February 16 2014

Valentines' Day in the frozen tundra - Here's what our celebration looked like: two home-made cards (guess which one is the calligrapher's), box of chocolates, and Brian made my very favorite soup, cream of zucchini. Simple pleasures - plus the power did not blow out as everyone anticipated.

And while all that was happening indoors, here's a taste of what was going on outdoors: Icicles growing daily, mounds of snow everywhere, and visible evidence we declined to take the latest suggestion to shovel our roofs - Brian had more than enough to do just to dig out to the car and generator.

This last round of storms has been so brutal there really isn't much time or energy to do much else other than try to stay ahead of the next round. Brian does the shovelling, I do the woodstove cleaning, laying the fires, and making huge batches of bean,barley and vegetable soup, something easily microwaveable for the inevitable outage when we can run the generator, but alas, not the stove or the computer. So far we've been able to get to where we had to when we had to, and nobody's lost any weight, so we're good.

My best news for last: another successful adoption in which I took a small part. I got to do the home visit for little Sammy, to make sure he was going to loving folks in a reasonable place. Lucky dog - they have 3/4 acres of fenced yard for him to play in, and were so taken with him when they drove out to his foster family to meet, the deal was sealed right there and he went home with them. Oddly enough, both husband and wife work where one of my former calligraphy students works, so I not only got great reports from them, but a back channel confirmation that they are boring everyone at work with stories of their great new family member. Best part of rescue..

And that's it from here. Hope all goes well wherever you are, and that spring finds us all REALLY SOON!

January 9 2014

Starting the New Year with plenty of winter scenes for our friends NOT living through it. It's been a wild ride so far, down to many degrees below zero, back up to the high 40s, then back down again to even more degrees below zero. It's pretty, I admit, but only if there's no need to go out and actually deal with it. Here are some snow shots and my best attempts at capturing the really beautiful frost patterns on the porch windows (again, disclaimer, not the best photographer).

There's very little left of the summer gardens, after all the precipitation and wind and temperature swings all my green buddies have either given up or gone underground. But as an antidote to the already seemingly endless winter, I've sprouted some arugula seeds on a windowsill and am hoping to be able to get a few leaves for sandwiches some day soon. We shall see.. In any case, even windowsill gardening seems better than no gardening at all.

The bluebirds cleared the berry bushes before the first big chill, and I haven't seen them since. I hope they are somewhere safe and warm. Thus far I have successfully resisted the impulse to make tiny parkas for the birds, it's just so hard to believe such delicate looking creatures can make it through these brutal winters.

And that is all the news I have at present. I hope things are milder wherever you are, and that 2014 brings good things to all - we can always hope, anyway. Be well!