Farewell January 2022

 

 

There aren't enough words

Or too many words

So just farewell, January 2022

 

 

A Certain Slant of Light

There's a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons--
That oppresses...

Sorry, Emily, not in my kitchen!

 

Hello February!

I love February! Do you?

Hal Borland, editorial writer for The New York Sunday Times from 1942 to 1970, and one of my favorite nature writers described this short month beautifully....

Here comes February, a little girl with her first valentine, a red bow in her wind-blown hair, a kiss waiting on her lips, a tantrum just back of her laughter. She is young as a kitten, changeable as the wind, and into everything. She can sulk, she can beam, she changes from one minute to the next...

February is soup and mittens, and it is a shirt-sleeve day that demands an overcoat before sundown. It is forsythia buds opening in the house and skid chains clanking on the highway. February is sunrise at 6:30 for the first time since November. 

February is a gardener pruning his grape vines today and shoveling a two-foot drift off the front walk tomorrow morning. It is a farmer wondering this week if his hay will last the Winter, and next week wondering if he should start plowing. It is tiny catkins on the alder in the swamp and skunk cabbage thrusting a green sheath up through the ice. February is the tag end of Winter--we hope. But in our hearts we know it isn't Spring, not by several weeks and at least a dozen degrees. 

Hal Borland, 1900-1978

Is it just me or do you love to greet February too? 

  

Run BreeBree, Run. And other snow adventures.

RH and I were gone all day yesterday to various doctor appointments and errands and didn't get to post the pictures of Nashville's one and only snow so far. 

But Sunday's snow was so beautiful, if skimpy by comparison to other parts of the country. Dachshunds all seem to love snow but BreeBree dashed in and out in the bitterly cold temperatures. 

I didn't venture out in the slippery stuff but was never far away from a window all day long, enjoying it from inside.

Isn't it nice how the white stuff outside makes you notice everything so much more? The red bracts from this old houseplant that we really need to transplant into a larger pot stood out as red as a beautiful Chanel red lipstick.

I admit that I also did a little nosey peeking at our neighbors across the street as it is only in winter that we can see them, the snow showing them up even clearer. I can't help wondering about them over there in that big house, the neighbors we never see but sometimes hear talking when they sit outside in the summer.

You're never guilty of being nosey, are you?

I was so glad there were two Christmas decorations that I've yet to get rid of as they looked pretty in the snow. I had finally moved the wreath from the front porch to just prop up on the kitchen porch, still too fresh to dump.

And I was so happy that the birds' red Christmas bow still graced their dining room!

It looks like the cardinals are finding every single seed but the many finches are there even if they don't show up well.

And a few other kinds visit.

I missed a fantastic opportunity for a picture yesterday when RH was driving home from Nashville. 

I screamed out to him, "Look!" And pointed to the sky, probably not the best thing to do when someone is driving fast.

It looked like a helicopter was sitting on top of power lines strung high in the sky. And it was! I thought it was stuck there and trying to get lose but RH told me there was a linesman on it fixing something on the lines.

Have you ever seen that? I had never heard of such a thing. My heart was pounding. Why didn't I grab my phone for a picture? My kids would have.

But here's the cute picture I did snap when we were welcomed home by BreeBree and James Mason.

For you to fully realize the cuteness of this, I have to explain that all his toys are piled in a corner of the room and this is what he did while we were gone--drug them out and played with them one at a time and then put them in a row on the rug. BreeBree doesn't play with toys. I think she was too busy having babies the first five years of her life before they came to us last year to ever learn to play. I can't bear to think about it.

James Mason didn't play the first six months here but then he gradually got interested. But to line them up like that? Now isn't that a brilliant little man?

And just now he's talking to me, in that voice that says it's 4:30 p.m., Mama. Time for his and BreeBree's dinner.

Pronto. Right now.

Gladys's Nervous Day

In my own life, I find that if I have what I call a "nervous day" and dash frantically from a hasty breakfast to a quick supper, I haven't, in the end, accomplished a single thing worth while. Not a single thing. All I have done is get keyed up and tired out.

Gladys Taber

The Stillmeadow Road

Oh, my dear Gladys, you always seem to know just what I am going through myself!

Sometimes at the end of a nervous day I feel as if I haven't accomplished a thing even though I have cooked and eaten breakfast, showered and made the beds, started laundry, unloaded and loaded the dishwasher, picked up around the house, dusted, folded laundry, cooked supper and cleaned up the kitchen again. 

Between times I've also fielded phone calls and wished people would learn to text--yes, I've gone over to the dark side--and fed and brushed the dogs and let them outside and back in a dozen times, fed the birds, paid the bills, checked email, Facebook, blogs, Pinterest......

You know the story, it's called a day at home. 

Gladys was a busy woman, between writing novels and Stillmeadow books and articles for women's magazines, but even she had to actually take care of Stillmeadow  and concoct three meals a day. No wonder she sometimes had nervous days.

And she didn't have social media to deal with! I'm glad the poor dear didn't because she even rebelled when her phone service went from asking the village operator to connect her to someone, to having to use a rotary dial telephone.

She let her friends and children know that they would have to call her from then on. And she never did quite figure out how to operate the vacuum cleaner or washing machine.

I had one of Gladys's nervous days a few days into 2019. I desperately wanted to take down all the Christmas decor, waking up one morning and realizing I was over it. I needed to pack it all away more efficiently, eliminating more of it.

After that was done I looked at my Christmas-naked rooms and wondered if I really wanted them put back the way they had been before Christmas went up. The thought of it made me jittery. That led to some subtle changes. 

Then I went into my disheveled office/writing room where all the Christmas bins are stored in one corner. There were piles everywhere: personal and financial paperwork, months of blog post ideas, files of paperwork from books I'm writing, stacks of books I've read with little post-it notes sticking out with quotes that I wanted to type, stacks of books I'm waiting to read, piles of things that I've forgotten what I meant to do with them.

And I felt like tearing my hair out or crawling into bed or sitting down and binging on House of Cards all over again. Anything other than cleaning that office.

So I closed the door and went in the kitchen because meals must be cooked whether you are nervous or not.

Cooking always calms me down. I think it did Gladys too.

Each day this week I have gone to my office and sorted papers and books. I have organized the heck out of papers and books but they are still in piles. I keep thinking that once it is all organized that then it will look organized. But it doesn't yet and that makes me very nervous. 

So I go back to my kitchen and wash dishes or cook.

Our Amaryllis 'Caprice' keeps me company as she has since early December. She has given me of her beauty in generous doses that have sometimes almost been more than I could handle as I studied her colors and delicate petals.

"All of this for me?" I ask her, as she has given me bloom after bloom unstintingly, the second stalk even gifting me with five huge blooms.

And as I spritzed the moss around her base and saw it return daily to jade green, I noticed that even the grass has put on tiny flowers. Who knew it would do that?

I've smiled at the miracle of that, foolish Gladys Taber mentee that I am.

I realized this week that my husband really knows and understands me. He understands the pleasure I have gotten from this large window over my kitchen sink ever since we moved in two years ago.

He notices that things change seasonally and that it is really not the place for him to plop a sponge pad down to dry. He knows that his coffee thermos is not going to be there long when he empties it out at night and puts hot water in it to soak. Because when I see it sitting in my window I move it.

I think he realizes now that this window is not only my view to the garden that he made for me last spring and summer but it is also my canvas.

I'm guessing that he has learned that there always needs to be something pink blooming there, or about to bloom. The other day he brought home a $3.99 hyacinth bulb from the grocery store.

He couldn't, wouldn't, have pleased me more if it had been diamonds. Naturally, it is pink.

And I savor that.

What I haven't done is savor the delight of the day, for every day has delight if we take time to look for it. And when I think it over, I feel I have wasted a day, and no way will ever come again.

Gladys Taber

I love it when my heroes are not perfect all the time, when they've walked the same road I have and learned from it and then taught me about it. 

Like Gladys, I have to do the best I can, failing sometimes and picking myself up and starting all over again the next day. 

It's still going to be winter for a long time, like it or not. I happen to enjoy it and am in no hurry for the months when we'll once again use our outdoor dining room. 

There's still time for winter cooking, not holiday food but nothing stringently painful either.

There's still time to finish organizing my office/writing room. At least the old primitive green drop-leaf table that I use for my desk has been cleaned off.

I knew I would be forced to start with that if I piled everything that had been dumped on it lately into my recliner.

 And gradually I'll work my way around the rest of the room, because after all, when my youngest granddaughter left to go home on Christmas Eve, she gave me a little something.....

 She left some of her Super Hero Girls power with me!

That office is due for some major clean up! Because it really does make me have nervous spells the way it is now.

But first I might go to the kitchen and check on Caprice. She and I might even bake a cake first.

Cake, amaryllis 'Caprice' and Gladys. This winter is going to be too short for all the wonderful things we're going to do!

Frost Ferns

Frost ferns grow on glass here this morning when I open the kitchen door to let Bree and Mason out to go potty.

A sight I have not seen since a child living in Inglewood in a white clapboard two bedroom, one bath bungalow built after World War II, one of others along a street where the opposite side holds imposing pre-War brick homes.

I've lost count of the recent nights with single digit lows, faucets left to drip, frost on the storm door that opens to our kitchen porch. 

It is only this morning that ferns appear on the glass.

I could google this phenomena and tell you exactly what conditions cause this if I were so inclined. I'm not.

I grab my phone and snap pictures and call for RH to bring the camera.

I know the ferns won't stay long, and they don't.

But for a few moments we are lost in a magic world of crystal gardens that may never appear again.