It was five degrees F yesterday morning when I got up, and eleven today at 6:00 a.m. Our furnace has been running non-stop, and that’s with the thermostat set at 67 during the day and a bit lower at night. We’re seeing a lot of activity at the bird feeder, but have not seen a deer for days. The acrobatic woodpecker in this photo is clinging tightly to the wire cage holding the last of the Christmas suet bell we had put out. A new cake of suet sits on our kitchen table, ready to replenish the supply. As for the semi-feral cats, after several days without a sighting, I’ve just seen both the white and gold shorthair and the rather scruffy long-haired black and white one in the yard near our driveway. The temperature having gotten up to 33 degrees by 4:00 p.m. this afternoon, our own Treena was sitting on the screen porch staring at them seriously. Perhaps the deer will reemerge by the weekend, when the temperatures are predicted to get back into the fifties. True stories about the weather are always fascinating. Ditto new words. “Polar vortex,” the term used to help explain this week’s record-setting cold wave, was a new one for me. Cold as it is in central Virginia, I’m glad I’m not trying to brave the frigid temperatures, the ice and snow, further north. Less than six weeks ago I was in the Chicago area, flying into O’Hare on a cold evening with light snow on the ground. Walking over to the lake with my son on a still cold but sunny afternoon a couple of days later, we observed some ice at its edges, but nothing like the amazing pictures being posted this week by intrepid photographers. I’m reminded of historic cold weather of the past, like the so-called Children’s Blizzard of 1888 (described so vividly by Kathleen Shoop in her novel “The Last Letter”), and the so-called Little Ice Age that affected 500+ years of history from the 14th to mid-19th centuries. (In January 1772 Thomas Jefferson is said to have carried his bride Martha Skelton through two to three feet of snow to reach his “Little Mountain,” Monticello, some ten miles from our country house.) I’m also reminded of a picture book, the name of which I no longer recall, that I used to read to our children several decades ago, featuring snow so high that only the second story of the house was uncovered, and the roly poly children in the illustrations could jump out the second story windows into high drifts of fluff. I’m also reminded of that apocalyptic movie from 2004, “The Day After Tomorrow,” with its visions of a frozen New York, a frozen Northern Hemisphere. Over the top, to be sure, but perhaps a cautionary fable as well. In my mind I tend to connect cold and snow especially with Christmas time. But of course winter is a whole season, and we’ve got several months of it yet to go. As for the Christmas season, now that Epiphany has come and gone, Christmas is over. We did our final Christmas meal of the season this past Friday, January 3, celebrating with our daughter and son-in-law. Our son who lives over in the valley was able to join us, as was Gary’s brother. I set the table with the red and white Pfaltzgraff that I love to put out at Christmas, and napkins embroidered by my daughter as a Christmas gift some years back. Saturday I put away the lights and the tree and the decorations. The house is back to normal. I was inspired, though, to try something different on the sideboard in our dining room, a piece of furniture Gary and I acquired at a country auction some four decades ago as new marrieds, that Gary stripped and refinished to reveal the beauty of its birdseye maple medalliions. I put my folk art Noah’s Ark (a 1986 piece by artist Nancy Thomas that we acquired in the early 90s at a yard sale) in the place where I usually place a cut glass bowl. And I opened the ark's hinged top, removed all the tiny pairs of animals as well as Noah and his wife, and set them up on the sideboard. A child at heart, I guess.
5 Comments
Chrissy
1/8/2014 06:00:58 am
Loved your post!! Have to read the book you mentioned - The Last Letter, and now I have to look into Thomas Jefferson's experiences again. I especially love the Noah's Ark on your sideboard!
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Gary
1/8/2014 06:23:39 am
I'm glad the yard cats turned out to be unfrozen,
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Susan Wells
1/8/2014 10:24:32 am
Loved the entry. The animals and photos are wonderful. Your detailed descriptions leave me waiting for your next share merging old and new.
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Karen
1/10/2014 08:40:49 pm
Thanks, everybody, for the kind words!
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AuthorI am a 63 year old wife, mother, and grandmother, retired at the end of June 2013 from a 35 year career, and loving this new phase of my life. Archives
December 2015
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