March: Finally

 

It’s March. Finally. March is hopeful, even if it’s miserable from moment to moment. This week it’s been sunny and warm enough that Catmandoo could sit in his fold-up camp chair on the wart for an hour or more at a time, and he’s had his breakfast en plein air  a couple of times, which makes him purr very loudly and smile like only a big cat can.

The Buddha on the front mini-porch went, in five days, from being covered in snow up to his toppest  top snail to free of snow to his waist, to free of snow completely, although still completely surrounded by it. I can see the very tops of the giant heather patch just beyond the Buddha and the plowed-up tall bank of snow. Out the back window, the ground is still all white; but I can see almost the entire of the compost bins, and the two raised beds right next to the house’s south wall are, today, free of snow, making me dream a little of over-wintered parsnips. The ground will have to thaw quite a bit before I can get at those, however.

And exactly on time, I smelled skunks at night during the last two days in February. I haven’t seen them, but the smell tells me they’re out, mating, and going on dinner dates to my compost bins.

Also during the last weeks of February, the wild turkeys, which I hadn’t seen curly poop nor feather of all winter, suddenly turned up looking for hand-outs. I heard a banging outside and, going to the kitchen window, saw 8 perched on both the top and bottom rails on the wart, gobbling down the seed I’d left for much smaller birds as fast as they could, and the rest of the 20-fowl herd on the ground, scratching for the scratch seed I’d tossed out after seeing their foot-prints the day before. Wild turkeys are entirely too large to look anything but goofy perched on a wart rail, especially the lower rail, and as soon as they saw me moving near the window, they took off in a turkey tizzy and flew into the trees – literally, into them, not onto them, and then fell to the ground – next to the kitchen pond across the driveway. I managed to catch a photo of one on the rails through the window before it had a chance to follow its mates.

I have all my seed orders made, except for the seed potatoes, which I want to get from a farm in Maine that I can’t seem to rouse on the phone and can’t work out from their very peculiar catalog how to order by mail. I’ve already heard back from one of the seed companies I’ve ordered from, so expect I’ll start getting seeds in the mail sometime during the next few weeks. Not the onion and shallot and leek sets, I dearly hope – I hope the companies will have the sense to hold those until April, when I might actually be able to plant them.

The unknown flower on my windowsill bloomed, and its bloom looks vaguely familiar, like I should know what it is, but I still don’t. It’s pretty, and must be something I planted – I’m guessing a leftover from some store-bought plant that maybe Mom gave me last winter. I’ve tried looking it up, but find several close-but-not-quite-right candidates, so I still don’t know what it is.

Which also describes the current political candidate situation. As it starts to look like it’s going to be either Bernie or Biden – oh, sigh. Like I said, close but not quite right. We love Bernie, but he’s old, he’s had a heart attack, being president will probably kill him, which we don’t want because we need him to keep us honest if for no other reason. He’ll energize the youngsters (and we oldsters who want him to be able to do pretty much everything he wants to do) and the folks who voted for him last time but switched to Trump when Bernie was cheated out of the nomination; and he scares people who forget that no president ever has been able to do stuff that they want to do unless they get the cooperation of Congress, so there’s not much chance that the folks who worry about us becoming a politically socialist state (vs a little more economically socialist, which we all like, in reality, even if we don’t understand that) will come to pass; or Biden, who’s too old, too conservative, and so un- inspiring that there will be too many who won’t bother to vote because it’ll feel like a vote for four more wasted years - just like last time.

Really, people, we’ve made fun of Biden for decades and refused to vote for him because he’s a big goofball with a tongue that trips over itself and no real ideas, so why are we even considering him seriously now? And besides, he sounds like he could be in early stages of senility, or at least, has serious old age memory issues. If he wins, he’ll be better than Trump – anyone who isn’t evil incarnate would be a thousand times better than Trump – but he’ll be boring, uninspiring, divisive because of his unwillingness to do anything new, and stuff that needs to be changed urgently won’t get changed at all, or not enough to make the changes we desperately must make quickly. Let’s face it, Biden’s a liar, too. He may lie as part of telling interesting stories, and if you’re a story teller, a little creativity isn’t a bad thing; but if you’re a politician, it’s a really, really bad habit to have, and besides proving a serious lack of discretion, makes us wonder what is really wrong with this person, after all.

So I’m very irritated. In fact, I’m beyond irritated, because yesterday, someone stole the face masks that I keep in our clinic waiting room during cold and flu season, so patients can protect us and the other patients using the waiting room from sharing their viruses. So now we have no face masks, and like the rest of the world, we can’t get them. 

I have a small handful of patients whose lung health really does put them at risk for all the viruses that have been going around this winter. I happily would have shared a few face masks with them for emergency use. Now I can’t. And now I also have to tell anyone with a cold or flu that they can’t come in for a treatment, or to pick up herbs that could cure them, because we can’t risk them spreading something nasty to all the other patients waiting for treatments for non-contagious issues. And that’s not fair; and it’s not kind; and it’s not necessary. But it’s very greedy. And now I’m very cranky.

I know people are feeling stressed, at risk, and like they’re living in dangerous times. I get it. But we need to use common sense, and we need to be kind, and we need to not give in to terrors that don’t exist in anything but our nightmares.

One patient called me this week and cancelled his appointment indefinitely, because he didn’t want to drive to the Upper Valley for fear of catching something. You can’t catch something by driving to an area, people, the viruses don’t float around outdoors like that. Most people aren’t going to catch this scary virus, but a bunch are going to catch one of the upper respiratory viruses that have been going around for months, some of which have developed into pneumonia  this winter, and those people will freak out, thinking they’ve caught the scary one. 

This winter, like most winters, people have assumed that their “cold” is unimportant, and have gone to work and about their business as if they weren’t sick, cavalierly infecting others and spreading virus hither and yon so that people don’t know how they got sick. Going to work and other public places when you’re sick isn’t a courageous thing, isn’t something to be proud of, isn’t a virtue.  STAY HOME.

Corona virus isn’t, and hasn’t been, the only illness we’re needing to protect ourselves from. So stay home from work if you’re at all sick – whether you have a fever or not – and learn to wash your hands until they’re truly clean, and do it often. Don’t cough all over other people and objects. Treat your colds, don’t ignore them assuming they’ll get better on their own (rest, fluids, extra sleep, good, warm, easy-to-digest food, some herbs that are both anti-viral and anti-bacterial, if you know how to use them). And keep in mind that there are cold colds – no sore throat, lots of clear or white runny snot, no fever, maybe you don’t even feel sick – which can turn into hot colds over a few days, and the symptoms will change, but you’re contagious even while the virus is a cold one. And if you’re tired, or recovering from a winter virus, or are in other ways perhaps immune compromised, don’t go to places where there are lots of people. Be sensible.

Don’t go into a turkey tizzy in a panic that doesn’t make sense.

And don’t piss me off – I’m ugly when I’m really cranky.

For the blog, 5 March 2020: herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

All photos Deb Marshall

 

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.

Extra Special Gifts

 

This year, because I’m a woman of a certain age and can do it if I want, I gave myself a few holiday gifts (fortunately, the stuff I want is relatively inexpensive, otherwise it wouldn’t matter if I wanted to or not). Some of them I’ll share with The Husband; some will be shared with other people; some will be just for me alone.

I kind of think we should all give ourselves some stuff we know no one else will give us, either because they can’t possibly know we want it, or couldn’t possibly choose which one to get, or because that’s the only way we’re gonna get it because no one else understands why you could possibly want that thing. I had a friend back in junior high and high school who was a master at this; she used to get everyone in her family Christmas gifts that she wanted, knowing that her parents and grandparents and even her older siblings would thank her very much for them and then suggest she keep them for herself. That way, every year she got the multi-colored scented-ink pens she craved and that her mother wouldn’t use, the socks that were covered with glittery stuff that curiously didn’t fit her father but did fit her, the book of vampire stories her older brother wouldn’t read, and so on. She had it down to a science.

This year here’s what I gave me. You need to know up front, before you get all judgey,  that I’m not your average consumer – I rarely buy clothes or shoes (the stuff I wear is mostly at least a decade old because, oddly and fortunately, it rarely wears out), or electronics, or pretty much anything except necessities and stuff for the garden - which is mostly, but not always (wind-thingies and some pretty perennials) practical stuff; and I get most my books from the Five Colleges Book Sale (used; cheap):

*The big thing I got me and will share with the Husband is a bunch of tickets to local-theater-group plays, mostly at the Hatbox Theater in Concord, a couple at the Hop, one Tuesday-night cheap seat at Northern  Stage (King Lear – ya gotta see Shakespeare). We get to see almost one a month ‘til the Hatbox season ends late summer. And now we’re old farts, the tickets only cost around 15 bucks each.

*A liquid-soap bottle of fir-scented hand soap. Anyone using my bathroom can use this, but, oh, the smell just makes my heart sing. I get the liquid stuff – no, it isn’t ecologically responsible packaging – because I only do it once every so many years, and the bar soap loses its scent long before the bar’s used up. I’ve loved washing my hands for weeks, now.

*A package of 6 chocolate-covered cherries. Haven’t opened them yet. Enjoying thinking about them. But also, one of my very excellent patients brought me a tin of home-made chocolate-enrobed ginger to die for, and I’m eking those out, first. The Husband recently found where I’d hidden the chocolate ginger in the frig, so I expect I’ll be tasting the cherries before February.

*A small square of goat cheese with edible flowers, from Australia. It was gone in six bites, and it was worth it.

*A t-shirt that says: Let’s assume I’m right: It’ll save time. Because wearing it will save a lot of time. I shoulda got two.

*A handful of expensive but beautiful notecards that I’m enjoying looking at, and will eventually enjoy sending to a couple of friends who I know will also enjoy them when they get them. Yes, there are still people who write letters. 

*A bottle of peach-infused white balsamic vinegar. Haven’t opened it yet; I got The Husband one infused with mango, which we’re delicately enjoying now. This is vinegar you sip from a tiny little cup – just a little at a time. It’s quite wondrous. 

*Some books no one would ever think to get me, half of them used, and several I’ll pass on to someone else I know will enjoy them. I’m not going to tell you the titles because I know she’ll read this blog. One I’ll describe, however, because everyone should read at least one of these books, is a reprint of books made from letters written by Isabella Bird in the mid-1850s, as she traveled, by herself, around the world. She sent amazing descriptive letters to her sister at home in England, which were eventually given to the Royal Geographical Society, who as a result made her their first female fellow.

Her stories of where she went, what she saw, what she did, who she met, are remarkable, and not least because she traveled alone, but also because she did it on her doctor’s orders – she’d injured her back as a youngster, and her doctor prescribed travel as a way to keep herself and her back healthy after she healed. She went all around the world, including to the US, Hawai’i, Tibet, China, Japan, Estes Park Colorado, and so on, camping out, helping herd cattle, taking boat trips into the jungle – they’re fascinating and the books have been reprinted several times by different publishers.

One of her stories that I read earlier was about her trip to Estes, CO. She traveled there directly from visiting Hawai’i and didn’t have winter clothes with her. Even so, she went camping in the mountains with the men, rolling up in a blanket at night for sleeping, and managed to stay long enough that she got snowed in, so had to spend the winter. She went out on horseback to help the men round up the cattle to bring them into shelter for the winter, and stayed in a log cabin that was uncaulked and really meant for summer tourists. She wrote about waking up in the mornings and having to brush 8 inches of fresh snow off her blanket before she could get out of bed, then sweep the same amount out her door before going to the better- enclosed cabin of one of the families who’d settled there for breakfast.

I think of that, and of how much whining I’ve done this winter since our furnace is still not functional so we’re relying on the woodstove to heat the house; and I look out the window on this 7-degree night at the new snow illuminated by the almost-full moon, all glisteny and frigid, and think, “My god, how wimpy we’ve become!”

*A small cement winged gargoyle for the garden. Because gargoyles make me smile. As they should everyone.

All these treasures (except the ones I’ve eaten!) are scattered around my bedroom amidst the gifts I got from family and friends, and I look happily at them every night before bed, and every morning when I get up, and I feel rich, and blessed. 

And sometimes I think, b’god, I hope we don’t get bombed before I get a chance to read those and eat that!

Deb Marshall photo: Chickadee trying to decide whether to approach the seed-covered bird house Mom gave me for Christmas. A week later, the seeds had all been eaten.