One of my most favourite things about the fall season in the Arctic is watching the daily progression of sea ice forming in the ocean. It starts like this, with a thin, white ice coating the dark brown mud flats so that it makes the oceans look bright turquoise at high tide. (more…)
This year’s early-summer weather in Iqaluit has had its ups and severe downs. It has been cold, grey, and quite uninspiring for home decorating. On the downside, it has brought lots of fog and ice into town that has drawn a number of polar bears near our house lately – meaning that we can’t wander far from home (at least not without ammunition or bear spray). On the upside of it though, it has meant that bug season has been delayed enough for me to spend more time in the front yard doing some landscaping.
I was initially thinking to do just one or two small things to add some curb appeal to our place over the summer. Nevertheless, once one project was started I began finding other little things I could do to improve our curb-side look and my ‘to-do’ list quickly snowballed. (more…)
One of the ways I like to keep fresh veggies in the house throughout the year is by regrowing vegetables from their scraps. Some vegetables can be easily regrown without much of any effort and it can be a great way to get a head start on your summer garden.
Today my husband and I took the day off to wander through Sylvia Grinnell Park (one of the nearby territorial parks) and have a tundra picnic. It was a perfect Arctic spring day: +6°C, sunny and no wind.
We’re a week into June and our Arctic garden is finally starting to come to life. There may still be plenty of ice and snow in the bay, but in our greenhouse there’s nothing but sprouts, sprouts, sprouts! After a month of very slow starting seeds, our greenhouse is bursting with all sorts of seedlings. I started some of these seeds way back in April – primarily the coriander, basil, and sunflowers – but had to wait until the end of May to get most of the others started (when the greenhouse stopped going below zero). So far I’ve started the season with my favorites: (more…)
