Winter is Coming

First off, I'd like to thank all you readers for reading!  This is mind-boggling, but blogger tells me there are people from Canada, the US, Mexico, Germany and the Philippines checking out the blog.  (Unless some of my fellow Canadians checked the blog while on vacation in the Philippines?) Wherever you are following from, thanks!

It has felt like "fall" here in the the north for a few weeks now. This morning (again) it was below 0 degrees. I love fall colors.  Thunder Bay, Ontario (where our "forever home" is) doesn't really have fantastic fall colors, because most of the trees are evergreen.  Around our house there I've planted burning bushes, a maple shrub, black eyed susans, tall grasses, and every shrub I can find that displays fall colors (including a wall of virginia creeper against our fence). 

Believe it or not, there are fall colors here in Nunavut.  Yes, even without trees. You just have to look a little harder to find them. The tundra is dotted with tiny plants growing in amongst the rocks.  These turn glorious shades of crimson and yellow.  Two weeks ago I even captured some "tall" grasses.

Not quite "amber waves of grain", but still!

This is the also time of year that you can find blueberries, bearberries, crowberries and arctic cranberries.  They grow very close to the ground, against the rock, and take great patience to pick. After word got out on Facebook that the berries were ready for picking, I had to check it out. It actually took my mother and me three separate trips onto the tundra before we finally spotted them. We kept looking around and were starting to think people were either crazy, or just putting us on.

Every summer when I was young our family would go to visit my grandparents in Nova Scotia. I loved going out into the field to pick blueberries. There were blueberry bushes everywhere, and I could happily pick berries all afternoon.  Picking arctic blueberries is not the same!  After an hour your back is stiff from bending over and crawling around on the rocks.  The berries are tricky to spot unless you are literally standing on top of them. They don't grow in the swampy or low-lying areas, but actually on the slopes of the rocky hills.

These berries are growing only millimetres
above the ground.

A lot of people here LOVE berries, as they are part of a traditional Inuit diet. They are commonly used in baking, making jam, and the leaves used to make tea. Akutaq is a northern delicacy: berries mixed with fat. (Rumour has it the berries from Kimmirut are "better" than our berries here in Iqaluit. Apparently elders can tell the difference by taste alone. They also sell for more money.)  Since it is berry-season, the tundra is full of people picking.  Everywhere you go outside town people are bent over or crawling, carrying their bags or plastic containers.  It is backbreaking work, so they sell for quite a bit of money.  Facebook is commonly used to get the word out if people have extra for sale.

These berries are from Apex,  the only "suburb" of Iqaluit.

We picked our own.  I tried to talk my darling children into picking some extra berries to make themselves some cash, but they were not enthusiastic.  "Well, you know Mommy", said Captain JS wearily at the end of the day.  "Picking berries takes a long time.  Its a lot of work."

Some of Gramma's yummy blueberry muffins.

My mother made two batches of these blueberry muffins with our freshly picked berries. Totally worth the work!

It has been almost 3 weeks since I took my fall photos.  A few days ago we woke up to this:

The lake in our backyard.

There has been snow on the ground ever since. We are not quite "north of the wall" yet, but we are well on the way.  Today I've decided I may need to pick myself up a sealskin headband to keep my ears warm. :)  (More on sealskin later.)  

Up next: Fire!