under the leaves

found as i scraped away dead leaves and other matter from a section of my garden. what are these tiny green sprouts you ask? theyre chives! some warm night next week ill snip a little and use them to make hamburgers on the grill.

powerless

boy i would have made a lousy pioneer. sometime in the night the top of a big tree near by snapped off in the wind and took down the wire for the entire road. so this morning there was no water to make coffee, no land line to check for messages, no internet or email, no water for a shower. and to make matters worse i had a severe case of bedhead. thankfully i had the crank radio for news and my cell phone to call and explain my tardiness. dunkin donuts coffee not too far away. but my hair looked wretched all day long. no wonder pioneer ladies wore those silly bonnets.

re: the tree

perhaps its wishful thinking. maybe im looking for a silver lining. could be its my imagination. but i dont ever remember seeing morning light flooding in the window quite like this.

gone

going, going....

i am so sad about this i cant even blog about it. maybe tomorrow.

sugar snow

warm enough today to forego the boots and wear sneakers. tomorrow will be warmer still. but tonight we have snow. sugar snow they call it. the term has something to do with cold-enough-to-snow weather embedded within a warm spell and how it prolongs the maple sugaring season already begun here in new england. i dont understand the science of it all. i just know that, even if it is a late winter snow, i still love to look at it. and that it will melt away as quickly as it arrived.

whats in a name?

how will i want this soon-to-be-born little one to address me? "chris" would be fine with me but i doubt the parents would allow it. so what else....
grandmother. thats so fussy. it makes me think of a matron with grey hair piled atop her head and glasses on a chain. oh wait. that could be me...
grandma. the ma syllable would grate on me every time i heard it. i think its the open vowel sound at the end that i dont like. sounds like sheep.
granny. too beverly hillbillies.
nana. just sounds old. besides nana was the dog in the darlings nursery in peter pan, remember?
gram. a unit of weight. best not to set up any mathematical confusion for the poor child.
mimi or meme or mamy or some other m name. knowing that this sound is acquired pretty early in a babys linguistic development makes these names appealing. but mimi is what my own mother is called. as for meme - im not even french.
grammy. like the best song award. or is it grammie? either way i think this may be it. not because i love the name or anything. but because i remember my own grammie who was always happy to see me who bought me presents when we went to boston who used to brush my hair til it was shiny and there were no more joe moes in it. she was the kind of grandmother who elicited smiles and made good memories. thats the kind of grammie i want to be.

spring in my step

the first day of spring and look what i found sticking out through the snow on my late afternoon walk!

sore throat

sort of sick for a couple of days now. at least im sure im miserable. sleeping hours on end. at the moment im kind of in awake mode so heres my 10pm dinner. tea and a one point 100 calorie thomas' english muffin. thank goodness this thing has nooks and crannies to hold the five sprays of fake butter spray.

st pats

no wearin' of the green today. no corned beef and cabbage or green beer. my nod to st patricks day - i had a granny smith apple instead of a fuji.

taking a chance on jewelry

always i wear the same earrings. little pearl studs. but today i threw caution to the wind and wore dangles. and no one even noticed.

a tough decision to make

somewhere i read that when a house was built in early new england two trees were planted in front to signify the start of a family. once there were two maples here. but a quarter century ago someone took down one that was dead. for years now its twin has been dying too. but still it stands looming tall over the house over the yard and over the hills out back. in summer it leafs out in spots and shades the house for a few morning hours. robins nest in the long branches over the roof. and birds sing from the leafless spire at the top. in winter a family of squirrels lives in the hollow trunk. in spring the lawn is littered with dead branches fallen down with the wind and the snow. when storms rage and wind whips around i fear falling branches will smash through the roof or a window. during thunderstorms i sit in far corners not wanting to be in the center of the house lest the tree get struck by lightning and come crashing down on it and on me. ive had nightmares about this tree. for as long as ive lived here ive both adored and feared it. now a decision needs to be made about taking the tree down. soon. and i cant decide.

small town voting day

the second tuesday in march folks in our small town go to the polls and vote on issues of local importance. who our selectmen will be. whether the fire department will get their new engine. if the teachers will get a salary increase. how much the town will raise through taxation for summer road repairs. theres a familiar pattern to voting in our small town. we gather in the old meeting house now open only for elections. the giant woodstove warms us as we wait in line and climb the few steps to the ancient stage where the voting booths are set. the same faces year after year ask us to state our names when they know full well who we all are. we wave across the room to neighbors. marvel at how much children have grown. have long conversations by the doorway. buy cookies and fudge and baked beans to benefit the local scholarship fund. sit in the pews and discuss weather and politics and whos already tapping their maples. when its finally time to go we negotiate our way through the driveway now rutted and muddied by the wheels of hundreds of cars. drive past the placards stuck in the snowbanks. a final wave to the candidate whos still shaking hands and smiling as evening comes.

rocks

in baskets and in bowls, on sills and on desks, i have rocks. rocks from beaches, rocks from gardens, rocks from other peoples trips. rocks worn smooth by water long gone. rocks jagged and sharp and shaped like hearts. a rock from the ancestral home in ireland. another from a volcano. salt from the great salt lake. and a long succession of duxbury rocks. heres my most recent acquisition - found just this morning right by my foot in the driveway. sparkly quartz among the gravel.

7:47 am & all set

look. its the clock in the car. all set for daylight savings time tonight. because i never turned it back in october. why bother? with the early arrival of DST this year it only amounted to a few months time. id drive, glancing at the clock, subtracting the hour in my mind, imagine the sunlight in spring, and dreaming the winter away. i am so ready for the extra hour of daylight.

noontime ambivalence

driving down a back road i smelled it before i saw it. and there it was: a dead-by-the-side-of-the-road skunk. while i am certainly not a fan of roadkill (i brake for small animals) i was oddly encouraged to see this sight. to be dead-by-the-side-of-the-road, this skunk had to first have woken from hibernation. and that i believe would be sign of spring #5.

twilight

the western sky as i was leaving work tonight. hours of light are getting longer and longer. with daylight savings time returning this weekend it will be curious to have skies look like this at a later hour. its not even yet the vernal equinox, the day of equal daylight and darkness. imagine after that event that days will grow longer still.

snowman

even though weve had only two big storms this year theres a lot of snow out there. apparently some ambitious folk in the area have been taking advantage of that fact and competing to see who can build the biggest snowman. i dont imagine this ones in the running but it is quite tall and very cute. it made me smile all the way to work this frosty morning.

toasty tootsies

on a bitterly cold night such as this i have found the best place for my cold feet. the rest of me is rocking, right in front of the fire.

home fires burning

for reasons that are too uninteresting to even go into, the woodstove has been out of commission for about six weeks now. and sad to say several hundred dollars in conventional fuel. but today i came home to the familiar smell of woodsmoke in the yard. im happy. and the cat is cozy on the hearth once more.

flowers in winter

in winter some people spend their money on skiing and lift tickets. others buy movies or games to play inside. i buy flowers. my need for them is directly proportional to the weather outside. the colder it gets the more it snows the more i need to buy myself some flowers. theyre very much out of place with the gardens and the walkways covered in white. its odd to be handing them while wearing fleece and flannel and heavy socks. but when theyre arranged, when theyre in a beautiful vase, when i can inhale their headiness as i pass by, winter seems very far away even though its raging right outside my window.

same spot different day

see what i mean? i love snowstorms!

the bane of the season

the worst thing about winter: dirty snow.
the best thing about winter: new snow that covers over the dirty snow and make the world look pretty and clean again. until april. then youre just stuck with dirty snow until it melts into mud. but by that time you dont care any more because its spring.