Sesuci Salju

I feel so embarrassed with my self. Here I was eagerly wishing to update the blog as frequent as I could and yet what happened??? My promise to upload the snow scenes have gone stale !!! Somehow things got in the way. . .  Ohhh I do so admire those who manage to update their blogs daily, they must be good in time management. I'm sure everybody is busy in our own ways, so it's a matter of controlling and managing our time.

Last week, we went to a place that I had been wanting to go for quite sometime, but only manage to locate the place in the last few days. The place is idyllic, it's so beautiful even with the still barren trees. I was so excited to upload the photos here in the blog and found to my dismay that, I have yet to upload the snow pictures!!!

So here is the stale snow photos. . . I will upload them anyway :D

Just outside my house

All the pictures were taken on Saturday morning 4th February. As I mentioned in my earlier post, heavy snow had come down on Friday morning around 11 am or so. By 12.30 am, only light snow were still falling. When I checked, it was only about 10 cm thick, hmmm not that heavy compared to last year and the year before. By late Friday afternoon, all the snow on the trees had fallen to the ground. A pity. . .  it's the sight of snow on the trees that makes it beautiful.

That night, temperature had gone down to -15 Celsius (when I checked), but I was told it was even colder than -20C in some areas. This might be normal in Scandinavian countries, but not in The Netherlands. Average winter temperature (as stated in the tourist guide book) is actually 5 C. Netherlands had not seem much snow in the last decades. . . but since we have been here, we have seen lots of beautiful snow scenarios in the last three winters, Alhamdulillah :D

Winter 2009/2010 recorded the heaviest snowfall in almost 20 years. All my dutch neighbours came out and not only us, but they too took pictures of the scene. So we were not the only ones getting excited and oooing here and ooohaahhh there !!!

Winter 2010/2011, we already move to The Hague. Snow came early, in late November it already started snowing. That year they had white Christmas, the Dutch must be excited, it's not every year they have snow and even more rare to get white Christmas. You can read about it and browse the pictures here.

This year winter 2011/2012, even though snow came once and not that heavy for that matter, we were glad because we managed to capture the precious moments (in my opinion :D)

That Saturday morning, when I looked out the window, all I saw was mist and the black outlines of the trees. I was sure there were no fresh snow in the night (because our footsteps of yesterday's were not covered by new snow). But when the sun started to shine, and the mist had cleared, I saw that the trees in front of the kitchen window were all white. . . How come???

Scenes outside the kitchen window. . .

A talk with a neighbour later in the day revealed that the mist had frozen on the trees because of the low temperature. Hmmm interesting idea, I'm not going to argue about that but I think she might be right in her theory.

White snow against blue sky. . .

Behind the house. . . the building in the picture is kinder boerderij (kids farm)

The big tree is all white

I managed to coerce DS to come out and took a walk in the neighbourhood . . . . 

My nextdoor neighbour - House no 3

Neighbour - house no 2

Love these 2 trees. . .

The main gate and bridge to the houses


We took a walk along the bicycle path to school. I would prefer to continue on the road and took pictures of the neighbours' houses, but DS was more interested in sleghing on the frozen canal. So we continued walking along the school route.

View of the frozen canal from the bridge

Upclose

In early spring, the compound is full of snow drops, now it's all white. .

The distance to nearby towns by bike

Normally you would be able to see a few sheeps grazing here on this compound. . .  too cold to come out I suppose :D

This area with the walking and cycling paths (next to it, but higher - where people are seen walking in the picture) are still newly developed, so the trees are still small. We had to stop here because DS wanted to snow sledding...

Down into the frozen canal . . .

Have to stop now, hope you enjoy watching the pictures as much as I did enjoy the scenarios. The camera didn't do the scenes justice, it was much more beautiful in real life. . . .