January Blues

 

I heard that this past Monday was supposed to be the most depressing day of the year.  Did you find it that way?

It was blue last week when I took these pictures.   I got up at 7 in the morning and the world was blue in the gloom of early morning and freshly fallen snow.

 

By the beginning of this week our yard looked just like this! 

It rained all week and as the snow disappeared our house became lakefront Property.

Our front and backyards were flooded and  the water was a foot deep on the driveway between the house and the shop.

 

So what do you do on those long January evenings to take your mind off the weather?

I did a jigsaw puzzle  and watched a couple of movies last week and

I completed an on line book using My Publisher software and sent it off while Harv figured out how to use a negative scanner he bought himself for Christmas.

Then we decided to tackle the HUGE job of organizing our pictures and scanning negatives into the computer.

Our dining room table was covered in pictures and negatives

 

and we started the long process of scanning our negatives into the computer.  So far we’ve done the negatives from one year – 1974.

Thankfully most of our negatives are stored in chronological order, because many of our pictures are not.  Some are in albums, most aren’t.  You know how it is, you go looking for a pictures for someone’s school project, or a family wedding and then never put them back in their proper place.  So we have boxes and boxes of pictures that really need to be sorted through. 

Then there are old pictures found in a box that came from Harv’s Dad’s place.  These are amazing .  Although many of the pictures in that box are of people and places unknown to us, there are a few gems among them.

Here’s a few samples:

Harv’s Dad in the Hop yards

Dad with his horse, Star and his dog back in the Prairies and then this gem:

The old Harrison Hot Springs pool.  The date on the back of this picture is 1939.

 

This whole picture thing will be an ongoing project – I don’t expect to complete it any year soon but each picture sorted, each negative scanned is progress.

The bonus is discovering pictures of times long past and, when going through family pictures, remembering the people and experiences that have enriched our lives.

 

I’d say it’s good medicine to get rid of those January blues.