xoxoxo

Happy Valentine's Day !

Ice in the City

The aftermath at our house was definitely not as dramatic as in the country but we had almost an inch of ice on our steps this morning!! I was very creative and scraped it off with an old metal dustpan while R (ready for school and waiting to descend to the car) and Nellie (anxious to go potty) looked on. Poor Nellie! At one point I gave her a little shove back with my elbow (hot, stinky breath in face) and she slid off the steps and hung by her leash in the neighbors front garden!! Luckily her hind feet touched the ground so she didn't choke and I get her leash off as fast as I could but it was still pretty traumatic for both of us. Then R, Nellie and I skated our way to the car, went to school, only to find that school was closed! R's response to a school closing? "OH GOODY! Now I can go back to bed and listen to the rain pitter patter on my window!! Do you know? I didn't really want to get up this morning" ... and on and on. This reminds me of when R was just a babe in the snow:

Ah those were the days!

The morning after

Every little twig is covered in ice, the trees are bowed down with the weight of it and icicles are hanging from every horizontal surface. It's still incredibly slippery : Jonesy took a tumble off the porch when he stepped out the door, the chickens can't stay on their feet and a guinea slid right off the roof of his house when I came in the pen to feed. The horses are staying in their stalls - very wise- and the poor dog still can't seem to keep her feet from sliding in 4 directions.
My barefoot hike is showing signs of consequences - I am developing what my German mother called " einen tuechtigen Schnupfen". The dictionary defines tüchtig as competent, capable, efficient, sizeable,industrious,hearty,good and proper and Schnupfen is a cold. So I'm taking tons of vitamin C in the hope of making the Schnupfen not so tüchtig.
Good bye Jack London, hello Linus Pauling !

The Power of Wool or How to Impress Yourself

Here's how :
1. leave home without checking weather report
2. drive a car which is totally unsuitable for winter driving
3. arrive in town and spend hours rearranging Emlyn's furniture

4. take break and give her a little surprise I just finished knitting ( note date at top of mittens !)

5. go out to lunch and fool around taking pictures of cool buildings while a gentle ice rain falls on bare head ( forgot hat )

6. go shopping until dark , then stay for tea and cookies until weather gets lots worse. Drive home on ice covered roads in second and third gear, slipping and sliding all the way. Drive home takes 3 times as long as usual. When driveway is tackled by unsuitable car, car loses and can't make it. Get out and realize that it is literally impossible to stand up ! Realize that hat and gloves would be a nice thing to have at this point since ice rain is still falling.

7. Take off shoes and walk up 1/4 mile driveway in total darkness and in stocking feet. Stocking feet are comprised of wool socks I knitted ( see above ), .When I get to locked gate, I can't climb over fence, because fence boards are too slippery. Have to stand on bottom board and wait until socks freeze to board before I can heave myself up and over.

8. finally get into house and peel off socks. I am totally amazed and impressed : my feet are not frozen clumps of ice, they are toasty and warm !! I feel like Admiral Perry and Jack London rolled into and I'm completely impressed by myself. The tulips ? Couldn't bear to leave them in the car and carried them up the hill in icy darkness.

Footnote : it took the dog several tries to negotiate up one step to the mudroom door landing. The ice is too slippery even for 4 feet !

Spring Fever

It's another gloriously warm, sunny day and spring fever is setting in in earnest. Even though the countryside looks wintry , things are starting to happen !



Daffodils are pushing up their green spears through last year's oak leaves,

the first clump of crocuses has appeared under the birdfeeder,

in front of the house the winter jasmine is blooming


and here are more winter aconites, lifting their little flat faces to the warm sun.

All the lilacs have fat buds on every branch - they've packed their bags and are ready to go at the first signal of spring. You can practically feel them straining at the leash !

Every day I go outside, curious to see what has changed overnight , but there are still many days of winter in store for us . This February reprieve is just a little taste of things to come, a little glimpse of the mighty workings that go on unseen under the seemingly dead ground. It should encourage us when everything seems dead and flat in our own lives, when we think that there is no progress, no change, nothing happening at all, but underneath there is always change, more profound and inevitable than we realize.

Garden Fever

The warm temperatures ( 70 degrees ! ) have infected me with gardening fever and I have spent the day cleaning up the vegetable garden, pulling up old tomato plants, removing the stakes and cutting asparagus foliage. Now it's nice and neat and ready for spring planting.

That pile of dead stalks is 6 feet high.

The flower bed in front ogf the greenhouse got a haircut, too.

And this is what I found under all those dead stalks - winter aconites, just starting to bloom.




And someone else got a haircut, too ! Spring fever must have temporarily disabled the hairdresser - T's head was positively shaved.

How many peanuts does one family need?

This is what you get when you order a bag of environmentally friendly packing peanuts ... I thought it said five pounds? Apparently they are very lightweight.



No I have a lifetime supply of peanuts and it also happens to be the least expensive and most exciting toy my children have come across in a long time, they both love it!