One of the happy things that happens this time of year, when my winter weariness is at its most intense, is the arrival of seed catalogs in the mail. I get a lot of them and I look through each one. The pictures and descriptions of the flowers, fruits, and vegetables remind me that spring is getting closer every day. As I peruse the catalogs, I start making The List. At first the list is very long. So many things appeal to me and I add them all to the list. Later, when I’ve calmed down a little, I’ll go back and start removing the impractical things – things that are too expensive, things that will require too much fussing to get them to grow here. By mid February, the list will reach its final form. Then I’ll place orders and wait anxiously for the garden of 2024 to start arriving in the mail.
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| Some of my seed catalogs. |
The McMurray catalog also arrived in the mail. I decided last year after buying chicks, that I wouldn’t order any in 2024. My hope is that my new Black Cochin hens will be ready to hatch out eggs for me and I’ll never have to buy chicks again. The Black Cochin hens are mature enough to do that now, but I won’t know until later in the spring if they will cooperate with my plans. In a moment of doubt, I went ahead and looked through the McMurray catalog – and I shouldn’t have. I might be turning into one of those crazy poultry people. As I turned the pages I kept thinking, “Ooh! I want some of those! And some of those! And maybe we should raise turkeys again! And geese! And I’ve always wanted a flock of Guinea fowl! Maybe we should raise quail!” I’ll try to have some faith in my Black Cochin hens and refrain from buying chicks this year. I’ll keep reminding myself that turkeys and geese and Guinea fowl and quail, as lovely as they are, will make my life more complicated. I will try to control myself. Maybe.
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| Almost irresistible photos from the McMurray catalog. |
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| A sure sign the days are getting longer. |
Here at the end of January – at last – we’ve had a January Thaw. After the bitter cold and all the snow we had the week before, last week the temperature rose above freezing every day. On Thursday and Friday we actually hit 50°! According to the Farmers’ Almanac, during a proper January Thaw “temperatures rise an average of 10̊ F higher than the previous week, then drop back down in time for February’s arrival.” That’s exactly what happened last week. And, true to form, the thaw has faded out and will be long gone before February rolls in later this week. February is usually the coldest month here.
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| Just before the thaw. |
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| A sunrise before the thaw arrived. |
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| After the thaw. |
Sometimes I find myself pondering on a word I just used and at some point the word turns strange on me. I say it and it feels odd on my tongue. I wonder where it came from and how it came to mean what it does. That happened with “thaw.” Try saying it aloud a few times. Doesn’t it seem strange? Of course I then had to find its origin. My favorite etymology dictionary says it comes from Old English þawian through Proto-Germanic *thawon, and back to the Proto-Indo-Eurpean root *ta, meaning “to melt or dissolve.” And all of that just makes it seem stranger. Even stranger is that many people say they “unthaw” something when they really mean thaw. The same way some people say they “unpeel” an orange or “unloosen” a lid. Curious.
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| The orchard before the thaw. |
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| After the thaw. |
On Tuesday morning, as the thaw arrived, we had freezing rain at first. They canceled school. That was good because I had an unexpected project to work on that morning. Our wood stove wasn’t working right. It wouldn’t draw properly and it filled the house with smoke. So I let it burn out and cool down. I cleaned out the firebox and got a bucketful of ash. I removed the interior stove pipes, took them outside, and cleaned them out with a wire brush. There was a layer of soot, but it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I examined the exterior pipe, the long chimney that goes up the front of the house. In the lower part where I could actually see, there was some soot, but I couldn’t do anything about it. When I lit the stove again, the smoke problem remained. I think I know what has happened. When they were putting on our new roof, I had them put a piece of wire mesh across the top of the chimney to keep the starlings from coming down it. I think the mesh has become clogged with snow and ice and maybe some leaves and that is keeping the chimney from drawing and preventing the smoke from going out. There’s no way anyone here will attempt going up on the roof to have a look. I think we’ll have to hire a professional to come and fix it. The Amish probably know someone who does that sort of thing. In the meantime, we cannot use our wood stove. It’s a good thing it hasn’t been as cold.
I took that bucket of ash that I dug out of the firebox down to the barn and mixed it with a bag diatomaceous earth and filled the chickens’ dust bath, a kiddie pool that I keep inside the coop during the winter when the flock can’t dust bathe outdoors. The chickens love it.
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| The chicken's indoor dust bath. |
Our January Thaw was very rainy. Most of the snow melted, but not all of it. Thaws are a messy business. The ground is still frozen, so the rain and melted snow couldn’t sink very far into the soil. That made the top inch or so very spongy and muddy. The snow melt plus the rain made the creeks and rivers rise. The creek on the other side of the Rapley Road is still running high. Across the highway at the beaver pond, water is running over the top of the dam. On Friday, when I went up to Wellsville to run errands, the Genesee River was over its banks.
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| The Genesee River in Wellsville. |
Last week I went on a binge. With the world outside a soggy, dreary mess, I sought a little happiness in music. And, as it often happens when I need a musical uplift, I turned to Mozart, and more specifically, to his piano concertos. Those wonderful pieces and I go way back. Mozart was probably my first love in the world of classical music. As a child of eight or nine, I found recordings of some of his music among my parents’ records. There was Eine Kleine Nachtmusik and some of his divertimenti. I listened to them over and over again till I wore the vinyl out. But except for the most famous one, No. 21 in C major, I didn’t know his piano concertos. Then in 1980, just home from my mission and living with my family in Sylmar, California, I discovered KUSC 91.5 FM, the classical music radio station. Sometime that spring, on their morning program, they played Mozart’s piano concertos, one each day, starting with No. 5 in D major and on to No. 27 in B♭major (there is a reason they usually start with No. 5 instead of No. 1, but I won’t go into that). I was amazed, enthralled, completely swept away by this music. Ever since then, for the last forty-four years, any time I want a dose of musical joy, I listen to these piano concertos. They are the perfect cure for my winter weariness, or my autumnal melancholy, or anytime I want to wrap my mind in musical beauty. They did the job for me again last week.
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| Mozart. |
Yesterday we had an appointment at the temple – at 9:00 a.m. That meant we had to leave the house at 6:15 to get there on time. I’m usually up before then, but some of us are not used to being up that early, especially on a Saturday. We left the house in the dark and drove north through patches of dense fog. About the time we got to Mt. Morris, close to half way there, the sun started to come up. It was a pretty sunrise with the low fog and bright clouds. I tried to get a picture of it from the car window, with limited success. We arrived at the temple on time and had a great experience.
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| Sunrise out the car window. |
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| After the temple. |
We arrived back home at 2:00. The rain had finally stopped, but it was starting to get cold again. We took advantage of the last hours of relative warmth to do some much needed outdoor things. I collected fallen branches from the front lawn. I broke the smaller ones up to use as tinder for the wood stove – when we can use it again. The larger branches I piled to be burned outside. While I was doing that, Miriam and Hannah took down the rest of the outdoor Christmas lights. While Hannah was up on the porch roof doing that, she shoveled off the last bit of snow that was up there and then moved the heating wire down into the gutter to prevent icicles from forming. It was nice to work outdoors.
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| Taking down Christmas lights. |
Last night around 3:00 it began to rain again. As we drove home from church, the rain turned into snow. By the time we reached home, the ground was white again. Our January Thaw has come to an end. Now we must brace for our long haul through frigid February.
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| Before church. |
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| After church. |
This Friday is Groundhog Day. I have no doubt that, no matter what Punxsutawney Phil says on that day, we will have at least six more weeks of winter here. At our house, we will keep our tradition and watch the movie Groundhog Day on that day. Sometimes I feel a bit like weatherman Phil Connors, who in his despair said, “You want a prediction about the weather, you’re asking the wrong Phil. I’ll give you a winter prediction: it’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last for the rest of your life.” But I prefer his later sentiment when he said, “When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney (or Gold) and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.” Yes, knowing that it will eventually end, of course. Good Sabbath.
