Officially Sick of Winter Day 2014

Well, I put it off as long as I could. I tried to tell myself that there is still some enjoyment to to be had out of this winter, but yesterday I hit the wall. Enough already.

It's been a snowier winter than usual; that is to say, it's been the kind of winter we used to have 40 years ago. There was snow on the ground for Thanksgiving, and a brief, bitter cold snap at that time. We had a 14" snowfall less than a week before Christmas. Alas, the white Christmas was mostly ruined by 4 days of rain and temperatures in the 50s, which turned the sparkly fluff into gray slush and the air to dank, gray fog. In the northern part of the state the temperature did not rise, but the rain fell anyway, coating the northern third of the state with ice that flattened trees and power lines, and left many without electricity for more than a week, as the first real arctic air of the season rolled in.

Dave, our plowman, never got around to helping put the tire chains and the snowblower on the tractor. This has been a major source of frustration for me. Dave plows the driveway, but he did anyway. The snowblower was for clearing the edges the plow doesn't reach, and for keeping a path open to the cottage and the composting area, but these are out of reach now.

It's been cold, too, as the ominous and hyped "polar vortex" has dropped down over the US a few times, bringing bitter, bitter cold for days at a whack. Not as consistent a chill as the winter of 2003, but bad enough.

Oh January 6, I had knee surgery, but the night of the 5th was filled with another storm of ice and slush, so Ber and I rented a room in Brattleboro that night, so we would not have to travel through the storm in the morning. Ugh, it was a gray, dark, raw and miserable day, and it took just forever to get home after my surgery.

I can't really do much in the way of thrashing around as I recover from having my knee cleaned out, so I have not been able to enjoy the snow that has fallen. My longest forays through the snow have been slow shuffles to the far side of the other garden on consecutive Saturdays, but my knee is unhappy with hills and slopes and uncertain surfaces underfoot, so hikes into the woods are out of the question, as are skiing and snowshoeing. The walks were pleasant, on sunny days in the 20s, blue sky and blue shadows, and millions of snowfleas pinging around on the snow. But... I will not be walking to the woods today - not with the new snow.

It began to snow early on Thursday morning - a little mist of fine crystals sifting down just after sunrise. The sky was that even, flat gray that it gets when a storm means business, and by 9am the snow was falling fast.

Linda stopped in for breakfast on her way to work, and said that the blower on her Durango had stopped working, and her windshield was frozen over, and could she take the Outback? Of course, yes, and I would take her truck to the garage at the corner have it looked at. She anticipated closing the store at 1 or 2pm; almost all of our company's stores in the south and east were closed, as the storm was blasting the entire eastern quarter of the country, and so I knew I would not be going to work that day, so did not mind so much being left with the Durango.

After breakfast I nursed the Durango down to the garage, and sat in their waiting room, sketching the water cooler (a sketch which came out pretty well, considering the conditions). Then one of the mechanics said that the blower motor was shot, and a new one, and sundry other related parts, had to be brought up from Bellows Falls, and it would be late afternoon before the truck was ready. Not wanting to sit around a smelly garage for the entire day, I set out on foot for home, 1/4 mile away, not looking forward to the walk in the wind and snow, but willing to do it. Luckily, one of the mechanics was taking a car for a road test and gave me a lift.

I called Linda with the bad news of the $400+ repair needed. She was unhappy, but resigned. She said she was going to close at 1pm, and as Dad needed a refill of some medicine, I asked her to swing through Londonderry on the way home - 7 miles out of the way, but probably a better road than Rt. 30, which is broken and pitted with frost heaves and potholes for miles. I settled in to watch the snow, and feed the birds, and turned on the Winter Olympics for Dad. Warm sunshine and balmy breezes in Russia, 20 and snowing to beat the band here. Hmm.

Linda finally made it here at quarter to three. It seems that the wiper blades on the Outback kept icing up, and she had to stop a half-dozen times so clean them off. She said the road wasn't so bad, not for an experienced driver with a good car and good tires, but all the same she was glad to be here.

Her car was fixed, and the mechanics delivered it late in the afternoon, which saved us a trip out in the snow, but at dusk, Dave drove in, and our cars were blocking the driveway, so we had to fling on out coats and boots and hurry to move the cars so Dave could plow. Linda drove her truck as far up the hill as she could, and I managed to get the Outback into the garage without too much trouble.

After supper that night, Linda went out to head for her apartment up the road, and her car refused to start. The battery has been fading, and has needed three or four jumps this winter already, and now it needed another one. Linda slogged back to the house and got the keys for my car, and drove up to her house, only to find that she had left her house key here, and had to come back for it.

Yesterday morning we woke to more than 20" of fresh snow. Dave made another pass through the driveway early in the morning, but with Linda's truck still here, he could not plow up in front of the garage, and left a berm of firm snow across that part of the driveway. Linda called; she had not even been plowed out yet, and knew that she could not get over the big berm of snow that the road plows had heaped up at the end of her driveway. She said she would call for a jump start as soon as I could get the Durango shoveled out.

So after breakfast (cornbread and tea) I pulled on boots and gaiters and all my other winter gear, and Dad waxed the good snow shovel, and I went out. The wind was rising by now, and before I set to work, I took a few photos of the conditions.

Looking down the Driveway, 10am on Valentine's Day

In addition to the still fast-falling snow, the wind was tearing snow from the trees, and whipping it up from the ground, and sending it in stinging, pelting clouds, and on occasion causing complete white-outs, reducing visibility to perhaps the end of one's nose.

I shoveled out the area the plow did not reach near the front steps, and the short path to the oil filler pipe, and then set out across the driveway.



I first had to remove the berm that lay like a beam behind the Durango. It was about 12 feet long, 4 wide at the base and 24" deep. The snow was firm and heavy, but not hard-packed, and it took me about 20 minutes to shovel it away. This was complicated by the slope, because often I'd toss a chunk of the snow up onto the slope at the corner, only to have it tumble back down to my feet. AARRRggghgh....

Linda's truck, and my cottage

I got the berm removed, and then went in for a drink of water, and to leave my glasses, which kept fogging over. I considered leaving my hat in the house, too, as it kept falling over my eyes, but the wind was sharp, and I didn't quite dare go hatless.

Then I set to freeing the truck from the snow that had drifted deep along the driver's side. I shoveled away the snow behind the truck, then cleared the back window and shoveled that away. Then, along the side...shoveling that seemed more like tunneling.

I cleared as far as the front of the truck, and would have cleared all around but Linda had driven it as far as she could to make room for me to get into the garage the night before, and the truck's grille was mushed into a 4-1/2 foot deep wall of packed snow. So I got out her long snow scraper and cleared the snow from the vast expanse of the hood and windshield, then shoveled that snow away. At that point, the snow shifted under my feet and I fell - more like tipped over  into the snow behind me - and I just leaned there for a few minutes, weary and winded, my knee aching. I decided that I had done all I could.

While I was out shoveling, Linda had called to say that she'd been plowed out, and plowed in at the same time. Her plowman had cleared the driveway but had pushed up a 4' deep heap behind her (my) car, and she had to go shovel out. Then she had a call from our manager, telling her to not even try to get to the store. Most of the East was shut down anyway, and if she could get there and open, who the heck would be there to buy anything? So at least that worry was taken off the table.

I slogged back across the driveway, and then I fell for the second time, this time flat on my face. I felt my feet go, and just let myself fall, not wanting to land on my knee, now 6 weeks removed from surgery. Flump, face down, a soft impact in the snow. Snow in my gloves, in my face, in my collar, in my coat pockets. I got to my feet, and trudged to the house, and asked Dad for the whisk broom. I took off my coat and stood in the wind on the front step, sweeping as much snow as I could from my coat before going in.

I made a cup of tea and dropped into a chair with my feet, still in boots, stuck out in front of me, snow melting and dripping off in puddles. I was drenched from the outside with wind-driven snow, from the inside with sweat. My hair was well on its way to becoming one giant dreadlock. The heat of exertion drained away and I began to get chilled and shivery, and felt sticky and gross from being sweaty and damp. So I took a hot shower, and put on warm fuzzies, and began to feel more human. Dad was making a stew, so I pitched in, and cut up the meat and browned it.

Linda arrived shortly before the guy came to jump-start her truck, and once she was sure it was going to run, she started out for the garage to get the new battery she had ordered. But her truck isn't great in snow, even in 4WD, and it slipped sideways, and got well and truly stuck. So in she came and called for a tow, and sat to wait.

The tow truck finally arrived about two hours later (it must have been a busy day for them) and tugged the Durango out of the snowbank, and Linda went down to get her new battery - only to find that the garage had already closed for the day on account of the lousy weather.

She came in and threw her purse and keys and hat in a heap on the floor, and sat down in tears. Then she went up to her apartment and had a good cry, and hot tea and a comforting fluffy book, and felt better.

After she had left, I decided to put the Outback in the garage so Dave could come give us a proper plowing-out, and I thought I'd be out for maybe 5 minutes. But no...

I backed down the driveway and started up the hill to the garage, and got only part-way there. Back down, try again.... and again.... and agan...  Try a different angle, but now, now the car wanted to go sideways.

I almost got it in, the nose of the car only a couple of feet from the door, but could go no farther. I fetched a shovel, and sand, and shoveled and shoveled, and hid in the garage when a particularly strong blast of wind came through. Then I thought I would just straighten the angle out, put down some sand and then roll right in. But no...

I backed off, and could not get back to where I had been. The snow underfoot - under-tires - was chopped and mushed to the consistency of shaved ice, laid thick over the packed and frozen driveway. There was no traction to be had.

I backed down - almost got hung up crossways in the driveway - pushed through and got out into the road. I turned around at the ski shop and headed back for home, thinking "I'll get the car into the garage if it's the last thing I do!" I intended to zoom in and let momentum carry the car up the hill...but as I reached the driveway, a string of about 15 cars came creeping ever so slowly down the road, and I had to wait, steaming, for them to pass. Then I gunned it, and started around the corner... I mean, I tried to go around the corner. I steered - turned the wheel - but the car kept going straight, and I went WHUMP! into the snowbank at the corner.

I decided that despite my assertion, I was not going to get the car under cover. If I can't even steer - if the Outback shod with knobby snow tires can't get the least purchase on the ground - then there is no point in trying. So I backed down, then bulled through the snow to the front door and parked. I put away the sand and the shovel, scraped away the snow that had packed into the grille and fog lights, and went inside, defeated by the winter. I threw my keys and wet coat and hat and mittens on the floor and wiped the fog from my glasses and came very close to crying from sheer frustration.

I watched TV - Dad and I made biscuits - the stew was VERY good. This morning it is snowing again - another coastal storm bound to drop another 4-6" here, with a blizzard down on the Massachusetts coast. Not a good day to be out on the Cape.

I've had enough of it. I can't get out and enjoy it, can't get out into the woods. I want spring, and birds, and flowers, and to go out without boots and coat, and smell the warm earth. Enough winter already.

January 20

The sun was bright this morning, slipping through the bare branches, and splashing a glowing golden spot on my bedroom wall. The wind tossed the trees and sent dry leaves skittering across the snow. Chickadees and titmice flitted from branch to branch in the bent maple outside my window. The sky was a clear gold near the hilltop over which the sun was just climbing, then changed to a sweet, pale blue overhead, with small tatters of cloud, tinted buff and gold, racing eastward.

It was very warm for a January morning; 44 degrees, and water drizzling from the eaves. Up on the hill, the snow was all gone from a warm slope underneath the shelter of pine trees. It didn't look like January.

That was about two hours ago, before I am setting down these words. Now the wind has increased, and gusts cry and howl around the exposed beam-ends at the front of the house. A dark gray mass of clouds rolled in from the northwest, and now the sky is entirely overcast, the hills around the village fading in the snow that now pelts at the windows. The temperature is dropping, and now stands at 40 degrees. It's not going to get warmer for a while; by midweek, the thermometer will struggle to reach the low single digits for a high, and at night it will fall well below zero.

It's Inauguration Day; the President and VP take their oaths in quiet, private ceremonies, and tomorrow there will be the big wing-ding, with speeches and poems and anthems and hymns and the big overlong parade, and then banquets and balls far into the night. I'm just as glad to watch from here.

When I was in high school there was one January 20th that fell on a Wednesday - I remember, because it was Winter Activities Day, when the afternoons were given over to things like skiing, skating, and other things to give us a break from the monotony of school during the long bleak winter. For a couple of years, I signed up for cross-country skiing, and a dozen or so kids and teachers would go out to the Cutts farm on the Grafton Road and go skiing in the woods there.

This one particular January 20th was still and gray, the sky overcast but not snowing. It wasn't especially cold - somewhere in the low 20s, I suppose. I remember being on top of a big sidehill meadow, with the barn and sugarhouse down below, and the house behind some trees, with smoke curling from the chimney. It was quiet; I don't know where my fellow skiers were, but I remember being alone up there, looking down at the farm buildings, and at the dark stripe of the road, and the gray wooded mountains that rose up all around me. It was so peaceful - the cool, even light that seemed to cast no shadows, the dormant woods, the little column of sweet woodsmoke that rose from the chimney, suggesting warmth and food.

Sometimes, when I have too much going on in my head, I will think of that peaceful moment, when I was alone but far from lonely, in the quiet of the serene, snowy land.

It's snowing quite hard now, and the wind drives the snow horizontally through the air. The temperature has dropped another 2 degrees since I started writing this.

I have to go get ready for work. I hope to retain the peaceful memory of that long-ago January 20th with me as I move through the clamor of my day.

Leaf Peeking

Ber was visiting for the weekend, and as the weather turned out to be not nearly as gloomy as forecast, we decided to go on a leaf-peeking trek. The plan was to go to a certain cemetery in Marlboro and get a fresh rubbing from a stone there, bearing a carving of a splendid soul-effigy. I have a rubbing of it that I made more than 20 years ago; it has hung on the kitchen wall for nearly as long. It is looking tired, though, and the newsprint it is on has become brittle and yellowed, and tattered on the edges.

We didn't want to go straight down Rt. 30 to Brattleboro, and up Rt 9, because those are heavily-traveled roads, and on Columbus Day weekend, are packed with tourists. We prefer back roads, anyway, so looked at a map to plan our route. We thought we would go to Wardsboro, then through South Wardsboro to Newfane, then through Williamsville, South Newfane, and down the Auger Hole Road to Marlboro.

The plan went well at first. We went to Jamaica, then over South Hill, always a beautiful drive, to Wardsboro, where they are preparing for the world-famous Gilfeather Turnip Festival.

There we stopped at a roadside bake sale, held to benefit the village school, and bought some goodies, then out toward South Wardsboro.

The road climbs thorough a steep, narrow gulf, and it was apparent that Tropical Storm Irene had wrought significant havoc here. The road was newly paved - probably because most of it had been destroyed. It was shocking to see the banks that had fallen, stripping away rocks and trees, leaving raw gashes in the land.

We emerged from the wounded gulf into the tiny crossroads village of South Wardsboro. The austere old church looks over its village of a few houses sprinkled along a narrow dirt road, and a graveyard that overlooks an old mill pond. We were going to look at the graveyard, but could not find an access road; it seemed to be blocked off by private homes, which seemed very odd. We continued up the road we had started on, up a hill to the west out of the village, when we spotted a small, cascading waterfall in a gully beside the road. 

We climbed down the bank of new rip-rap stones and looked at the broken foundation of a long-gone building - presumably a mill. The water leaped down over the leaf-strewn ledges, and I could only wonder how it had roared the day Irene dropped 10" of rain.

After climbing back up the bank, Ber said, "well, so you want to go back? Or keep going?" We looked up the road, where the wind was shaking a shower of golden leaves from the trees, and we decided to follow this new, unplanned route, and see what was around the corner.

The road was narrow, and neither of us had ever been this way before, which made it all the better. We knew it wasn't getting us any closer to Marlboro, but we had all day, so we didn't care. we determined that the road did lead us toward Dover, and we wanted to avoid that place, sure to be crawling with tourists, but then I saw that this road would eventually lead us to a place labeled "Podunk."

"Podunk?" Ber asked. "You're kidding. Really? Podunk? I wanna go to Podunk!" And so we decided to follow the road to its end.

The road meandered uphill, past some glorious butterscotch-gold beech trees...


 

...until the woods opened up on the right, and revealed a broad marsh, full of cattails and winterberry.

Winterberry

 Here we stopped for a while and enjoyed the quiet, and watched clouds creeping in from the west. It was serene.




The road continued west through the woods, where stone walls between the trees testified to the farming past of this place. There was a time, a hundred years ago, when there was hardly a tree here - hard to believe now.

Finally the road crested a hill, and we found an old, severe-looking farmhouse overlooking broad, steep meadows. Ancient sugar maples lined the road here, their crowns clouds of gold. 

Nearing the top

Austere, and a little scary-looking. Probably haunted.

We paused here for a few minutes, soaking up the beauty of the place. It was SO quiet! There was wind, and the whistle of a chickadee, but no other sound. It must be so beautiful in the summertime, with the fields full of bobolinks, and the trees full of songbirds.


 The road turned downhill now, over the crest, away from Wardsboro and toward Dover. We went slowly, pausing to revel in the scents and sights around us - the narrow road-less-traveled, and the places where the view opened up around us.

My kind of road

Meadows kept open

The road kept on downhill, to a gathering of houses near a crossroads; I guess you could call it a village, though there was no sign of buildings that anchor villages - no meeting house or school. The road we were on - it turned out to have been Potter Road - met three others, and we turned onto Lower Podunk Road. It went uphill out of the hollow and over a low ridge, and here the influence of the Mount Snow ski area became more evident. There were more houses here, and obviously richer houses, and before long we emerged onto Route 100, a mile or so south of West Wardsboro. Since we really didn't want to go into Dover (that section of Rt 100 is desolate, and the area around the ski resort built-up, commercialized and very unattractive), we went back through West Wardsboro, the terminus of the Kelly Stand Rd, and along the flood-ripped road back to Wardsboro. Once again past the bake sale, over the bridge and around the corner onto the road to South Wardsboro. Once again up the gully road, to the village with the austere little church, and this time we took a left.

This road - Newfane Road - is more heavily traveled, and is wider and not as mysterious as Potter Rd - but is still beautiful. We stopped to look at a big gray wasp nest on the middle of a beaver pond, and to take a photo of a wonderful little stone hut in the middle of a field.

A couple of miles further on, Ber spotted an old graveyard, and pulled over. We hopped out, carrying cameras and a notebook, expecting interesting carvings and epitaphs, but not expecting the fellow who came up with the beginnings of modern physics!

Sir Isaac Newton, and his wife Patty

Of course, it isn't THE Sir Isaac Newton, but a man who happened to be names "Sir Isaac", presumably by parents who admired the scientific pioneer.

It's a quiet little cemetery, and it must be quite pretty in the spring and summer. The original Sir Isaac Newton could rest as easily here as he does in England.

A quiet place to sleep

There were a few interesting stones - lots of willow-and-urn designs, very trendy in the early 19th century, and several of the usual, "as you are now so once was I" epitaphs. One unusual carving was this one, of two clasped hands. I have seen this very few times in all my perusal of headstone art. The words over the carving: "Fare well."

Edwin A. Mellen, d. 8/31/1868, ae. 37 years

After leaving this little graveyard, the road swooped downhill towards Newfane. As we neared that village, we came upon a small field roped off for parking, and cars lining both sides of the road, and lots of people walking. We wondered that was going on, then realized it was the Newfane Heritage festivals, a major major tourist trap. We turned around and hightailed it out of there, back up the hill. After consulting the map, we found what looked like a good route to bypass the village, and turned onto Grout Road, which led off to the south. This road soon narrowed to one lane, and meandered off into the woods. It passed a lovely small lake - Kenney Pond, with lots of No Trespassing/Fishing/Boating/Swimming signs tacked to trees. At the end of the pond the road split, and we continued down one called Hobby House road, which had us gasping at the steep dropoff into a deep gulch on the east. Over a hill, around a switchback and to a corner with baker Brook Road. I knew this road would lead into South Newfane, and so we started down it, but found that the road was closed. Though it would have been a great walk on a warmer day, we turned back and once again consulted the map. The side road at the end of Kenney Pond seemed to lead up over Newfane Hill, and from there we could easily reach Williamsville and, eventually, Marlboro.

The road over the back of Newfane Hill was glorious. Old sugar maples lined the road, and fallen leaves carpeted the road, and the air itself seemed to glow with golden light. Ber and I both felt our hearts fill with the love we have for the beauty of this place.

At the top of Newfane Hill, a couple of houses sit perched atop meadows with amazing views to the south and east. We stopped and looked for a few minutes, talking about how great it would be to live up here - until we decided that the wind must scream over this hilltop. We moved on.

A mile or so down the hill we came upon another graveyard. We stopped, of course, and had to take a look.

Newfane Hill Cemetery

A little gabled notice-board inside the stone wall held a map of the graveyard, telling who was buried there, and where. We perused the list of names, then started down through the sloping rows of stones.

There was a stone with an interesting stylized willow-and-urn pattern, similar to one we'd seen in the other graveyard. The willow looks kind of Art Nouveau.

The inscription on the stone is sad and sobering, but not out of the ordinary. It reads: "Mrs. Polly Orsgood - died Aug.30, 1802 In the 26th year of her age. At the left hand her infant child."

Rest easily, Mrs. Polly and child.

Ber found a big old pine tree to hug...

...and if there was any question that we were in a graveyard, we found a marker that removed all doubt: 

I never before saw a stone that said "The Grave Of..."

This super-stylized willow-and-urn on this one is interesting. Ber thought it looked like the pudding in Alice in Wonderland:

We decided that, since it was after 3pm, and it was getting windy, and cold, and spitting rain, we'd  postpone our trip to Marlboro until a warmer day, and go home to hot tea, and a fire in the woodstove.

Planting Potatoes

The Second of Two Potato Patches

The potatoes are in the ground - 50 pounds of Kennebec seeds, which turned into almost 300 hills of potatoes.

We planted the first batch of potatoes on June 10, in the garden above the house. Dad tilled the patch on the 9th, breaking soil out of the grip of witchgrass and weeds. The tiller bounced and clanked mightily over some buried boulders that are part of the mountain, and Dad thought some of the tiller tines must have been damaged, but that was not the case - not until he tilled the other garden, and hit the anchored boulders over there. Such are the dangers of gardening in glacial till.

Lucy and Ber were here that weekend, and so there were many hands making light work of the laborious task. Well... it still wasn't light work... but it did go faster.

The Humphrey Hoe

The tools we needed were few: a long length of baling twine tied between two stakes, used for marking the rows; a 3-pound stone hammer, for driving in the stakes; the Humphrey hoe; the potato hook; a bucket for the compost and another for the seed potatoes.

Dad cut the seed, which Ber had brought. He sat on a pillow, on an upturned bucket in the barn, cutting the seed and spreading them out to dry on a sheet of plastic.

We stretched the line the length of the garden, and Lucy grabbed the Humphrey hoe and asked, "How far apart do the holes go?" "About a stride," I said. "Dig one, step in it, dig another as far apart as you step." "Gotcha." She scraped a shallow hole about a foot across, stepped in it, dug another, and went on down the row.

We usually use a 5-10-10 rock phosphate to fertilize the potatoes, tossing a small handful into each hole. Since we could not find any phosphate this year (well, we did, but did not want to take the time to drive to Chester), we used well-composted horse manure, the consistency of crumbly soil. After Lucy had dug a complete row, Ber came along behind with a bucket of the composted manure and tossed a double handful in each hole.

I started setting the seed - placing a piece cut-side-down in each hole, but Lucy, having dug a row and a half in a hurry, was flagging, and I offered to switch places with her. She then happily set the seed, singing to it as she did. "Grow, little potatoes, grow..."

A seed potato nestled in, ready to be covered

Once two rows were seeded, I started covering them - raking a couple of inches of soil over the top of each seed and giving each hill a little pat with the hoe. When that was done, we started digging more holes, first marking the rows, pounding the oak marking stakes in with the hammer. Some patches of the garden had not been tilled deep, and Ber broke up this harder soil with the potato hook before the holes were dug.

We had neared the end of our eighth row when we heard a tapping sound from up on the hill. We thought Dad might be making noise to drive off a squirrel or something, but the sound continued, and Ber went up to investigate. We heard her make some exclamation, and then laugh, and a moment later she appeared at the top of the garden and called for us to come help, as Dad had tipped over!

The bucket on which Dad had seated himself had been slowly hitching backward as he moved, and unbeknownst to him, was slowly collapsing as well. It eventually folded up under him, tipping him over backwards - not a fall, but a subsidence. Poor Dad laid there, reclined on the pillow, for about ten minutes before Ber went to check on him. He was quite comfortable, and said he almost fell asleep, lying there and looking out at the trees.

It took all three of us to get Dad onto his feet; we had to help him roll over and get to his knees, then haul him upright and brush the dirt off from him. he was unhurt, but put out at being unable to get up by himself. He decided he'd had enough for the day, and went inside. When he reached the house, he told Mom, "I got cast!" - referring to a horse that falls in such a way that it can't get up.

Lucy took the folded-up bucket and threw it into the dumpster (we have one here so we can clean out the cellar), and it went all to pieces, and she had to gather up the bits that scattered around.

So... we got 8 rows planted, averaging about 20 hills per row. Not bad for a couple hours' work. Ber and Lucy had to go back to their respective homes that day, so we had to stop, even though there were a lot of potatoes still to plant.

In subsequent days, Dad took the tractor over to the other garden and tilled and re-tilled the upper piece, a fairly flat piece of ground hedged in by scrubby woods. It was while tilling this piece that he ran over some boulders and bent some of the tines on his tiller. Yesterday, he hauled the equiplent over - hoes, buckets, potatoes, composted manure, and a bag with a couple of pounds of phosphate, which had turned up in the greenhouse. He went over while I wasn't looking and dug a row of holes and dropped in the phosphate, before having to return for a drink of water. While he was resting, I took off for the field and worked steadily. I got 4 rows planted, and the holes dug for the last 53 hills when Dad returned.

It was dusty work, but the air was sweet and mild. Though the sun shone from high in a midsummer sky, there was a cooling breeze, and I had a bottle of cold water in the shade. Birds sang all around - warblers, sparrows, thrushes, and, high up on the mountain, the startling screams of a flock of young ravens. I could smell the warm soil, and the green grass and leaves, and the sweet resinous scent of warm pines.

When Dad arrived, he cut some row markers while I scooped manure into the holes, then started setting the last 2 rows of seeds. He couldn't finish that task, as it was very hard on his back, so he gave me the bucket of seeds and took the hoe, and started covering the seeds.

Dad, the Potato Shaman, in his element

We planted a total of 112 hills. All they need is time, and some water; the soil was pretty dry, after this extended spell of sweet sunny weather. We expect some thundershowers later this week and perhaps some rain next week. That will be good.

The potatoes in the first patch are beginning to crack the ground, and with the hot weather due this week, some will be poking tiny, dark-green curled leaves into the air.

I remember when we got 15 bushels (from over 100lb of seed). I remember the year we had some potatoes that tipped the scales at over 2-1/2 pounds EACH. Not a lot, but some.  I don't anticipate either thing to happen this year. But we will get some potatoes -  a few bushels. They will come rolling out of the cold soil in October, when the air smells of frosted grass and fallen leaves, and the sunlight will come clear and brittle through the leafless trees.

When we dig them, and when we make meals of them throughout the winter, we will remember the bright sunny days when we planted them, and the memory will drive the cold and dark away.

The Stone Place

A couple of summers ago, Ber and I decided to go for a ride - just jump in the car and go somewhere, without planning. We drove over through Livermore Mills (a village that is barely there anymore) to Peru, and bought a big Italian sandwich at a deli, and ate it while sitting in a cellarhole on the manicured Peru common.

Cellarhole on the Common. Not Tavern on the Green, but a lovely spot for a picnic. 

After our picnic, we drove around on the dirt roads that lace through the woods, and decided to go up to The Stone Place. It is the site of a former farm, now completely wooded over, in the Green Mountain National Forest.

Griffith Brook, running very low.

The road is quite ordinary for the first quarter-mile, a narrow but well-maintained gravel road leading to a house. Beyond the house, however, the road becomes much more interesting. It is one lane, two tire-tracks with a high row of grass and weeds growing between them, and trees and ferns pressing close on either side. For all of its primitive nature, however, it is kept open and passable, to a point, and we were able to drive perhaps another mile into the woods. We parked in a broad clearing and walked the rest of the way, crossing a plank bridge over Griffith Brook, which, in the middle of that dry summer, was reduced to a froggy-smelling trickle. 

The road turns uphill, away from the brook, and toward a stand of young trees growing in a large area that was clear-cut about twenty years ago. It is here that we found the graveyard. Of course we knew it was there, but it is always a little strange to come across a graveyard so far away from habitation.

The Stone Family Cemetery

It is a small plot; only five gravestones stand inside a tiny, fenced area. Five members of the Stone family rest there, surrounded by birches and spruces and ash trees. The Forest Service maintains the plot, clearing it once a year and removing any fallen trees. There is no gate in the spiky iron fence, so unless one wants to risk being impaled, one has to be content with squinting at the inscriptions from outside the enclosure.

We decided to keep going up the hill, following the old road up the side of the mountain. We scuffed through sedgy grass, and stopped to admire the beautiful, rare bottle gentian that grew there. We found a hop-vine climbing a spindly cherry tree, and explored the remains of an old orchard, where gnarled, twisted apple trees dropped their fruit for the benefit of the wildlife. The ground beneath the treees had been cleared; we assume it is the work of the Forest Service, creating good browsing places for the deer.

"Want to keep going?" Ber asked after we had left the orchard, and stood in the road, looking uphill and down.

"Hmm..." I looked up the hill, along the path we had not let trod, and down the hill, the way we had come. My knee ached, and I knew the ball game would start soon. "Let's go up a little farther."

We climbed the hill, and the path soon went under the trees, in a place that had not been cut-over in many decades. The woods were dense here, still and quiet and sweet.

The Doorstep

Looking to the east side of the path, we saw the outlines of some stone walls, and went to investigate. We found that the stones formed a rectangle, and soon realized that we had found the remains of the house - the house the Stone family had built. We stood on the broad, flat doorstep that must have led to the main entrance, and I wondered, how many times dis someone gratefully cross that threshhold, going in after a hard day's work, into the cool house, or out of the cold, to get warm near the fire?

Bricks from the Chimney

We found not only the house, but the foundations of the barn - a much larger square, and the stone walls that formed a kind of funnel leading from the road to the barn. This was where they drove the sheep and cattle into the barn from the pastures, or out to the road, to be carted off to market.

We found bricks, which some previous explorer had pulled from the debris and left piled on a wall. They were weathered, and green with moss, but we could not help thinking of the chimney that must have stood there, long ago.

In poking around the corner of the house foundation, I found a bit of metal protruding from under a rock, and pulled it out. It was a horseshoe, heavily encased in rust. Ber and I passed it back and forth, and then I tucked it back into its hidey-hole, knowing that if I left it in sight, someone would take it away, and somehow, we didn't think it ought to leave this place.

The Cistern, and the Ash Tree that Split It

Ber found a cistern - one of the only pieces of concrete we found there. It was a large square vessel, split in two by the growing of a huge ash tree. The bole of the tree was squared off from having grown in the cistern, and then it had outgrown its dimensions, and split the concrete apart.

"The well can't be far from here," Ber said. "They wouldn't have piped water very far." Within minutes she had found the well, too. It was very near the house foundation, almost built into the cellar wall. It was hooded over with a couple of slabs of rock, to keep unwary people and animals from falling in, but there was enough of a gap to peer in, and see the circular stone wall of the well descending into the earth.

The Well

"Think there's any water in it?" I asked.

Ber peered in, as much as she could. "I can't see any," she said, "But it's been such a dry year..."

Inside the Well

I couldn't see any better than she could, so opened the flash on my camera and stuck my hand in the hole, and snapped a few pictures. Sure enough, beyond the litter of leaves and spiderwebs, there was the glint of water. Whoever had sited that well had chosen a good place.

It was beautiful there - serene and fragrant with the scents of ferns and earth. The woods were almost silent, but for the quiet trickle of a vireo's song. We stood and looked at the traces of the buildings that were just visible - stone walls, slowly disappearing beneath leaf-mold, delineating the footprints of the house and barn, and the outlines of the paddocks and meadows. We looked at the apple trees - no doubt the descendants of the Stones' original trees - and knew that if we looked, we could probably find roses and lilac bushes, and wondered if there were still daffodils that bloomed early in the spring.

"They did so much work," I said. "Think of all the work it took to clear the land by hand, and root out the stumps, and build the walls, and the buildings... and now it's all gone."

Ber climbing out of the barn cellarhole; house foundation to the right

 

It must have been backbreaking, endless work. Cutting the trees, digging and lining the cellarholes and the well, hauling god-only-knows how many tons of rocks to make the walls and foundations, hauling the lumber and bricks to build with. I wondered what the house had looked like - whether it had plaster walls, and if there had been any decoration. There must have been; even the poorest farmers had some kind of color in their homes - stencils on the walls, a glass vase, patterned china dishes, inexpensive framed lithographs, fuzzy gray photos of family members, colorful quilts on the beds. What kind of home had they made here, miles from the village, on a southeast-facing mountainside? Where are their descendants now? Are there any stories in the family of the long-vanished farm, any photos of it, tintypes stashed away in a trunk someplace?

Ber looked off toward the valley. "They must have had a fantastic view."

Indeed - with the spread of the valley below, and the rumpled mountains crowned in the distance by the rounded bulk of Stratton Mt. The view was, of course, blocked now by the dense growth of trees. "I wonder if they had time to look at it," I said.

The farm was abandoned sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. Bricks, window glass and roof slates were probably salvaged or scavenged; meadows went rank with goldenrod, then hardhack, scrubby trees and then encroaching forest. The orchards no longer provided apples for cider and vinegar, but food for deer and bears. The hop vines went untrained and unpruned; their descendants still tangle the trees beside the road. Dad says he remembers going up there when he was a little kid in the 1920s and '30s, and seeing the derelict remains of the house slowly decaying into the ground, before the Forest Service and the CCCs went in and knocked it down and took away the debris.

We left it, left the cellarholes and stone walls and broken cistern to the silence of the woods, where the July evening sunlight was angling through the trees. We walked out past the apple trees, dropping fat yellow apples on the ground, past the hop-vines, past the cemetery where no one places flowers, but where the blue bottle gentian grows wild. Down the long hill, over the bouncy plank bridge, out on the narrow ribbon of road toward the sounds and sights of people.

2012 Official Where The Heck has Winter Been Day

(Written on March 1, 2012. Forgotten for more than 3 months, but here it is.)

Today is the first day of March. Since it is a Leap Year, winter is one day longer than usual, and yet it has taken until today to get a decent snowstorm. Normally I'd be writing my Officially Sick of Winter entry... but we have not had any winter to speak of, so how can I be sick of it?

There was a storm on the last weekend of October, but it dropped at most 6" on ground not yet frozen, and it all melted away before too many days had passed. There was snow on the ground for Thanksgiving, but by early December, that too was gone. There was no white Christmas here, and the only precipitation we saw for most of January was frequent hard rain that ate the frost out of the ground, and made the riverbanks, grievously wounded by last summer's floods, to melt away and crumble into the river, turning the water an awful murky dun color, like coffee with too much cream in it. What ice did form in the rivers was made of muddy water, and each rainfall would heave jumbled stacks of mud-ice blocks onto the riverbanks.

The hardest snowfall in January was a stationary squall that sat on the mountains between here and Manchester on the night of January 13th. My windshield wipers suddenly refused to function, so I rode with Linda, and we came up to Rawsonville. It snowed as hard that evening as I have ever seen it snow; we literally could not see ten feet in front of the truck, and sometimes could not see past the frantic wipers. It took an hour to travel the 15 miles from there to here, and by the time we reached home, Linda was a trembling wreck. Within an hour of our arrival, the snow had stopped and the clouds dissolved, leaving a star-dusted sky behind, as if to mock us and say, "see, you should have stayed put for another hour, and you'd have been all right."

Stupid weather.

February is often the coldest month, when the snow is deepest, and the deep frost buckles roads into wrinkled, broken devices of torment, when rivers are usually invisible under their blankets of snow-covered ice. This year, February was mild. Temperatures in the mid-40s were common, and nudged 50 degrees in warm valleys late in the month. In most locations beneath, say, 2000 feet in elevation, the ground was bare. Lawns started to have the soggy green look of early spring. Snowdrops emerged and budded.

On Leap Day, however, the snow began to fall. It came down pretty steadily all afternoon, and had accumulated about 4" by nightfall. Of course, I had to make an emergency trip to work, and drove home on a sloppy road, but it wasn't a bad drive. I've driven in worse.

Today it has snowed all day, sometimes hard, sometimes not snowing much at all. The radar picture shows another burst of snow coming from the west; the storm should be pretty well played out by nightfall, and will have left us with about 12".

The old hitching post in the front yard

This morning I went for a short walk up into the woods, while it was still snowing quite hard. Once I got up among the trees, there was almost perfect silence around me, save for the whisper of snow falling through the dry beech leaves, and the distant, muted sounds of traffic on the road - the scrape and rumble of a plow, the purr of a car passing, its tires silenced by the snow in the road. There were no birds in the woods; all the little feathered freeloaders were congregated around the feeders in the back yard, but even there they were not making much sound. It was mostly the soft buzz of their wings, the little kissing sounds the juncos make, and the occasional cussing of blue jays.

The woods were so peaceful. The columns of trees reached high overhead, darkening the already dim daylight, and holding little clumps of snow on bumps in their bark. There were no tracks, save the little stitched trail where a mouse had emerged from the snow and bounded across the path. The air was cold, but not bitter, and smelled fresh and clean - the exact but indefinable scent of snow.

I returned to the house when the wind came up a little, and thick white plumes of snow began to fall from the trees. I didn't want to get buried, so came back home, and changed into a more waterproof jacket, and went to start the tractor.

It wouldn't start, of course.

I shoveled out the area in front of the garage, and then returned to the house to tell Dad I couldn't get the thing to go. So Dad pulled on his boots - a laborious task, with his bad knees, hips and back - and got his coat and hat, and walking sticks, and we went over to the tractor, and he tried to start it, and it wouldn't go for him, either. We ran an extension cord out and plugged in the tractor's block heater, and we slogged back to the house, where Dad pored over the tractor manual, and then called Dave, the indispensable, and we waited.

After a little while Dad said he had an idea, and wanted to go back out, so he donned his warm things and scuffed back over to the garage. I had to get some supper going, and so started a pot of soup, planning to go over as soon as it was on the stove to simmer, but in the meantime, Dave pulled in and plowed a lot of the driveway, and helped Dad get the tractor started, so Dad cleared the rest of the yard, and I got the soup going.

It's just about 4pm now, and snowing quite hard again, though I doubt it will fill up the driveway.  The soup is bubbling happily on the stove. Mom is napping on the sofa; Dad has changed to warm dry clothes, and it's about time I took my boots off, because I'm not going out in the snow again, I don't think. Though it may be my last chance this winter to go out into the snow, I will pour a cup of Darjeeling and let the storm finish up without my interference.

The Art Book

My brother asked me recently to spend a little while teaching his older daughter how to paint. She is very interested in art, and got a treasure-trove of art supplies for her birthday - one of those studio-in-a-box sets, with 3 kinds of paint and 2 kinds of pastels and 3 kinds of pencils, and brushes, palettes, an easel, and so on. Since there is no real arts education on school anymore, and I have acquired a few skills over the years, I was recruited to be a teacher for a day.

To prepare for the lesson, I looked for books to give ideas in teaching a few art basics to kids. What I found was disappointing and disheartening. It seems that a good 99% of kids' art-instruction books consist of "Draw Manga" and "Draw Cartoons" and "Draw Fairies and Dragons". The other 1%... well, I never found the other 1%. I got a used copy of First Steps: Drawing and Sketching, by Cathy Johnson, published by North Light Books. It is an excellent book, but assumes a level of skill, even for a beginner, that is way over a 9-year-old's head.

What to do? I want to get Caitlin to both exercise her imagination and learn observational skills, and learn how to use her supplies to the best advantage - that being giving her inspiration, learning and fun. Where is the book that tells how to do this? I don't think the best way to learn how to draw is by copying cartoon characters out of a book.

Children are smarter than they are given credit for. Why must their first real instruction in fine arts be to copy simple line drawings? Older beginning art students are given lessons in fundamentals such as observation and sketching. Why shouldn't children be given the same initiation into art?

One thing an artist must have is a long attention span and a lot of self-discipline, and as these things are not exactly any child's strong point, these have to be learned and practiced along with art techniques. I want to come up with something that is neither childish nor complicated - something that will inspire her, and make her want to spend the time an energy learning, but nothing daunting that will lead to discouragement and disenchantment with art. Like many children, Caitlin has a full schedule - school, lessons, various "camps", play-dates and sleepovers galore. She has little time to devote to something as solitary and disciplined as art.

So, I am writing an art instruction "book" for Caitlin. I start off with "What Is Art?", and set out some basic rules, including "be patient" and "have fun". I tell about different media, and materials, and tools, and how to care for equipment such as brushes. I briefly describe some basic color theory, and want to write a page or two on simple perspective.

I will next tell about how to observe. Every kid wants to draw an apple as a red circle with a stem on top, every tree as a green cloud full of red apples on a straight brown trunk, every bird as a "M" in the sky. Clouds - white cotton balls. Water - always blue. While she was here, I gave Caitlin an apple to draw, and she promptly drew a circle with a stem - despite the actual apple not looking like that. So, I want to tell her that learning to observe - learning to really see - is the most important thing. Does the apple have a stem, or not? Is it round, or knobby? Does it have bruises or scars? I want to instruct her to spend a fair bit of time looking at what she wants to draw before she sets pencil to paper, and then learn how to draw what she sees.

I want to then tell about, describe and demonstrate some simple techniques for using basic media - drawing with pencil, making a watercolor painting, making a drawing with pastels, oil pastels, colored pencils, etc. For subjects I will use common, easy-to-draw things like a coffee mug, a banana, a nectarine. I'll make the drawings and paintings, photographing each step as I describe it so she will be able to see how I depict shadows, layer colors, etc.

Later on, when she has a better grip on basic drawing and watercolor painting, I will help her explore acrylic painting, and then oil painting. I want to do these things in steps not only out of concern for her - I don't want her to be overloaded - but out of concern for her parent's carpeting. A palette full of paint, when dropped, will fall wet-side-down, of course, and I am envisioning a lovely, permanent, abstract pattern of many colors of acrylic paints on their pale-beige carpet. Yikes!

The book won't be too much of a reach for a kid, I don't think. I use simple language, but don't talk down to her and patronize her; kids know when they're being patronized, and appreciate respect, not just effusive praise. When an adult hunkers down and says, "Oh my, what a GOOD PAINTING! Aren't you WONDERFUL!", a child looks askance (I know I did, when I was a kid). A quieter, more sincere praise is more appreciated.

Once she has a grip on draftsmanship, then she can take off on flights of fancy. No matter what kind of art she grows into, she will have a grounding in some essential skills. As she grows up, and her ideas and thoughts expand and mature with experience, she will have basics - drafting, color theory, perspective, and knowing how each type of media behaves. Even if she doesn't choose to go into art, she will have this creative outlet as a pastime, a way to relax, express herself. That's all I want for her - to know about and appreciate the process of creating artwork, so she will have a broader understanding of this essential part of human nature.