January 7, 2007:

Another year! So far, at least, I haven’t forgotten to write “2007” instead of “2006”. A little colder today, around -10°, but sunny for most of the day.

The mild weather continued all week, with some sunshine, some heavy overcast, and a day or so of strong winds. We went to Tisdale on Friday; the winds were strong and blowing snow was stuck to the highway. Thursday, the temperature had gone up to +5, but Friday dipped down a little, so the snow turned to ice. We didn’t have any trouble but there were lots of marks in the snow where vehicles had hit the ditch.

We went to Saskatoon on Wednesday and came back Thursday. Millers came with us, and on the way we saw two huge white animals on the highway. I thought they were polar bears at first, and couldn’t imagine where they would have come from. They turned out to be dogs, great, big, fluffy white dogs. Merv thought they were Siberian Huskies; could have been Akitas too, I guess – they are a pretty good size. We didn’t offer to pet them.

The Cove has been closed since Tuesday afternoon. We really bulked up on coffee, going over twice a day on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. We haven’t gone into coffee withdrawal yet because we have been away so much this week, but it will settle in soon. When we drove into the Park on Friday evening, a car pulling a trailer with a couple of snowmobiles on it pulled into the Cove lot and up to the pumps. I’m afraid he was going to be disappointed. The closest alternate source of fuel is Porcupine Plain; after that, Bjorkdale or Kelvington.

Last time the Cove shut down for the winter, a bunch of the coffee regulars rotated to each others’ houses for coffee. We took up a collection of a dollar a cup and at the end of winter donated it to a couple of charities. It made a respectable amount! So far, there has been no word on getting the rotation started again.

This year, the coffee crowd threw in some money at the pot-luck supper a couple of weeks ago, and Irene Crane-Genaille sent it to SARBI and Cystic Fibrosis in the name of the Greenwater Coffee Crowd. Our time at coffee row isn’t entirely wasted!

We had eight deer in the yard at one time last week. I guess the families get together at this time of year. They seem to hang together going from feeding station to feeding station.