The weather turned bitterly cold toward the end of the week. It snowed a fine dusty snow and then the wind blew it all around. The wind chill dropped into the double negative digits. When this arctic air descends, it makes the joints of this old house pop and groan from cold contractions. It has the same effect on me sometimes. I only left the house when it was absolutely necessary.
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| Cold days. |
We celebrated my birthday on Thursday. It was a quiet celebration, just the sort I like. The Shilligs came for dinner and we had tacos. Julie made me a banana cake. It was delicious. I received some nice gifts. I heard from my children and I got a lot of birthday wishes at school and from friends on Facebook. That’s all, and it was great.
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| Birthday cake. |
I’m still on my Mozart binge. I’ve made my way through all the chamber music, the symphonies, and the divertimenti. Now I’m working on the piano concertos and I’ve decided they are my favorite of all the wonderful works of Mozart. The later concertos (numbers 15 to 27) are especially beautiful. I love them so much that when I get to the end, I’m going to listen to them all again.
This is Presidents Day weekend and we’re on the short side of a four day break from school. We had Friday off and tomorrow. I always feel a little cheated by our present observance of Presidents Day. We used to celebrate Washington and Lincoln’s birthdays separately. Lumping them together seems to diminish their importance to me, not to mention crowding Valentines Day in there too this year. Also, most people don’t realize it, but Washington was actually born on February 11th (just like me), not the 22nd. In 1752 England (we were still part of England then) switched from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar and that required skipping the calendar ahead 11 days. New years day was switched from March 25th to January 1st and Wednesday September 2nd 1752 was followed by Thursday September 14th. That would have been confusing. Because of that, eleven days were added to Washington’s birthday, moving it to the 22nd. Washington preferred to celebrate on the 11th. I prefer that too.
Back in the day, when we lived in Southern California, it became our tradition to go to Death Valley on Presidents Day weekend. The first time we went, we just drove out for the day. The next time, we decided to camp. That didn’t work out well. The wind was ferocious and blew our tent down and we abandoned camp in the night and drove up to Independence and spent the weekend with Steve and Linda and their family. The next year we skipped any pretense of camping, went straight to Steve and Linda’s, and drove down to Death Valley for a day. That was our pattern ever after. Those were fun times.
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| Death Valley 1994. |
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| Badwater 1997. |
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| Death Valley 1997. |
Death Valley is one of the most fascinating and beautiful places I’ve ever been. Its beauty is of a strange sort, all rock and mineral and bare bones of the earth. In February it is usually 80° or more there and the wild flowers are blooming. It’s strange to look out my window and think that there are wild flowers blooming in the desert right now.
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| Our last trip 1998. |
I’ve spent most of the long weekend bird watching, painting, tending my houseplants, and working on garden plans. I’m trying a new method of gardening this year called straw bale gardening. I read the book and watched several videos and I’m going to give it a try. My soil is very stony and, in parts of my garden, depleted. This method will overcome those problems. According to my plans, I’m going to need about 50 bales of straw. Drawing different plans for arranging the bales has been fun. I’ve come up with half a dozen different layouts and I haven’t decided which one I’ll use yet. It’s a great mental distraction for me during these frozen days.
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| Birds at the feeder on Saturday. |
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| Painting. |
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| My upstairs houseplants. |
It was 18° below zero when we woke up this morning. That’s without wind chill. Luckily, there was no wind – 18° below is bad enough. But the sun was bright and sky was that amazing color of blue that only happens when it’s bitterly cold. By the time we got out of church it had warmed to a balmy 31°. It’s strange how warm 31° can feel after feeling such deep cold. So we’re home, we’ve eaten a hearty lunch of beans and sopapillas. I’m ready for little winter hibernation and then we’ll go from there.
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| Bright blue Sabbath morning. |
