The pansies are a lost cause. There is almost nothing to bite off of them any more, and still they get yanked out.

The temperatures seem to be staying solidly above freezing even at night. Time for spring flowers.

Ranunculus in a hanging basket in the front porch, so we can see it whenever we come and go. And a fluffy heather in the large pot at the bottom of the stairs.

I’m not sure what those steel-wire baskets are supposed to be lined with. I’m guessing the producers had something more aesthetically pleasing in mind than cut-up paper bags. But… the bag kind of doesn’t look too bad.

I put pansies around both of those “centerpieces” just to fill out the pots. Not the ideal plant for this neighbourhood – the deer will come and nibble at the flowers, I’m sure – but the plant nursery didn’t have anything else to choose from, this early in the season.

Oh. That went faster than expected. Eight hours later, the deer have already been at them. Not just nibbled at the flowers but yanked out the entire plants. Couldn’t they just bite off the bits they want and leave the rest? And what did the poor heather bush do, why did it deserve to be thrown to the side?

The tulips at least are well protected from the deer, up at the top of the porch. I was worried about them during the coldest days of February, but the green shoots all survived.

One of the two potted cyclamens is thriving like never before. The other is looking less lively every week. They get the same amount of light (obviously) and water and plant food. The only difference apart from the species/variety/whatever is that the one on the right occasionally gets sprayed with a diluted soap and alcohol solution because of pesky little flies. Now I’m wondering if perhaps the spraying is what’s making it grow so lush. If I start spraying the other one, even though it has no visible fly problem, will it also perk up?

Some of our water pipes froze overnight. Not for the first time. The last time was no more than 5 years ago, and somehow I still forgot that this can happen, and didn’t turn on the heating coils ahead of the cold snap. (–17°C this morning.)

I started the dishwasher before I went to bed, and by morning – no more than eight hours later – the cold water pipe in the kitchen had frozen. The pipe to the shower was not entirely frozen, but only a tiny trickle of water was coming through.

Went to the basement, plugged in the cord for the heating coils. Turned on the tap in the kitchen partway, and same with the shower. Waited. Waited another day. I was getting to the point of looking up the prices of heat blowers and resigning myself to the need of buying one (I know we had one in 2018 but have no idea where it is now) when the shower came back online. Three hours later, the water in the kitchen was back on as well.

I thought I had opened the shower just a little bit, but I forgot to take into account just how light the shower head is. Even that gentle flow of water was enough to throw the shower head around so it ended up showering half the bathroom. I was in a Teams meeting with work when it happened; had to rush to turn off the camera and run to the bathroom to turn the water off.

Four days in a row of shovelling. The pile in front of the root cellar is a metre tall by now.

Snow ploughs have been by to sort of clear the street, but when there’s so much of it, it just ends up along the sides of the road. Normally the street is wide enough for two cars to meet; now it’s barely the width of a car and a half.

After several days of fresh snow with little wind and no melting, the garden is at its most “winder wonderland” look.

Boatloads of snow.

Nysse doesn’t have a litterbox (I decommissioned the one we had when he hadn’t touched it in months) and does his business outside. In this weather, he walked a few metres away from the stairs, dug a little hole in the snow, covered it up with more snow, and came straight back inside.

It’s not particularly cold, even. Just very, very snowy.

It started snowing heavily yesterday and kept going all night. The weather service issued red alerts due to heavy snow and heavy wind, telling people in some areas to avoid driving completely. Not just “stay home if possible” but more like “stay at home because emergency services won’t be able to reach you”. Up to 50 cm of snow was promised in some places, and with strong winds it will pile into deep drifts that you just can’t drive through.

The worst hit parts were two or three hundred kilometres north of here – not that far on a Swedish scale. Down here it didn’t get that bad (we only got yellow warnings, later upgraded to orange) but we still got plenty of snow.

It’s a giant hassle for everyone who needs to get to places, and for those who need to clear the streets, but I love it. I don’t mind shovelling the snow. I love the way the world is bright and light all of a sudden. It feels like real winter, instead of that dreary gray limbo we had in December.

And it’s brought so many more birds to our feeder!

I’ve had this ivy for years and never had any problems with it. And now all of a sudden it just died. From one day to another, all the leaves dried up, and that was that. Not even just one shoot – the whole thing.

I did move it from the bathroom to the living room some months ago, so this was its first winter in this window. But it used to stand in the window next to my desk for years and didn’t have a problem with it then. Maybe it didn’t like the draft from the heat exchanger?

The tulip bulbs in the flower pot on my front porch think it’s spring. I hope that the green shoots can survive the actual winter weather that will come soon.