Having four distinct seasons is a wonderful thing. I could not imagine living in a place where the weather never changed, or where the variations were so slight that you had to be reminded it was one season and not the other.

I don’t have a favourite ‘season’, but I do have favourite parts and pieces of each of them. And this piece of winter is generally my favourite. I live in one of the colder parts of Canada, just an hour away from Ottawa — which is (depending on who you’re asking) either the second coldest capital city on the planet, next to Ulaanbaatar, or number four.

And the forecast for the next week says it’s going to be nipple-shattering cold — with the ‘wind chill’, it’s supposed to get really, really close to -40C (-40F) over each of the next three nights. Which is awesome. Seriously.

The problem with winter, however, is there’s no colour. For almost four months we live in a world made up almost entirely of grey with less than six hours of daylight in which to see the shades. Which can get tedious.

So, for the next week or so, I’m going to post shots of colour.

This is several pots of chives for sale two summers ago at a local Farmer’s Market. If my memory is correct, this is what green looks like.