, particularly during pandemic lockdowns, but it also gave us the flexibility to choose where we wanted to live. Merrickville is one of the villages that we often visited after moving back to Canada. It’s a remarkably unique place abundant with artisans, beautiful scenery, and incredibly kind people.

While we considered moving to a more rural area, where we would be able to start our own hobby farm, we decided to live near the heart of the village. It allows us to be able to walk to pretty much everything we need, and become less reliant on using a car. One of the highlights of our days is walking to the local shops, restaurants, and scenic areas. I’m excited for the weather to become warmer, so that we will be able to bicycle to nearby farms and canoe in the river.

I’m going to try to make an effort to update this blog at least once a week to showcase changes in the season as well as highlights in our new life. One of the things I loved about my first year of living in Tokyo, was having completely new experiences throughout the seasons. I’m excited to see the ebb and flow of the seasons here, and what they bring. Hopefully learning about what it’s like to live in a small village will be interested for you, too.

In the past week, we started to see temperatures rising to above double-digits and subsequently falling again to below zero. I’ve heard that the rising and falling of the temperatures is what leads to the flow of maple syrup in March in Ontario. Farmers and those with larger plots of land around the village are beginning to tap sugar maples, and in some places you can see steady steam rising from small huts where sap is being boiled.

The rising and falling of temperatures has also lead to melting snow and the return of birds. We encountered a flock of evening grosbeak while on a morning walk to the library the other day, and often see the returning v-shapes of Canada goose up above. On our walks we can see little streams beginning to flow below cracking ice. I’m also enjoying seeing gardens reveal themselves as the snow melts. We even discovered the local community garden, where in the summer, people will grow vegetables to donate to the local food cupboard.

Shops within the village are also beginning to wake up since the lockdown was lifted and spring has begun. We pre-ordered homemade belgian chocolate bunnies and cream eggs from the local sweet shop for easter, and were excited to participate in the pi day auction (in honour of the mathematical symbol) for the first time today. The pi day auction, as many things, is virtual this year, and the proceeds will go towards supporting the local fair. We bought a bumbleberry (mixed-berry) pie from the local bakery. Did you know bumbleberry pie was a Canadian thing?