Tis the season for ....

Yesterday the Better Half [BH] and I selected and cut down a youngish pine along the driveway for this year's home-grown Christmas tree. Getting it to balance in the tree stand was tricky because we hadn't noticed a crook in the trunk about half way up. The top half of the tree is slightly off center. We managed to fiddle with the tree stand a little and the tree stood tall all night. Today the lights went on. Other decorations are coming out and getting hung. Now I just need my mood to include more Christmassy spirits. Maybe if I keep away from the news until after the start of the New Year? Anyhow here's a picture of last year's home grown tree.

Home grown pine Christmas tree 2024

Photo by J. Harrington

Friday we helped the Daughter Person celebrate her birthday with lunch at a place in Stillwater called Brick and Bourbon. My cheeseburger was good and the BH raved about the meat loaf she ordered. Son-In-Law, Granddaughter and Granddaughter's "nanny" all had a good time and the place was festively decorated for the season. Snow showers during the day made the roads messy but driveable.

As this is being written, the temperature is in the single digits with a slight wind chill. That helps explain the diminished joy I'm feeling. Too damn cold. If you don't believe me, ask the dogs. They are not happy about their "walks."

Most of the Christmas shopping is done. There's still wrapping to be tended to and stockings on Christmas eve. Winter solstice happens in two weeks at 9:03 am. Days will start getting longer a week or ten days later. Then there's the two month lag before temperatures approach daytime averages above freezing. I suppose it would be curmudgeonly to ask for an early spring as a Christmas present.

More snow is in the forecast for the coming week. That makes Robert Frost's poem seem quite timely for this native New Englander transplanted to Minnesota decades ago.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost  1874 – 1963

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.

Winter didn't wait for the solstice

Today it's time to say good-bye to November, since tomorrow we welcome the arrival of December. Signs of Thanksgiving past arrive later today in the form of hot turkey sandwiches for tonight's dinner, while the Christmas season arrived earlier this week in the form of snowflake lights and wreathes adorning the house and reflecting in the snow from the two separate storms we had this last week. In fact, another snow shower has started since I began writing this post. Sometimes we get too much of a good thing.

Christmas cheer comes in many shapes and sizes

Photo by J. Harrington

Juncos are back at the feeder, probably for the rest of winter. There's a pair of cardinals that occasionally arrive at the feeder just as dark is setting in. Maybe, if we ever shake the chronic cloud cover, they'll show up during the day to bring bright Christmas color to the woods. Male cardinals agains a snowy background are about as cheery as winter woods get, it seems to me.

The Better Half [BH] and I have yet to select a home grown Christmas tree from the woods around the house. The aforementioned snow storms required enough snow blowing and shoveling to preempt woods wandering. I'll try a reconnoiter tomorrow and see if I can spot some candidates for the BH's approval. We've been cutting our own, on our own, for several years now and it's become a fun tradition.

Another holiday season tradition around here, blooming amaryllis, was renewed today when the BH put three separate, newly arrived, bulbs into three planters on the south-facing window sill. I''ll be curious to see how long it takes them to blossom. I should have paid more attention in years past.

This is supposed to be a season of peace to men of good will and / or peace, good will toward men. Holding aside the archaic, sexist phrasing, peace and good will seem sparse this year. Perhaps, if each of us tries, just a little bit harder, as Janis used to urge us, we can make this season a pleaasant memory for many more of both young and old than would otherwise be the case. It's worth a try, don't you think?

Since this is the last day of Native American Heritage Month, let's have Joy Harjo help us welcome winter and December.

 

Grace

Joy Harjo   1951 –

                                    For Darlene Wind and James Welch

I think of Wind and her wild ways the year we had nothing to lose and lost it anyway in the cursed country of the fox. We still talk about that winter, how the cold froze imaginary buffalo on the stuffed horizon of snowbanks. The haunting voices of the starved and mutilated broke fences, crashed our thermostat dreams, and we couldn't stand it one more time. So once again we lost a winter in stubborn memory, walked through cheap apartment walls, skated through fields of ghosts into a town that never wanted us, in the epic search for grace. 

Like Coyote, like Rabbit, we could not contain our terror and clowned our way through a season of false midnights. We had to swallow that town with laughter, so it would go down easy as honey. And one morning as the sun struggled to break ice, and our dreams had found us with coffee and pancakes in a truck stop along Highway 80, we found grace.

I could say grace was a woman with time on her hands, or a white buffalo escaped from memory. But in that dingy light it was a promise of balance. We once again understood the talk of animals, and spring was lean and hungry with the hope of children and corn. 

I would like to say, with grace, we picked ourselves up and walked into the spring thaw. We didn't; the next season was worse. You went home to Leech Lake to work with the tribe and I went south. And, Wind, I am still crazy. I know there is something larger than the memory of a dispossessed people. We have seen it. 

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.