There's a Witch in the Woods!

Red Squirrel; Deb Marshall photo

One winter, many many winters ago, three wild turkeys came to visit us – or to check out the area under the wart rail where I feed the winter birds, to be precise.  They sashayed through twice in two days, and we never saw them again. The cats were alarmed, the dogs were terrorized, and we never thought anything about it again, except to think it was odd that the turkeys that live in the woods behind us never showed up to scavenge seeds the sloppy winter birds toss on the ground.

During the winter we get a variety of birds eating the seed we put out: chickadees, cardinals, bluejays, mourning doves, nuthatches, some grosbeaks, some little black ones with bright yellow beaks, and some slim swift red squirrels and some fat fat grey squirrels. Crows get into the compost bin and keep it mixed about during the winter and on very rare occasions they’ll come snag a few nuts or fly off with the suet block.

But this year, we’ve also had turkeys. For awhile they’d straggle here in twos or threes; but for the past couple of months they arrive either in a group of four, or a herd of 17. Any motion they see in the house as we try to sneak up on the windows to peer out at them, strange prehistoric-looking things that they are, sends them racing back over the marsh towards the woods, or sometimes flying in crashing bumbling self-imposed terror into the trees on the far side of the field. After awhile, they come back out of the woods, and we’ll see them slipping and sliding about on the ice, from time to time popping their heads up over the wart decking, looking amazingly like an ostrich, to see if anything alarming is about.

Oddly, they’re scared if we open a door or look out the windows, but are very slow to move if we arrive by car while they’re noshing. One morning Catman in his lordliness stalked and herded the entire flock of 17 out of our yard and into the neighbors’, then sat at the edge of the driveway and glared at them long enough that they didn’t come back until much later that day. Another day before the deep snow, after filling their crops they all hunkered down along the edge of the driveway and took mud baths and naps. And they seem to have made a truce with a couple of the fat squirrels, who will get down on the driveway amongst them and share the feed I toss out , and with the other birds, who pretty much ignore them as they fly to the wart rail to eat, dropping extra goodies for them onto the snowbank below.

We look forward to seeing them. And you know – up close, in the sun, a turkey’s bland plumage is absolutely gorgeous, flashing streaks of blue and purple and green and gold in those otherwise dull black and brown feathers.  But for the past month, instead of coming daily, sometimes the turkeys disappear for several days at a time. And I’ve noticed something odd: on the days the turkeys are here, there are no mourning doves – none at all that day. And on the days the mourning doves are here, there are no turkeys – also none at all that day. Some weeks one or the other will be gone for days, but never at the same time.

Curious, I thought. So I started counting them, and discovered that there are exactly as many mourning doves as there are turkeys. This is very very curious – most years, we have only four or five mourning doves, but this year, we get a group of four, or a herd of 17. 

Hmmm, I thought, again. This has been a strange winter. And a hard one for birds and squirrels and turkeys, because the over-abundance of chipmunks this summer hauled off all the wild foods these critters would normally be eating – the chipmunks squirreled it away or ate it before they went to their winter nests. The deer are also having a hard time this year, because the little rodents stole all the apples and windfalls, too.

But why the interesting correlations between dove herds and turkey herds? This could be coincidence if it happened once or twice, but it happens every day.

No worries: I have a theory. It seems obvious that there’s a witch in the woods who’s turning turkeys into mourning doves, and mourning doves into turkeys. 

And I think I know who the witch is.

Besides that turkeys have been appearing at my house in ever-ascending numbers, the only other different thing that happened this past year – well, the only strange thing that happened locally, anyway – is that out-back naybah Eddie Bear sold his very strange and interesting house, which lies up the hill and through the woods in the direction the turkeys flee towards, to a Polish poet. And Eddie Bear’s house is one that would fascinate a witch – or a poet. It’s a house that is nowhere the same: many stairways, including one that descends into a cave-like space; hidden pathways for cats (and the poet got a couple of those familiars last summer, who spend a lot of time in the grape arbor that spans one of the several high-up decks); doors of odd shapes, some that one needs to stoop to get through; windows of many sizes and shapes and styles. No front door – in fact, no front of the house.  And a fascinating layout of rooms, on many different levels. It’s a house of uncountable storeys, and probably uncountable stories, too.

I’m on to you, Poet! I’ve read some of your poems, and they read like spells - conjuring, repeating, distilling, twisting, reappearing, unfurling, slithering, exploding, rushing, stalking, dripping, flying... 

You aren’t fooling me!

Szczesliwy poeta czarownicy!

Hunkering Down

Deb Marshall photo

The snow has already started.

It’s been lowering all day, not a sparkle of sun through the grey cloudy sky, and the birds and turkeys and squirrels spent a lot of time gobbling the extra seed I put out because the next two days are going to be hard on them. Extra sunflower seeds, extra nuts, plenty of suet balls and cracked corn: the wart was busy all morning and afternoon, like any good diner.

I couldn’t seem to wake up today, and spent most of it lying on the couch, bundled in afghans, with a book propped on my chest that miraculously stayed upright and didn’t fall and bop me on the nose every time I fell asleep, which was often – I think I read the same paragraph 15 times.

And then suddenly, it seemed, it was almost dark out; on the radio, dire warnings about inches of snow – feet, that is – to expect , and the Husband was hauling  in extra loads of wood hoping to bring in enough to feed the woodstove for tonight and two more days. I rousted myself, and began the things we do before a big storm that is likely to knock out electricity for awhile: make sure the teapot and pan on the woodstove are topped up with water, fill all the pitchers and water bottles in the house so there will be plenty of drinking water, fill buckets with water to leave in the tub for toilet flushing, make sure all the dishes are washed. Plug in cell phones so batteries are at peak, check the batteries in lanterns, bring out the candles that got put away after the last storm.  Decide what we’re going to eat for the next few days, make a little extra for supper so there are leftovers, and boil the chicken that’s producing this week’s soup stock tonight, rather than waiting until tomorrow. That giant pot’s out on the wart cooling off before I stick it in the frig overnight, and so far the snow isn’t building up on its hot surface. 

And then – turn on some lights and memorize which ones are on, so that if the electricity does go out we can shut them off before heading to bed, so they don’t burn all night if the electricity comes back on. Should we take showers tonight while we can? Does anyone in the family need to come here to sleep, just in case? 

We have a fine house for over-wintering a storm: we heat with a woodstove, and there’s a big futon in the room that the woodstove lives in, and a chair that converts into a bed in the next room. We have plenty of food in the freezers and on shelves in cellar and pantry, and this early in the winter the basket under the dining table still has several squashes and pumpkins waiting to be eaten, and there are baskets of onions and potatoes and garlic in the pantry. Like all canny New Englanders, we keep baggies of ice cubes in the freezers to prove that the food hasn’t thawed out during a power outage (if the cubes melted and refroze flat, toss the food); there are always extra candles stored away, and extra batteries, and a couple of lanterns and a radio that run on crank power.  We can even light our gas stove burners with a match, so we can cook; and the woodstove heats soup beautifully.

So we’re hunkered down. With any luck, this storm will turn into a big piffle and life will go on as usual, the Sunday paper will arrive, the computers will be able to access the internet, the cats and I will still have cabin fever and be cranky, hard to please, and napping a lot. The Buddha on the front porch is up to his chin in snow, which is a couple of inches higher than earlier today; the deck is all white.  The snow shovels are within reaching distance of the doors. It’ll be interesting to see what the world looks like tomorrow morning. 

But in the meantime, hunkering down isn’t all bad. The lights seem to shine a little brighter when we aren’t sure how long they’ll be on; the water in my glass tastes a little fresher, more satisfying. After I fill it, I stand for a few moments on the tiles that surround the woodstove, letting the heat from the tiles soak through my socks, warming my feet. 

It could be worse.

Cold Enough For Ya?

Wild turkeys eating bittersweet berries in trees; Charley Freiberg photo

Last night, I went to bed wearing fingerless mittens, polar fleece knee socks, polar fleece pj’s all tucked in as thoroughly as I could tuck ‘em, in a bed made up with flannel sheets with an extra flannel top sheet and a red, a purple, a pink, and a tan – yes, that’s four – blankets on top. And a large Maine Coon Cat-dog beside me. I woke up this morning still wearing all but the fingerless mitts. The Cat-dog had left for a warm basket down by the woodstove.

It was -4 degrees Friday night when I drove home from the Upper Valley. It’s January, and this is New England. We’re in it – the January Freeze, which we get every year, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, sometimes more than once, and sometimes for two weeks or only a few days. I got the serious winter coat out (bought in Montreal one winter many decades ago) and the serious winter hat and scarf, and the serious winter mittens, and as I write this, I’m sitting at my desk wearing legwarmers under my pants, ankle-high moccasins, fingerless mittens, a scarf, a sweater and a shirt, and I’ve got a lap blanket draped around my shoulders. And I’m dreading having to head down to the cold cellar to clean out the Furry People’s litter boxes and fold the dry laundry and put the wet laundry into the dryer before I can go to bed. 

I checked with my dear Florida friend tonight, to see what the weather is like in the nether regions. “Oh, it’s been kind of chilly,” she said. “70 today, and only 60 tonight.” 

Yeah. Well. Life is tough all over, doncha know.

The British Car Gal and her sister were up from the more temperate zone in our state this morning, both also dressed in their serious winter clothing, but reporting that when we had more than 9 inches of snow this past week, they got basically nothing. We got ice and sleet – my windshield wipers are still thick with ice from that part of the storm - then lots of snow, then enough wind to blow gaps in the snow off the ice so places in the driveway are wicked slippery. The BCG says they have the ice, but not the sneaky snow cover. I think I prefer what we’ve got – I can walk from the house to the garage without my crampons on so long as I tread lightly and don’t dig my foot in deep enough to hit the ice hiding below. That reasoning is how people in the Northeast wind up suddenly flat on their backs in their driveways, seeing stars and wondering what just happened.

This is the only time of year when it’s probably safe to venture into the woods (hunting season’s over and we assume the tick population is buried in ice or otherwise not a threat), but oh, it’s a nice thought -but a thought it’ll remain. I remember when I was young and foolish going skiing in weather like this. I must have had a better-stoked internal furnace back then, now I get cold just thinking about it. Even the Catman, who has fur between the pads of his paws and an incredibly thick winter mane, will only spend about 4 minutes outside in this weather. The little black one sticks her delicate snoot out the door for a second then backs up quickly and goes back into semi-hibernation in one of her winter nests. She isn’t even bothering to patrol the cold cellar for mice. Catman did bring a live blue jay indoors the other day, which was a little too exciting for all of us. Note to self: no matter how cold it is, don’t just open the door to let the cat back in - check the cat’s mouth first!

Giant Calla leaves; Deb Marshall photo

 

This is the time of year when we all have dry skin, chapped lips, cold toes and fingers, goosebumps, and the idea of having to take the compost out to the bin is just – well – horrifying. All winter long, the compost bin feeds and possibly heats and houses the outdoor mouse colony, and crows keep it fairly mixed up on days when the top layer of snow has melted down. Getting there can be an adventure, between ice, snow, wild turkey droppings, storms, howling wolves, abominable snowmen, and so on.

The Buddha statue on the front wart has twice been covered to his head top with snow, and hasn’t yet, since the first storm this season, lost enough snow to uncover more than his shoulders. The garden is just lumpy white – no signs of the deer who were hanging out there earlier, there’s nothing left for them to browse at this point. Something has stolen the big sunflower made of seeds from the railing on the wart; and several cakes of suet, which this year totally disappear instead of landing on the snowbanks beneath the railings, so I don’t think the very fat squirrels are pushing them off.

Even though we’ve passed the solstice, it feels like midnight at 6 pm and some nights my body just longs for bed before 8 pm. I indulged it one night, but woke up in the wee hours and spent the rest of the dark time reading, then wanted to sleep again when the day had started and I had to be up. Not going to do that experiment again. 

This winter, my windows are full of giant-leaved calla lilies that haven’t produced a single flower, long-leaved amaryllis that bloomed months ago, some more long-leaved freesia that produced two measly flower stalks but no more, paperwhite narcissus that also bloomed two months ago and are now just really tall green leaves, orchids that aren’t in bloom, Christmas cactuses that bloomed at Hallowe’en, lush green bushy bay tree and kaffir lime trees, and a hibiscus that’s produced 2 flowers three weeks apart. One of my pink prittithangs has bit the dust and the other is sending out flowers, but none are open at the moment. The greenery is nice, but I need some color, and some scent would be nice, too. 

Kaffir lime leaves; Deb Marshall photo

 

I’m also missing dog energy in the house, and still finding myself in tears every so often when something makes me acutely aware that Roo and Abu are gone. Come spring I’ll probably go dog-hunting again, but realize that much as I adore large dogs, I need to find one that I can lift and carry down stairs if need be, and will be able to do so 10 years from now. It’s going to be hard not to fall in love with the first large dog I see that needs a home. Catman-dog is trying to fill in for the dogs – he’s taken to peeing on car tires, for example, and chasing turkeys and deer out of the yard, and terrorizing visiting canines – but he’s not fooling me, he’s really an opinionated puddy and sometimes benevolent whiskered Lord of the Universe, after all.

I’m definitely feeling a lot of discontent this winter – no flowers blooming, my feet are cold, no dogs to hug, now that the holidays are over no interest in cooking and can’t think of anything I want to eat, my feet are cold, avoiding doing my work inventory and other tedious things that have to be done before taxes can be calculated, can’t find a book that really grips my imagination, my feet are cold, I can’t bear to listen to any more politics, stories about people shooting each other, arguments about gun laws, anything to do with our Great Orange Idiot - and my feet are cold.

It seems like a good time to do some hauling out and tossing. We could apply that to DC, for certain, but since that takes more co-operation than seems possible right now, I’m finding myself looking around the house and narrowing my eyes at stuff. Why, exactly, do I have a basket full of plastic container tops in the pantry? Do I really need to keep those notes for articles I wrote for now-defunct magazines more than three decades ago? Just because I’ve had these books that someone gave me/I bought/I inherited forever, do I really need to keep them if I’ll never read them again? Does anyone actually need 10 used cardboard berry boxes? Why do I still have that pair of pants that doesn’t have pockets deep enough to be useful so I never wear them? I haven’t worn that dress in at least 100 years – does it even still fit? What is that stuff on the top shelf in the pantry, and under the bottom shelf in the cedar closet? 

Clearing out can be very satisfying, but, at least amongst those of us brought up in northern New England, the process runs head-first into two potential problems: The first is that we don’t throw anything out because you never know when you might need it again. That proves to be true often enough that it’s hard to fight.

The second is the idea that something you really really like is too good to use. If you use it, you might break it, or wear it out, or some other disaster may happen to it, and then you won’t have it any more. If you don’t have that concept stored in your brain you won’t understand how difficult it is to surmount; but if you swallowed that concept as a child, you’ll understand why it took me more than 20 years before I could convince myself to actually wear the hand-made moccasins that cost me more than I could comfortably afford when I bought them all that long time ago.

A related problem is that of the stuff you inherited from people now dead. This kind of stuff is often “too good to use” as well as being somehow especially valuable in our minds the older it gets; and if you do get rid of it, you never know when you might wish you still had it. You may not even like the thing – but if it’s a thousand years old and belonged to great great great great great aunt Mabel, or worse, was made by that old lady by hand, how can you possibly get rid of it? And if you love it, even worse, because that makes it irreplaceable and thus, too good to use. The only solution is to open a private museum.

The human mind is a snarled and sometimes scary place – especially in the middle of the January Freeze. Good luck getting through it. I suggest buying a bunch of flowers at the grocery store to make you happy, then starting the clear-out with the filing cabinets. Great great great uncle Bert’s stuff can wait.

Bay leaves; Deb Marshall photo

It's A Wicked New Year

Scituate Harbor in Ice; Charley Freiberg photo

• ·         Most people have dog snoot smears, or cat hoofprints, on their car windows. I have fat, fat squirrel prints!

• ·         I haven’t seen the 17 female turkeys that had been eating and lounging in our yard in a while, only the four males. But lately there have been 17 mourning doves chowing down on the wart railings. I have to wonder if some solstice witch turned the female turkeys into mourning doves?

• ·         Did you know that the only way to truly tell a male wild turkey from a female wild turkey is by examining its poops? Males poop a J shape, females poop something spiraly. Guess who was outside in her slippers Christmas morning staring at the ground?

• ·         The New Year’s air is brisk and fresh, so let’s all go outside and do one great, simultaneous, sustained, loud, national and international scream of frustration and despair, to clean out our heads and get it out of our systems. And then let’s pointedly ignore the ignoramus in the White House and his minions, and do what we need to do in order to do the right thing – in spite of him, despite him, to spite him, by going around him, with each other. He doesn’t really count for much if we all work together to do what’s right.

• ·         My holiday resolution was to cook and eat all the wonderful foods I associate with holidays, especially winter ones, and to make stuff I haven’t made for awhile because of lack of time: fruitcake (yes, it’s possible to make a tasty one), truffles, sour cream and onion dip, muhamarra, stilton, lamb kofta with tzatziki sauce, corton, tourtiere, pumpkin quiche, mincemeat custard...most of which are very infused with garlic, so, after two weeks, I’m a walking garlic emanation and gobbling tea mints (“fight dragon breath like a samurai warrior!”) in an attempt to avoid knocking out my not-as-well-fed patients.

• ·         I’ve been thinking a lot about Holidays during the past month, which are…well, sometimes very difficult, especially for people who have recently lost a loved one through death, or divorce, or break-up; whose friends have drifted away or died; for people who are generally so busy they haven’t had time to keep up with friends and family, or who live too far away from them for intimacy to be easy; for people recovering from severe injury or illness, or still suffering with those conditions. And for a lot of other people, for a lot of other reasons.

In our modern world, we’ve made holidays all about family and family get-togethers and fantasies of cozy family reunions where everyone is happy to see everyone else and they all get along, and bounty is comfortably presen, and love conquers all. We can blame our Victorian- and Edwardian- era forebears for that.

I think we’d be better off, all of us, if we reverted to our ancestral roots. The winter holidays then were about survival and lasting until the Light conquered the Dark – the Yule Log that burned past solstice when the sun begins to wax again and hope returns; the candles whose oil lasted impossibly until there was more; the gathering in the light, with foods to nourish and strengthen, and enough warmth for kin and kine to survive the long darkness ahead (sometimes with the kine actually in the house with the kin, to help keep everyone warm!); the stranger who arrives at the door carrying luck in the form of kindling or food. It was a time to hunker down and gather together to protect ourselves from the Wild Hunt which roared about us in the dark stormy skies; a time to tell ghost stories; a time to light and linger by candles in the dark night; a time to set an empty place at our tables, to welcome the mysterious stranger.

No one wants to be in the throes of emotional, spiritual, or physical pain at these times. But even if we are, we can lighten it, a little, by following some of the old rituals. Light a special light or a candle; eat something warm and redolent of spices; set a place for an unexpected guest. Call your friends and relatives even if you haven’t spoken for ages – take a step towards them – all you need to say is “Hi, I was thinking of you and wanted to hear your voice.” Read a ghost story (ghost story not horror  story! Think of A Christmas Carol, or High Spirits, Robertson Davies’ collection of ghost stories written for Yuletide, for examples.) – or write one. Nod at the shadows in the corner and the dust of ages creeping about our feet. Bring in a sprig of something evergreen – pine, fir, holly. Remember the last time you laughed, and laugh again, even if nothing’s funny – if you can’t laugh, then sing, loudly – both open the lungs, heart and spirit and spread the good stuff around our bodies, which is the beginning of healing and, maybe more importantly, comfort. If you can, gather with others, even if you don’t know them; if you can’t, invite someone to join you. Give someone a hug – even if it’s your mailman, or the cashier at your favorite store, or the rotten dog next door who poops in your yard regularly.

The true gift is whatever ritual works for us, that teaches us to comfort ourselves, as we all must, in the end. We use ritual to spark a light in our souls, our spirit; we nourish the body to heal it and our souls; we listen to stories that remind us of the mysteries around us; we leave space for new and old relationships, for surprise and wonder. We use ritual to remind ourselves that we’re safe in some deep and abiding way, and to bring out the beauty that sometimes hides in dark corners.

Pleasant Lake in Winter; Charley Freiberg photo

• ·         Corton (pronounced something like: cahw-toh, said through the nose, so there’s almost, but not really, an N on the end) is a French-Canadian pate of sorts, and the base for tourtiere, which is a traditional Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve meal. It’s not bad luck to eat them other days, so here’s my meme’s recipe.

P’tite Reine’s Corton and Tourtiere

For the corton, you need ground cloves, a lot of minced garlic (at least 4 cloves for a pound of meat), a little olive oil, at least a pound of either ground pork or ground beef or a combination of the two, salt, and a little water. If you want to end up with corton and  tourtiere, use a couple of pounds of meat at least.

In a saucepan – not a fry pan, you need something deeper – heat the olive oil and add the meat. Cook the meat, stirring often to keep it broken up; when nearly cooked through, add garlic, salt, and cloves to taste – be bold with the cloves. Stir it around well, then add a little water and boil it until the water evaporates (this helps get the tasty stuff into all the meat).

If you’ve used lean pork or beef, now add a big lump of butter – you need fat to hold the meat together once it cools. No, this is not a fat-free meal and don’t you dare try to make it one, you won’t like the results. Stir it all in well.

Now pack the corton into small bowls, pressing down until the juices cover the top. Cover the bowls and stick them into the frig to cool.

There’re lots of ways to eat corton: on buttered toast for breakfast is heaven on earth. You can also make a sandwich with it, on toast again (you need warm bread so the rich meat will spread well); my mother puts mustard on it. Or eat it out of the bowl with a spoon, hiding it from your spouse so they don't get the last bit. Don’t try to scrape off the fat – let it melt into the hot bread (a nice baguette is good, with some cornichons on the side to cut the unctuousness) and let yourself enjoy it, it’s good for you!

To turn Corton into Tourtiere, you need potatoes, cinnamon, onion, and the ingredients to make a 2-crust pie:

 Precook some potatoes – I nuked them this year, but you can also parboil them. Let these cool a bit while you:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Stir a little cinnamon, and some more salt (you need more salt because you’ll be adding potatoes, which essentially suck up the salt), into the cooling corton meat.

Dice some onion, about one medium for an 8- or 9- inch pie

Add the onion and chunked potatoes (bite size chunks please) to the corton meat and stir it around well.

Now make a 2-crust pie crust. Once you’ve lined the bottom of your pie plate, add the corton and potato mix; press it down, flatten it out. Top the pie with the second crust, do what you do to squoosh the edges together, and cut a vent hole or two in the top crust. If you want to decorate the top crust with cut-out pastry maple leaves or whatever, knock yourself out. You can now brush the top crust with an egg wash, or just sprinkle it a little with some water – these just make the crust a little shiny (egg) and browny (both).

Bake for about 45-minutes to an hour, ‘til the crust is nicely browned. More time for thicker pies.

Yum, yum, yum. Bon appétit, et Bonne annee!