Winter Solstice is our holiday.  Seth and I celebrate with a hike or snowshoeing, homemade gifts, and lighting candles.  We skip Christmas except to chase my five nephews around a noisy house, and then we got to bed early for the New Year.  It’s an exciting life, what can I say?

This year was a little different.  We thought maybe a hike for the Solstice, except someone in the house has no hiking boots, only winter boots with a 2″ heel.  Seriously — who sells winter boots with a heel?  More importantly, who buys them? (They were a gift.)

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To top it off, I was still hoping to pile manure onto the garden beds on one of my free days.  The manure is free for all community gardeners, minus the effort it takes to shovel.

Can you see where this is going?

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In some good news, the garden beds are finally done for the winter.  We dressed three beds with manure, and covered two with newspaper and snow because we ran out of shit and light.  This is what happens when you do outside work on the shortest day of the year.