Winter's Come

The old wolf oak at the end of the driveway looks to me like a skeleton on this cold winter day.

The huge front that's all over the news arrived here at Indigo Hill today. Any trees that were pretending it was still autumn were smacked hard in the face by the howling, and I mean HOWLING, winds out of the southwest.

If we thought we were cheating winter these last few days, with temperatures in the 70s(!) we were reminded today just how foolish those thoughts were.

Changeable weather makes everything weird. I get all itchy and restless. Tonight, while fixing dinner (chicken potpie and brownies--a comprehensive culinary coverage of the food chart) I dropped the eggs twice, breaking 5 total. Is there anything harder to clean up from a kitchen floor than smashed eggs? I am such a spaz.

At 3 pm I HAD to get out of the house. The temperature had gone from 65 this morning to 32 and the raindrops had metamorphosed into snowflakes. But get out I must. So I walked until I couldn't take the sparring of the wind anymore. My eyes were welling with tears from the snappy bite of the wind. My fingers drew no comforting warmth balled up in my coat pockets.
I watched the edge of the front roll the last of the blue sky under its wheels along the southeastern horizon. It was the curtain coming down on the fall. Winter now owns the stage and this act of the play lasts from now until the woodcocks start peenting in March.

But not all about winter's body-slam arrival is bad. New birds show up at the feeders, blown into our midst by the push of the weather front. Today the purple finches are back and I heard a pine siskin lisping into the swirling air, though it failed to make an appearance at the feeders.

The wind today was so strong that the leaves--even the huge sycamore leaves--are all blown from the yard. In 13 years here at Indigo Hill, we've never raked leaves. Instead, on this ridgetop farm, the winter wind rakes for us.

I stood out on the hill, by the fire circle and the tire swing and I remembered summer--and the feel of the dewy grass under my bare feet last June. Hard to conjure that same feeling standing on top of the dead, brown, crunchy stuff now underfoot. But conjure we must. It's all we have until winter is weakened by spring's emergence.

I'll ply the fire with kindling now, I'll pull the blankets up to my chin
I'll lock the vagrant winter out and bolt my wandering in....

I'd like to call back summertime
and have her to stay for just another month or so...