Category: Home Life

A summer of septic field construction and landscaping

My regular readers will have noticed that I didn’t go very far from home this past summer. What began as a simple (but very expensive) replacement of our complete septic system turned into a major landscaping project which lasted the entire season. The main component of the landscaping is...
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Catching up as Winter deepens

It’s been 7 weeks since I last talked to you. In that time the southern Yukon has gone from a nice Fall to a dreary but fairly mild Winter, with a more normal snow level than the last two extremely heavy-snow Winters. Another Winter like those two might get...
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Spring is here – somewhere under the snow perhaps

It felt for a while like Father Winter was never going to leave, but Spring has now arrived. Though nights are still just below freezing, the sun is very warm. We have a record load of snow on the ground – for a while 1972 had deeper snow according...
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Working on history – and the house

Winter has settled into Whitehorse, although it’s still fairly warm – as I write this at 05:00; the temperature is -5°C (+23°F). Cloudy skies are the norm, though, and despite some great aurora forecasts, most of the displays are hidden from us. What all that does is keep me...
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Fall rains and a taste of Winter in August

Except for a spectacular May, this was a sad excuse for summer in the Yukon, and now it’s gone. The Whitehorse area typically gets about 262 mm (10.3 inches) of precipitation per year (21.8 mm per month), but this year we got 35 mm in July, and a record...
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Puppy, tours, logging, websites… and tragedy

Although I haven’t posted here much lately, it’s not because there’s nothing going on. It’s not all exciting stuff, and not even all happy stuff, but it keeps me busy. One of my greatest joys is certainly Bella. Watching her grow up has been wonderful – she’s as beautiful...
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Digging out of a record-breaking snowfall

Yesterday was a busy day, and I can sure feel it in my old bones this morning. I haven’t seen official confirmation that the snowfall that ended about noon yesterday was a record, but I’m quite sure that it was. The Environment Canada weather statistics say that the record...
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Motorcycle season in the Yukon has begun

I’ve been watching the long-range weather forecasts especially closely for weeks now, trying to figure out when I could get on the bike for the first time. The biggest hold-up is always Fireweed Drive, the road that connects us to the Alaska Highway – it has a curve that’s...
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March in the Yukon – it’s all about the sun

We’re having a wonderful spell of sunshine in Whitehorse right now, and like most Northerners, I’m embracing it. Temperatures at night are still a bit chilly but overall we’re a little above average, day and night, for this period. The weather forecast for the next week calls for lots...
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