Almost winter

It’s been a while since my last post.  Not sure why.  And not really sure why I keep posting.  It’s like having a diary unlocked and lying out on the counter for everyone to see.  Hmmmm.  There’s something Freudian about that.

Anyway, the winter is creeping in slowly.  Not officially winter yet, but it sure feels it.  Twenties at night and barely scraping the underside of 50 during the day.  We got in a supply of bird seed for the season this weekend and filled the feeders.  Not seeing many finches, but the scrub jays and our local species of woodpecker, the flicker, are showing themselves more frequently these days, along with the ubiquitous sparrows.  We like to make sure they’ll have plenty to fill their bellies as it gets colder.

My hats were evidently a hit with a friend’s son and his buddy.  Also with some folks here in town.   I might actually make more on them than just the yarn cost this holiday season.  We’ll see.  I love crocheting them.  My mate is my color consultant and his eye has been unerring this far into the venture.  He favors bright, deep colors and those are pretty popular right now.  He and I are collaborating on a couple of wall hangings; my crochet and his beading and other adorning.  The first one looks pretty good.  We might take this one with us to a friend’s Holiday Boutique in Salt Lake this weekend.  I’m taking hats, so the ‘mandala’ might be a good addition.  We’ll see.

Well, my work day is about to begin.  So, that’s all for now.

The end of another week

The week is ending with a big storm pushing in from our northwest.  We’ve had clouds since yesterday and the wind has been howling all day today.  About an hour ago the wind quieted a bit and snow started falling.  Now the wind is back driving the snow sideways.  It was about 50 degrees this morning when I woke up, but now it’s down to 35 and feels a whole lot colder with the wind.

All day the sparrows have been mobbing the bower in the trellis, in spite if how bare it is.  The few scraggly hops that remain are dry and they rustle, creating a sound like paper crinkling, when they get blown about.  The birds had been quite agitated, but once the snow started, they completely disappeared.  Where do they go?  Maybe into the evergreens around the neighborhood; taking shelter there now that the deciduous trees have become skeletal, leafless sticks against the winter sky. 

My life mate and I are gonna venture out this evening for dinner at a local downtown restaurant, unless we have a complete white out when I end my work day.  We need to get out of the house after a week of being closed in against the cold.  My partner is a very active sort, who’s always in his garden, weather permitting, and this week the weather hasn’t permitted, so he’s going a bit stir crazy.  Time for an outing.     

The week begins

Another snowy weekend, but just like last weekend, the snow mostly melted within hours of its falling.  Today is wintry though.  The sky is a bright white, not threatening more snow, but looking decidedly chilly.  The sparrows form what my friend Annie calls a ‘flash mob’ and sail across the yard to the now denuded bower on the trellis at my office window.  The trumpet vine has only a few leaves left and the hops vine that shares the trellis has dry tan flowers hanging on here and there.  During the green summer and fall months, the hops are swamped entirely by the trumpet vine and only now in the cold beginnings of winter is their tenacity made manifest.  The sparrows don’t linger on the trellis, just grab some seeds from the feeder and hurriedly mob off to god knows where.  The next feeder, I suppose.    

I’ve had a mild cold this week.  Just some sniffles and a low-grade fever.  So, no venturing out into the inclement weather.  Spent most of it in my chair with my crocheting.  I’m working on some hats for a friend’s son.  He’s away at grad school in Hawaii.  I don’t see how he’ll need my hats over there in the sunshine and humidity, but his mom saw pics of them and says he’ll love one, so……….

As I slide slowly into retirement (still work a couple days a week), I’m finding the crocheting I learned as a girl coming in handy.  My arthritic fingers need movement, something they’ve had plenty of in my working years at the computer.  Now that they have 4 or 5 idle days a week, they had started to freeze up on me.  So, I took up the hook and yarn and started making small rugs, antimacassars and armrest covers at first.  Then a beret or two for my mate, then more and more hats for unsuspecting family members and friends and then there were just too many to find heads for.  I took some over to a small main street boutique, knowing full well I’d get a polite pat on the head and a smile of regret, but the owner asked me to leave those, told me to get some cards/price tags made and bring her as many as I could make.  With that, Brigham Berets was born.  She’s actually sold more than a dozen so far and I have an outlet for my finger exercises.  In this small town the market could already be saturated, but we’ll see.

Well, time to get back to my ‘tatting’ as my partner refers to my hat making. 

Snow

The snow finally came on Saturday, and while it’s hanging around on the garden beds and deck, it never stuck to the driveway nor roads.  Just an inch or two.  The clouds have been with us since, but haven’t deposited anything additional.

It was cold this morning when I ventured out to drive over to the pool.  The sky was lighter than usual, with daylight savings time ended for another year.  The kids won’t have to pick their way to school in the dark, stumbling over debris on the sidewalks.  They seemed a much livelier bunch today. 

After my swim, with smoothie in hand watching at the big picture window in our living room, I like to take in the neighborhood.  We live just around the corner from an elementary school, so the kids (and there are a lot of them; my husband refers to our area as a ‘rookery’) walk to and from school each day.  In the morning they go by in small bunches, hauling what looks like tons of stuff in their low-slung backpacks.  The afternoon homeward migration starts when the adult brother of a neighbor marches off to the school, muttering loudly to himself.  He’s autistic.  Then, several minutes later, here he comes again, tromping along ahead of seven or eight kids who peel off one or two at a time into their houses along the way.  He sets a brisk pace, so the littlest ones lag behind.  After the first week or so of school, they don’t even try to keep up.  The last three kids follow him into their home, a few doors up the block from us.  This ritual and his march to church on Sundays are the only times I see him.  A small school bus picks him up in the morning, probably for a ‘sheltered workshop’ or some such thing, then drops him home just after lunch time.  I see the bus, but usually not him.  The only reason I know he’s autistic is that about a year ago we got a solicitation in the mail from his family for donations to the national Autism Foundation.

Later

The day is progressing into evening.  The birds have been especially active today, seemingly hundreds of them startling up from the ground and into the bower.  They swoop and dive, dodge and veer, much like schools of fish in the air.  The wind and the snow make the change to winter more definite for them, I’m sure, and their desperation to bulk up is palpable.  My mate grows seedy plants just for them and they are taking full advantage of his generosity.  There are sunflowers of all sizes and sorghum, parsley, oregano and other late seeding plants.  All for the birds.  So our yard is alive with sparrows, finches, juncos, scrub jays and ravens this time of year.  All shouting at each other, but often feeding side by side, too.  A covey of quail share our backyard.  They are a cautious lot, usually, moving under cover around the perimeter.  Now that the cold is upon us, though, they have discovered that the shortest distance between two points really is a straight line and can be seen racing across the open paths between the beds.  And the occasional squirrel visitation is just a streak of gray-brown out of the corner of the eye.  All this frantic activity among the critters makes me worry this will be a harsh winter season.  Wooly worm predictions and all that.

Well, time to make a cup of tea and think about dinner.

A Quiet Morning

No snow yet, thank heavens.  False alarms from the weather prophets on TV.  Cold though.  The trumpet vine leaves on the trellis outside my window are hanging on, providing some cover against the wind for the sparrows and finches that stay here through the winter.  They burrow among the boughs, puffing themselves up to stay warm, waiting for the sun to come out from behind the eastern mountains.  Being in the foothills at the mouth of the canyon means gorgeous vistas, but also high winds in the morning and evening and a long wait for sunrise, especially during daylight savings time.  So I’m looking forward to the annual switch back to standard time.  Wish we didn’t have to mess with the time and our biologic clocks twice a year.  Seems downright silly to me.

My younger brother and his two grown sons are hunters.  Yearly they participate in both the bow and rifle hunts for deer and elk.  As is often the case, these past two years their hunt was successful, providing some venison for our freezer.  We have some chops and steak this year, which my life partner will marinate and prepare in some delicious form or other.  One of the late fall/early winter rituals we adhere to.  Others include putting up freezer salsa and corn; putting our extensive gardens to bed; making infused olive oil from the last of our herbs; changing to our heavier quilts and bringing our sweaters, sweatshirts and other winter clothes out from the back of the closet.  

Ah, the sun is finally lighting up the eastern horizon.  Not visible yet above the mountain, but suffusing the sky with a purple gold light, announcing its imminent rise.  Sunshine is precious now, lighting our south-facing windows and warming the house; raising our spirits.  It’ll get more dear as winter progresses.  Knowing the sun is on its way, the birds are rousing themselves, flitting in and out of the bower provided by the trellis, diving for seeds in the feeder and showing some life.   

In our dotage, my mate and I find what used to be small pleasures, like observing the birds, have taken on much larger roles in our lives.  We have the time now to spend leisurely hours sitting quietly and watching.  Watching leaves fall, kids push home from school against the wind, cats crouch hopefully below the bird feeders and clouds drift across the sky.  Such luxury we’ve afforded ourselves.