Deep Freeze

It finally got up to 0 degrees at 2:00 today, after a low of -19 last night. The sun is out but everything feels suspended. 

The cold frame in the garden is crusted over with ice. In a few months it will be closed, with green seedlings sprouting under the glass.

The chickens got an extra treat of hot oatmeal with their apples this morning. It's messy but they love it. I checked for frostbitten combs and feet, but they all seem to be fine.

Inside we are listening to the furnace crank on over and over, while the wind blows smoky snow past the windows. Our house is so bright and white inside when the sun reflects off the snow that our eyes get tired after awhile. We are working away at Greek history. R surprised me by showing me this picture from her history textbook (The Human Odyssey), and asking if this is the same painting we saw at the Art Museum last week. She's right! It's "Le Cheval de Troie (The Trojan horse)" (1874) by Henri-Paul Le Motte. I love when she puts ideas together across subjects like that.

We looked at some other artists' conceptions of the Trojan horse, some that looked like a realistic horse and some, like this amazing painted still from the 2004 movie Troy,  that looked like they had been nailed together with ships' timbers. Or the "planks of fir" from Virgil's Aeneid. 

After many years have slipped by, the leaders of the Greeks,
opposed by the Fates, and damaged by the war,
build a horse of mountainous size, through Pallas’s divine art,
and weave planks of fir over its ribs:
they pretend it’s a votive offering: this rumour spreads.
They secretly hide a picked body of men, chosen by lot,
there, in the dark body, filling the belly and the huge
cavernous insides with armed warriors.

- (Virgil's Aeneid, Book II)

January Is Rounded With a Snow

We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
- The Tempest Act 4, Scene 1, 148-58

January closed with a big blustery snowstorm.

R's tree swing. 

 

Silver maple in a sugar snow. 

I promise the chickens are o.k. Charlie. We let them tough it out so they'll be hardy enough for cold weather, but when it gets close to zero we put a heat lamp in their coop. Their waterer has a heated base also, so it never freezes. Charlie only trusts himself with their well-being.

Good dog. 

Marshmallow roasting with Daddy after a long, cold afternoon sledding with the neighbors. Charlie used to hate the fire as a puppy. He would bark at it and run upstairs to glower from a safe distance. Gradually he got used to it and now he can relax and warm his fur next to it. Except if someone makes a blowing sound, to stoke the fire or put out a flaming marshmallow--that drives him crazy for some reason. I love all the border collie hyper-aware eccentricities. And that they are so happy to come inside for cuddles on laps when their feral outdoor time is done.

Let the Wild Rumpus Start

It's indoor planting time again. Last year was a very lazy year for the garden, and I'm hoping to get an early start to get back on track this year. Here are the flowers I've started under lights so far.

Bok choy, leeks and purple broccoli (I couldn't find the seed package for that). I also started little round Parisian carrots in a container just to entertain R. If they grow, we'll eat those before they can get planted out. I also started four kinds of basil.


Here are the greens I've started.

I have four windowboxes with greens in the sunny front window.

Magenta Swiss Chard.

Asian Greens Mesclun.

Part of our upstairs guest room Seedling Empire.

I even colonized a closet.
 
Impatiens finally germinated when I put them on a heat mat.
 
Tiny Johnny Jump-Up seedlings, just getting started.

Holiday Weekend Trail Walk

Overcast Sunday afternoon walk, through the messy muddy melting snow.

excerpt from "Year's End"

Now winter downs the dying of the year,   

And night is all a settlement of snow;

From the soft street the rooms of houses show   

A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,   

Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin   

And still allows some stirring down within. 

                                         - Richard Wilbur 

Winter Sun

It's good to have a best friend whose house is thirty seconds away. They had a fun Monday holiday together today.

They put on a puppet show.

And found some more feather treasures on their cemetery walk.


The sun is low in the sky these short winter days. It hits our windows at a brilliant angle in the late afternoon, and floods the house with gold.

S'mores

More snow today, a wet, heavy snow that hung off the branches.

Dinner was lemon chicken breaded in panko; sweet potatoes with oranges and cinnamon; spinach, and polenta cut into flowers and browned in a cast iron skillet.

We had a fire and made s'mores.

This is what it looked like under the streetlight at 7:30 p.m.

Snow Day Three

We are on Day Three of this strange sick day/snow day week. R has been sick, then they canceled school for weather. It's been three days since R or I stepped outside. This morning it was fourteen below when we woke up.

Charlie is loving the attention.







Ice crystals are still on the upstairs windows at 3 p.m. Yesterday it never got above zero. Right now the sun is out, but it's five degrees. No burst pipes, and so far the cars are starting up.

Another April snowstorm

This is what happens when I sleep in and she dresses herself to help Daddy shovel. No need to change out of your nightgown. The secret is layering.

She made this snowman all by herself.

Then she was mad because I couldn't find a hat small enough for him. She said people were going to drive by and say "That snowman looks stupid."

So she went inside and got a muffin cup. Problem solved.