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| Sure, Mom, whatever you say... Deb Marshall photo |
Last day of February: I hear geese honking overhead. It’s 60
degrees in the Upper Valley; in White River Junction, you need to hunt hard to
find snow.
In my yard on the southern border of the Upper Valley,
there’s no need to hunt – there’s still plenty of snow, but also some widening
patches of bare ground, and my driveway – which is more like a short road – is
a stew of deepening mud, deep giant pools of frigid water, and a lot of rotting
ice covering one or the other and some hidden patches of really slippery ice.
It’s early, but we seem to be in that time of year when we wonder: if we get
the car out of the driveway, will we be able to get it back in? And if we don’t,
will we lose our boots slogging down the drive through the muck to the house,
and how are we going to get groceries in and trash out this year; and should we
warn the UPS guy and the milkman, or let them take their chances?
There are eight bare-ground inches between the southern wall
of the house and the snow that still well-covers the raised beds; Catmandoo can
get into this dry moat from either end, and he’s been making the most of it. I
can tell because his fur is full of sand and dried leaves and little twiggy
detritus from all the rolling he’s been doing in the moat. He demanded that I
fetch out his porch chair from the cellar, so he can properly lounge in the
warming sun on the kitchen wart (as he watches the birds and wards off the gang
of squirrels for which I put out bird lure), and now the chair goes in, and
out, in, and out, almost as often as he does. When he’s out having a roll in
the dirt, Biscuit Beastreau will try to steal his chair. The sun has gotten
strong enough now that she gets overheated quickly and has to seek shade,
usually before His Lordship returns from his dirt-bath and discovers an interloper
in his chair and has to beat her up.
Catman doesn’t share.
Around the full moon there’ve been a lot of noisy, after-midnight
cat races going on in the downstairs while we’re trying to sleep upstairs.
Today I picked up the internal remains of a mousie that one of the Furry People
left neatly on the kitchen door rug after one evening spree. I hope that means
there’s been an end to this winter’s pantry mouse.
In New London, there have been sightings of a three-bear gang
wreaking havoc on bird feeders, but I’ve seen no signs of our bear, yet. It’s
early, but it’s been warm, so I flip the wart light on and count to 10 at night
before stepping out to look about before letting the Barkie Boy out, just in
case. I know for a fact that the skunks are out doing their skunky mating
dance; and in the past week, I’ve met a couple of dogs who’ve been
anointed. At least five times a night, I
say sternly to Abu, “Don’t go greet any black and white kitties you might see
out there.” I don’t know why I bother: he’s mostly deaf, but he reads my mind
pretty well so I’m hoping he picks up “leave
‘kitties’ alone” and not, “ooh,
kitties! – go sniff them!”
Why I think a stern warning from me would make any
difference is a mystery. The First Hound, who was an even bigger boy, towered
above skunks, but he loved what he
thought of as kitties, and whenever he saw one out near the compost bin he’d
race over and put his snoot between their legs below their nice, fluffy tails,
and lift them off their feet. The skunks would let loose with the defensive spray
and get him on his massive chest on the
way down from their snoot ride. Then he’d happily come back in the house and
once in, before the tell-tale stink registered in my brain, shake shake shake
all over the stove and kitchen rug and walls and, usually, me. Did I learn to
hitch him up when I let him out at night so he couldn’t reach the lovely black
and white kitties? Not a chance. Do I hitch Abu up before I let him out at
night during skunk mating season? Ha! Do I wonder why I’m being that stupid
every single time I let him out at night? Absolutely. Does it change what I’m
doing? Do you have to ask?
Second day of March: Oh boy, it’s wet out there. I can tell
it’s at least pseudo-spring, though, because my first patient today cancelled
his appointment this morning because he needed to boil sap. When you gotta
boil, you gotta boil. Stomach bug vigorously going around has further reduced
my patient load today, so I rescheduled the remaining patient and I’m home, avoiding
working on the tax thing – oh, how I hate working on the tax thing! – by catching
up on correspondence and writing a blog article that isn’t all politics and
doom. Well, unless you count the mud in my driveway, which turns it into a pit
that can suck you directly to hell.
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| Winter Prittithangs; Deb Marshall photo |
Daytimes recently have been too warm to use the woodstove;
some nights are, too. More and more often I find myself going to bed all
bundled up in the winter flannels, and 30 minutes later starting to shed bits –
first the jammie bottoms, then the jammie top, then the feet come out from
under the blankets, then a blanket comes off. By morning I’m chilly again and
trying to figure out where I flung all the flannel bits in my sleep so I can
warm up and sleep another half hour.
Today’s storm hasn’t been too awful, so far, at least not
over here away from the coast; but the
weather folks keep promising further horrors to come before midnight. I’m glad
to be here at home, where I can look out and see the jays and chickadees and
the little black birds snatching seeds off the wart railings, and the squirrels
sneaking up to the far ends where they aren’t visible from the window. Every so
often I’ll open the kitchen door just for the pleasure of watching the squirrel
gang – sometimes as many as six at a time – race across the driveway, up the
snow bank, and into the trees. One day I was treated to the sight of one of the
squirrels finding its path up the snowbank to be too slippery, and it slid down
over and over, all four feet paddling uselessly, in what I imagine to be a total panic before
it finally found a grip. Interesting as this is, neither of the Furry People nor
the Barkie Boy try to chase the squirrels anymore, but I can hear them laughing as the squirrels
dash off. Then the two Furry People will get up onto the rail and plant
themselves, barely moving, amidst the birdseed for awhile. The chickadees
ignore them and just move to the far end of the rail. They know that by the
time a Furry Person rises out of their sphinx-like reverie and skitters down
the length of the rail, they’ll have had plenty of time to grab the delicious seed and fly off.
The pile of seed catalogs has grown tall; I keep telling
myself that if I finish the tax prep, I can reward myself by starting to peruse
the summer garden possibilities. But you know – out my back window, past the
pink prittithang and the last freesia in bloom, and the tall spires of calla
lilies that poked through their pot this past week, it still looks like winter.
Yes, it’s possible to get to the compost bin now without having to clamber over
snow banks; and yes, the top third or more of the compost bins have emerged
from the deep snow. But it’s still all white out there, and I’m still pretty
sure we’ll have more snow, whether we want it or not. I won’t believe in spring
yet until Mother Nature proves it.
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| What it really looks like outside; Charley Freiberg photo |
I could be surprised! But I still remember that February thaw
when we lived in Maine, that completely cleared the snow off the little
protected garden next to my kitchen door, and thawed and warmed the dirt. I
eagerly planted lettuce seed, thinking how much fun I’d have calling my family
in NH and crowing about how I was eating fresh salad greens from my garden in
February. Two days later, someone was laughing, but it wasn’t me, as the
weather gods dumped more than a foot of snow back on top of my precious winter
garden.
A taste of yum: take a
bite of a cube of smoked cheese and some candied ginger together – you’ll think
that summer has arrived, for a moment!
For the blog alone, 2 March 2018.
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