We had a hurricane blow through our neck of the woods early last week. It ravaged our forests, littered our roads with trees and their branches, and picked up our greenhouse like a kite and flew it for a bit before dropping it like a child discarding a toy.

If this devastation had happened a different week, a different time, another time when the devastation of personal loss of life wasn’t so bright in my mind, I would have mourned the loss of this structure more than I did. We had hoped to grow cucumbers, peppers, eggplants and tomatoes in our free greenhouse.

But it is just a thing. A convenient thing. But a thing, not a person, not a creature. We can build another.

Marc has had a chance to be Mister Mountain Man Supreme with all the tree damage.

This road goes to the back of the blueberry field and usually you can drive a truck up through here. I mean, it is never has smooth as a black tarmac road in a suburb but it doesn’t usually require four-wheel drive.

So many trees weren’t simply broken and suspended in the forest above. So many were uprooted and tipped over like Jenga blocks. Marc had his work cut out for him (no pun intended) but he took to it like a man of the woods.

He is excited to report that he can cook bannock using solely the wood stove now. I think he was meant to be a minimalist. When he comes in for lunch his face has a rosy glow, under a sheen of perspiration. He is a little smelly, a little gritty and ever-so happy.

The stinging nettles are starting to poke their green heads up so he pureed some for a soup the other day. How do I describe the satisfaction of seeing my husband trot out the door, kittens at his ankles, snipping herbs for dinner from our own garden. And he has the great responsibility of chicken-sitting the neighbour’s Osterlofs. (A black chicken with a pearly green iridescent back.) These lady-hens are named after Shakespeare’s women, Juliet, Ophelia, Portia, Cordelia etc. They lost their triumphant rooster Romeo to an eagle just last week and they’ve been mourning their hero ever since his valiant fall.

Speaking of valiant fall, I have fallen ill with a cold that seems to produce leaking from every facial orifice. So I have contented myself to stay at home, under gigantic blue duvets, wrapped in polar fleece, sweating out the virus. Best to keep your visiting to me strictly virtual at this point.

Wishing you a beautiful January weekend.