February Made Me Shiver

We have arrived at February, to me the most tedious month of the year. Although it’s the shortest month, it always seems to drag on and on. And this year is a leap year, so it will seem even longer. No matter how variable the weather might have been in December and January, winter usually lays siege to us in February. If there are going to be sub zero days, that’s when they will come. The calendar midpoint for winter is today, so if winter actually respected the calendar (which it doesn’t) and departed on March 21st, we’d only be halfway through. Only half way, a sad thought.

Today is Groundhog Day, the high point of the year in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. The word from the official groundhog is that we will have an early spring, a totally meaningless prediction for us here because no matter what the rodent says, there will be more than six weeks of winter here in the Allegany Highlands. The groundhogs of Gold don’t come out of hibernation until April if they’re smart. We drive through Punxsutawney every time we drive downstate to visit the Thayns. I guess you could call it a quaint town if you consider groundhogs quaint. The town is full of statues, murals, and logos of Marmota monax. We call them woodchucks here and do all we can to keep them out of the garden. We shoot them if we can. Sorry Punxsutawney.

It's Groundhog Day!

January departed on a low note, temperature wise. We hit the low single digits during the week. I have known cold weather. Through my high school years, we lived in Naperville, Illinois, thirty miles west of Chicago, out on the plains. It got cold there. My freshman year, our first year living there, I walked to school. During the winter, before I set out for school, I’d listen to the radio for the weather report. The announcer would say things like, “The temperature is minus ten with a wind chill of minus thirty. At that temperature, exposed flesh will freeze in thirty minutes.” I never went out with exposed flesh. On those hard cold mornings, I wore layers and layers of clothing – double socks, thermal underwear, a heavy coat, a hat, gloves, and a woolen scarf wrapped around my head so that only my eyes were exposed. It took me fifteen minutes to walk to Naperville North High School. By the time I’d get there, I’d be stiff from the cold. Where the scarf was pressed against my nostrils, there would be spheres of ice the size of golf balls formed from my frozen breath. Before I went into the school, I would take my scarf off and whack it against the school wall to break off the ice, otherwise the ice would melt and make a puddle in my locker. But I didn’t mind the cold so much back then. It was just the way things were. I’m not like that now, even though it’s still just the way things are. I complain more now.

It gets cold here in Potter County and Gold is regarded as the coldest place in the county. We are often ten degrees colder than places just a few miles away. Wouldn’t you know it. We get spells of sub zero weather every winter. They don’t last long, just a few days at a time, maybe a week at the most. Cold mornings are the hardest. Thursday morning last week was a typical midwinter morning. It was five degrees when I got up. The house was chilly. The first thing I did was turn on the electric heater in our bedroom and turn up the thermostats on the downstairs floor furnace and the upstairs hall heater. If I’d been more ambitious, I would have fired up the wood stove too, but I was too cold to be ambitious, so I warmed up the lazy way by standing over the furnace grate. As dawn approached, I could see that the sunrise would be pretty, so against my better judgment, I bundled up, grabbed my camera, and went outside. The air was so cold it froze the inside of my nose when I inhaled. The snow had a hard crust on it, but when I broke through it, the softer snow underneath made that squeaking noise like corn starch makes when you squeeze it. That noise always gives me goose bumps that have nothing to do with the temperature. I walked across the front yard and then down to the beaver pond. The pond was completely frozen, no open water at all. There was heavy frost on everything. It was beautiful. I didn’t take my gloves off to take photos, which was clumsy, but most of the pictures came out okay. On my way back to the house, I filled the bird feeders. Then I hurried indoors to stand on the furnace grate and thaw out. Extremely cold mornings are beautiful, but painful.

From my walk at dawn.

My walk at dawn.

Looking back at the house.

The beaver pond.

Frosty window in the woodshed.

Later that morning I was out running errands and I remembered to take my camera with me. The frost on the hills was spectacular. I drove up the Gazdag Road to the top of the hill and took a panorama shot of the view towards Ulysses. It was sunny and there was a little sun dog. The air was too cold to stand there for very long.

At the top of the hill.

Looking toward Ulysses.

One thing I like about the snow is that it reveals to me the traffic through my yard. Through the warm months, you can’t tell as clearly what creatures have visited, but when there’s snow on the ground, they leave obvious evidence. I’m always amazed at how many animals travel back and forth across our property. I know deer come into the orchard, but the snow shows me that they also walk through the front yard very close to the house regularly. There are also many tracks of rabbits and squirrels. There is a cat that has worn a path in circles around the house. The other day I found the tracks of a possum that was trying to find a way into the barn. I could see where it had walked around the perimeter twice and then gave up and wandered across the road. I found “tracks” in the snow where the maple trees have dripped sap. That means the sap is trying to run and that makes me happy. The biggest tracks through the yard are mine where I travel to and from the barn. 

Footprints: rabbit, cat, sap, me.

I spent the better part of an afternoon on Friday planning my garden. I made a chart of the things I want to grow this year and then I went through my seed boxes and pulled out packets of the seeds I already have that I will plant. I noted the seeds I don’t have that I will need to buy this year. I culled out seed packets that were past their time. I estimated what supplies I’ll need for starting seeds indoors – pots and soil, etc. My biggest expense this year will be for trees and shrubs for the woodland garden. I’m ordering a hickory, a walnut, a redbud, and an oak tree, plus under story shrubs – two osier dogwoods (a red and yellow), a Carolina Allspice bush, and an American smoke tree. I won’t be ordering any apple trees to fill in gaps in the orchard this year. Instead I’ll be ordering blueberry bushes to make the hedge between our house and the Shilligs where we cut down the row of spruce trees. Now I have to wait for our income tax return to come to place my orders. The whole time that I’m paging through catalogs, filling in charts, and planning, I find myself humming “If I were a rich man.” My budget is very limited. And I have other projects that will need resources too. I need to build more raised beds and a pig pen. I need to repair one arbor and replace the other before the wind blows it down. And maybe this spring we will finally build the greenhouse. The kit has been sitting in the woodshed for two years now.

This year's garden (part of it) in seed form.

The snow plow woke me up at 4:45 this morning. I was happy but not happy to hear it. It meant that it had snowed during the night and that did not make me happy. But it also meant that the plows were out early, which is often not the case on a Sunday morning, and that made me happy – especially as I set out for church at 6:30. The ride to church wasn’t too bad, but it snowed while we were in church and the ride home, at least the part from Genesee to Gold, was treacherous. New York uses lots of salt on their roads, but Pennsylvania uses mostly cinders which just turns the snow on the road brown. It is still snowing, but we’re in for the rest of the day now so I don’t care. Today is Fast Sunday and I am hungry. My stomach was growling so loudly at church, it was embarrassing. Now lunch is almost ready and from the fragrance reaching me in here, it involves bacon and that sounds especially delicious to me. I hope you all have a good Sabbath.