Winter: Still

Lovely winter foliage

We just had another crappy, snowy Thursday, and now two crappy, below-zero days – though, at least the sun’s out today, for a change. When I got up this morning it was only 55 degrees in the house, an hour after the Husband had started the woodstove again. Last night it was 10 below when I finally gave up the fight to stay awake and went to bed, early for me, about midnight – so the stove didn’t get stuffed at 2 am as usual. It went out earlier consequently, and now it’s 1 pm, and the temperature has finally gotten up to 65 degrees in the dining room. No, still no functioning furnace yet. Just call me Pioneer Gal. At least the Husband put in an electric water heater last fall, so I’m not still having to heat water on the stove!

We’ve had lots and lots of mourning doves feeding off the wart rail this winter, along with the usual suspects and a handful of grey and red squirrels - one of which is living in the firewood stacks, under a tarp. A friend told me that last winter she had a flying squirrel living inside her house – it had gotten in through a small crack in the wall, and she’d be sitting comfortably, reading in her living room at night, when without warning there’d be a swishing noise and a squirrel would go sailing by overhead, while her dog and cat watched it, bemused. This is the same friend whose cellar became infested with dozens, if not hundreds, of garter snakes a few years back. If it were my house I’d be seriously wondering what’s next: bears hibernating under the bed in the spare room? Alligators in the bathtub? Porcupines in the kitchen cabinets?

Last winter we were regularly visited by dozens of wild turkeys; this year we’ve seen not a one. On Tuesday last week, however, I needed to get some more suet cakes because someones have been hauling them off almost as fast as I put them out, and I’d decided it was time to get a big bag of cracked corn for the mourning doves instead of the piddling small bags that are gone too soon. [A related aside: I’ve been wondering how much seed I put out on an average winter, and stopped to add this year’s up: so far, three 40-lb plus one 25-lb bags of black oil sunflower seeds – and all the seeds the birds ate in my garden from the sunflowers growing there; three 20-lb bags of mixed nuts and fruit; four 2-lb bags of cracked corn; three big bags of suet balls, and four cakes of suet. I figure I’ll need another three bags of the various seeds/corn and some suet before the bears come out of hibernation and I stop feeding the birds so I’m not also feeding the bears.] 

Anyway, I decided that instead of another several piddling small bags of cracked corn, I’d by a 25-lb bag of “scratch feed,” which is a mix of cracked corn and wheat, I think – some grain that looks a lot like tabouli. I discovered this mix last year when we were scattering lots and lots of cracked corn for the herds of visiting turkeys, and I figured the mourning doves and other birds, or at least the squirrels, would probably enjoy the grain mixed in with the corn.

I brought the bag home and dumped it into the metal trashcan in the cellar designated for cracked corn, planning to put some out the next morning. Wednesday morning, my wart was scattered with big, frozen – poops! What, I wondered, would come up onto my wart and poop all over it? I went out and peered at it, but even though it looked curiously familiar – skunks? foxes? I wasn’t sure;  and after I’d put the days’ seed out on the rails, I started to walk down the steps, which were lightly dusted with snow. There was the answer – the steps were covered with giant bird hoof-prints: Turkeys! Turkeys had walked up the steps onto the wart to get after spilled seed.

They must have read my mind; either that, or West Leb Feed & Supply sent a copy of my check-out slip to Wild Turkey Headquarters so they knew where to look for breakfast. I threw a quart or so of scratch feed out onto the ground so they wouldn’t have to come up the stairs and poop all over my wart.

Later that day, the Husband found a herd of at least 20 wild turkeys milling about in front of our garage door. This morning, when I went out to put more seed on the wart rails, there were at least 13 turkeys scratching about in the snow. As soon as they saw me, they took off in a tizzy towards the marsh and the neighbor’s house. I noticed that the brand-new suet cake I’d put out yesterday was missing. Already.

This week, Valentine’s Day week, Catman left me two hand-made hearts – in his litter box, of course. Was this a coincidence? I’ve never found a heart in his litter box before; you decide.  One he made on Wednesday, one on Friday. I took a photo because, how could I not?

One of the two hearts Catman made for me

The strange flower bud that I don’t recognize still hasn’t opened, and I still don’t know what it is. There’s a calla lily sprout in the same pot; and there’s some other unknown plant that I assume is a sprout from some seed blown into the pot when it spent time outside last summer.  It’s been a weird month, let’s face it, and I’m glad we’re half-way to March. I did count the books waiting for me to read them this morning: I have six left from last year’s 5 Colleges Book Sale, and two from the year before; and a pile of about 20 that I got elsewhere, from patients and old ones from my grandparents’ stash and from gifts and from the bunch I bought myself at Christmas. It may be February, I may be sick of it, food may not be appealing, I may be too busy to think most weeks, and the world may be going to hell in a handbasket, but, damn, I’m rich.

The unknown plant

In February we tend to think that we’re nearly at spring, and yet, it’s usually a very snowy month; and yet again, it has its moments of real warmth (if the sun ever comes out), so we let ourselves hope, and are frustrated and depressed over and over again. This particular week in February was especially horrid, especially because it’s the month we officially became a banana republic.

We didn’t need to go this way. Inside info, after all, indicates that a lot of Republicans are uncomfortable and horrified as we are, and had those Senators simply voted to convict, the source of our main problems – and their main problems  - would have disappeared in an instant.  They would no longer have to fear our so-called President, or his minions. Poof! Like magic.

So what happened? Why did they pass up this obvious and clearly justified chance? I don’t want to believe that they’ve all gotten completely corrupted. So that leaves two options: they’re all on drugs and/or in a cultish, hypnotic trance; or they didn’t trust each other to vote to convict. If they didn’t almost all do it, there might have been the kind of  trouble  Mitt Romney’s now suffering from the cultish voters, though it really wouldn’t have been much of a problem for long. There aren’t that many of them, after all, there are more of us. 

Foolish, fear-ridden, self-preservationist Republican politicians! You could have ended this madness so easily, so ethically, so correctly. People who deal with the Devil generally don’t trust one another. Stew in your own bile, you wing-nuts, and hope you haven’t totally destroyed the nation. Recent events indicate you may well have. 

Ugh, February. I hope all your cats, or someone you love, left you a heart on Valentine’s Day.

For the blog, 15 February 2020.

The Devil is Dancing

Apparently the devil is dancing outside my house at night – there have been cloven hoofprints all over the yard and near the wart steps this week. And he stole the new suet cake I put out just two days ago!

Or maybe it’s a deer, or a moose. Hard to tell how big the prints are in the mucky snow, but they seem big. Do deer and moose eat suet cakes? I will say that I noticed the motion-detector light was making an eerie glow when I went to bed the night of the theft/dancing, and I looked out and didn’t see anything, so I’m going with the devil theory. He could definitely use the suet to stoke the fires of hell, which probably need stoking, since so many politicians sold their souls to him - well, actually, on that very same day. I wonder if it’s worse to burn in lard-and-peanut butter fires, or in the stinky, sulphur kind? Quick, write your Republican Congressmen/women and ask them!

So, while the world outside my private world has gone stinkier and if that’s actually possible, crazier, here in my world we’re freezing our butts off in one of this winter’s bizarre winter storms. Yesterday it snowed all day, and I worked on tax stuff until my brains melted and flowed out my nose and I became a zombie – fair warning, you readers who are also my patients! – and today we’re getting dumped on with freezing rain/sleet/rain that freezes after it falls, and I’ve had warnings from my sistah soul up north not to come up, and my mother who lives 4 miles to my right to not go out. So I’m faced with a dilemma; back to the tax prep for the tax lady and see if I can finish before my heart self-immolates and sets my veins on fire and my blood turns into a stream of flames – oh, wait, that can’t happen, I’m not a Republican senator or congressperson. OK, ‘til my heart expires from despair – oh, wait, that can’t happen either, because it already did two days ago when the devil took over Senatorial brains. OK then, ‘til my liver turns into a soggy goo and there’s no longer any point in adding up business mileage? – or, maybe, take a nap instead.

The trees are bending over and I’m expecting we’ll lose electricity at any moment now.  The cats have been out twice, come back in soggy and cold, and are glaring at me because somehow this is all my fault. My one consolation is that, since we don’t have a functioning furnace this winter (because we can’t afford to hire someone to replace the ancient one that died, Mr. The Economy’s Great, so we’re relying on the kindness of a friend who’s working on it in his spare time, and who amongst us has much spare time in this godawful economy?) we won’t be any colder than we already are when the freezing rain brings down the power lines and the electricity goes out. Yes, we have a woodstove. And I’ve lived here my whole life, so I know to pour many jugs of water for drinking, and a bucket or two of water for flushing, before it all blows up.

Cabin fever. I think Iowa has caucuses because it’s a good excuse to get out of the house and shout at your neighbors and eventually group hug and buy stuff from the bake sale tables – like we do at March town meetings. And of course it didn’t go well this year – the devil is about and dancing and causing as much trouble as possible, because he was invited in and handed the reins by our so-called representatives in Washington. I expect our paper ballots in NH next week will mysteriously burst into flames once they’ve been stuffed into the ballot box and before they’ve been counted. Or we’ll have a hurricane and no one will be able to get out to vote, because our rowboats are frozen in – we’re due for a hurricane, and so what it’s winter? Rising tides of misfortune. A series of unfortunate events. The devil you know. Bite me.

Yup. Let’s put our heads down and hold our breaths as long as we can. Maybe if we’re lucky we’ll pass out and not come to again until it’s actually spring. Literally and metaphorically.

Or, at least until the unknown plant – one I’m sure I planted, but I don’t recognize its leaves or its bud – that suddenly sprouted this week in a pot on the windowsill, and put out buds that look near to opening, actually opens.

If it turns out to be an Audrey, I’ll let you know.

 7 February 2020

Mr. Catman contemplating the state of the world.