Each Spring, the organization I work for co-sponsors "Daffodil Days" - a fundraiser in support of the Canadian Cancer Society (see poster below).  You can buy a bunch of daffodils for $6 and watch them bloom overnight!

Below are pictures of the flowers taken one day apart - these things bloom fast!

When it's still snowy outside, it is really nice to see flowers and greenery around you.

A couple of weeks ago I went berry-picking with some friends in the hills just outside of Inuvik.  Although the blueberry season had passed, we were in perfect time for cranberries.  It was a warm clear Saturday in September, and there was no place we'd rather be!

I got a little nervous when we saw fresh bear prints, but the other girls had bear spray and bear banger, so we didn't let a wild animal deter us!  He didn't seem that big anyway...  :)

I got the berries home and washed them, and ended up with about 7 cups of berries, which I threw in the freezer for future use.

Jump forward to Thanksgiving (Canadian Thanksgiving weekend - Oct 6-8!), and I pulled a few cups of berries out of the freezer and made my very first home-made cranberry sauce by boiling the berries in orange juice and sugar.

Round it off with a turkey dinner with good friends, and overall it was a great first Thanksgiving in the North.

Anyone who knows me at all knows how much I love tea.  I drink bucket-loads a day, and always have a teapot somewhere within arms-reach.  I drink mostly different varieties of green tea (which I credit with keeping me healthy and happy) but I do sometimes enjoy traditional English-style tea with cream and sugar (which tastes best when made by my British parents with Kenyan tea), or flavoured black tea like chai or pumpkin spice with lots of sugar.

So it is no surprise that I am always on the look-out for things I can boil up or steep.  As I have spent a bit of time out on the land here in the Arctic this summer, I have discovered a couple of new things that taste good when boiling water is applied.  Today I will show you rose hip tea, and next week I'll show you Labrador tea. 

Below are some pictures of the process (which I'm not sure I'm doing correctly, but I figured I'd just throw them into hot water and see what happens!).

Rose hips are the pods that form at the base of the rose flower.  Up here I believe they are from the wild rose.  I don't have any photos of them on the plant, but I will rectify that this weekend and post a picture later! 

They are apparently extremely high in vitamin C, and also contain vitamins A, B, D and E, as well as antioxidants, pectin, and organic acids.  The tea is good for preventing bladder infections, and for headaches and dizziness.  It also strengthens your immune system against infection and colds (thanks to the high vitamin C content), helps with digestion, flushes out the kidneys and urinary tract and relieves mild rheumatic pain.  Impressive!

So how did it taste?  Well, the flavor is what I would call "delicate"....meaning, it was hard to taste anything!  You need about 5 whole rose hips per cup of water, or you can also cut them into pieces... I'll try that next time.  Maybe I need more, or I picked them too early, or I need to dry them or cut them up.  But it was very pleasant -- other people have said it tastes like apple, and I would agree (it was nice and tangy). 

During the long days of beautiful weather we had last weekend (when it got over 30C / 86F), I had the chance to get out on the land and pick some berries in a couple of spots.  Berry picking is an almost sacred activity for the people of this region, and they take advantage of the long days to stock up on healthy berries to last through the winter.  (At the risk of sounding overly sappy) ... being outside, soaking up the sun, and harvesting fruit from the land makes me understand why they say Arctic summers are the world's best-kept secret.

Of course, we were always on the lookout for bears.  We didn't see any in the flesh, but we did spot a few paw tracks, some of which were too fresh for comfort, so we didn't wander far...

Below are pictures of the berries and other plant-life that we found.  The only ones we ate were the ones we could safely identify, which were the blueberries and cloudberries.  The others are a mystery, and I'm waiting to ask my botanist friend before eating them. :)

Nonetheless, between Google images and myself, I have taken a stab at identifying all of my findings except one, so if I'm right, yey to me!

I showed you the blue skies of Inuvik earlier this week, now I'll show you some pictures of the wild flowers in the area.  Below are just a few -- I am amazed at what has bloomed out of what used to be a frozen, snow-covered landscape.  It's now lush and green, with flowers scattered everywhere.

I won't even try to identify these flowers, so if anyone knows what they are, let me know!  My Mom is a botanist, and is on her way up to visit me for the summer (with my Dad), so I'll put her to work with a book on flowers from the library so she can identify these for us!

Today is another milestone -- five months since I moved to the Arctic.  Pretty exciting.  Because I'm too busy to provide any deep insights right now, I will save that for the six-month marker.  Hopefully I'll be wiser by then! 

The reason it's so busy is because tomorrow (June 5) is Inuvialuit Day, the highlight of the year for the Inuit communities in this region, and for those of us working with the Inuvialuit corporation.  I made 120 cupcakes over the weekend...  Tomorrow will be a full day of decorating, food, fun, games, music and dancing.  I'm sure I will take lots of photos so you can look forward to that!

I can't leave without posting a few pictures, so here are some of the friendly faces I saw at the Inuvik community greenhouse over the weekend.  Members of the community can rent plots for the season for $100 and some people personalize their plots in adorable ways.  I will do a proper post about the greenhouse soon, as it is the coolest place, but for now, say hi to these cuties! 

This is going to be a random post in which I revel in the warm, sunny, t-shirt weather.  With 24-hour sun, it stays warm all night!  I walked down to the channel yesterday lunchtime and took this video of the ice flowing down-river.  In just a day you can see the difference, and now the river is almost completely clear. 

If you compare these pictures to the ones from yesterday, you can see what a difference a day makes!  It was neat to see people by the river having picnics and BBQs and watching the ice break up and drift away.  We do what we can to entertain ourselves up here!

This warm, sunny weather has got me in the mood to grow things!  I have a planter on the patio ready to go for flowers, which I will get from the greenhouse on Saturday (more about the community greenhouse later).  A few weeks ago I started some herbs in little pots in my window -- I bought this starter kit at the local Home Hardware.

This is what they looked like after a few days (from left to right - basil, cilantro, oregano).  I planted them in alphabetical order so I would remember!

And after a couple of weeks, they are thriving.  I took this photo from the other side, so they are reversed (just to test myself!).  From left to right - oregano, cilantro and basil.