Raise a toast to February -- the month of love

Heart love to you from me.

Paintings © Barbara Muir

In preparation for February our city dressed up in a whopping
thick coat of snow.  It said -- "just look around Toronto!  It's the
end of January, you haven't had a speck of snow.  You look
tired and drab, and frankly not Canadian, and certainly not
Torontonian. I have a present for you." Drop.  Snow everywhere.
And then okay very cold weather -- but sunlight sparkling off the
snow.  Neighbours shoveling each other's walks.  City ploughs
helping my husband dig his car out (after a neighbour shoveled
the snow from his driveway all over my husband's car) (by accident
right?). People outside laughing about how cold it is, and inside
recovering and sharing coffee, tea, meals, drinks together.

And here it is.  The month of love. Twenty-eight days to think of
some way to be loving every day.  I love it.  It makes no sense that
I do, but my husband and I are hopeless romantics.  We are friends
of the symbol of the heart.  Tonight I hung the huge tissue paper
Peony heart on our kitchen door that I made years ago from
instructions in a Martha Stewart magazine.  My husband and I toasted
the month and each other with champagne at dinner.  And so it begins.

We usually go away sometime around Valentine's Day -- frequently
 to stay somewhere even colder than Toronto.  One year we were in
Montreal, where our beautiful hotel was connected to an underground
pathway to a mall, and we only ventured outside once in four
days,  (it was - 40 degrees celsius) -- to take a taxi ride to look at the sites.
We had so much fun!  But then Montrealers are romantic.  Very.

Happy first day of the Month of Love.