As I write this, I find myself torn between loving the warm weather that has made December in Toronto feel more like October — with green grass and warm breezes instead of howling winds and snowdrifts — and feeling anxious because it just doesn’t really seem like Christmas. Global climate change is a harsh mistress. Our year started with a strange omen, included a lot of travel to distant lands (if San Francisco and Greece qualify), saw offspring graduate from various educational institutions, and brough a summer of unparalleled beauty, a couple of mini-vacations at fancy resorts and a hectic fall filled with conferences in two different countries and three separate provinces.
The links below should open in a new window — and if you want to just read the text first, and then look at the pictures separately, they are all in a Flickr slideshow which you can browse at your leisure.
The year began with the usual New Year’s tradition of great food interspersed with a variety of outdoor activities at our friends’ farm near Buckhorn, northeast of Toronto. The activities included snowshoeing around the property, and the great food included my trademark (okay, Marc’s trademark) caviar pie. Then it was back to reality, and the usual kind of outdoor activies that winter brings — such as shovelling the driveway during a massive blizzard. And then came the strange omen: I looked out the window at the back of our house, and there was a shape in the snow on the roof of our shed — a red fox, curled up for a nap in the drift there, nose tucked under its black tail. I thought it was pretty special and took a photo, but he (or she) turned up again the next day, and the next, and the next. We had seen the fox in the neighborhood before, but having it sleep on our shed was a surprise.
