Halfway there, almost!

Come Tuesday, two days from now, we'll be halfway through meteorological Winter of 2018 - 2019. The local marshes, currently looking vacant and locked solid in ice, in six or eight weeks will be teeming with waterfowl. Today, for the second day in a row, we saw a bald eagle. This one flew over parts of the Carlos Avery marshes and landed in a tree overlooking the future homes of ducks and geese. In anticipation of those warmer days, we've added a small pot of daffodils to the middle of the dining room table. Although the West-facing windowsill in the living room has several orchids in bloom, they don't count because they're tropical instead of temperate. After living in Minnesota for decades, we're still trying to wrap our head around the idea that this state has an abundance of native orchids.

bald eagle in Winter tree

Photo by J. Harrington

On the living room's Southern windowsill, three amaryllis are belatedly growing. They're the same plants that bloomed near Christmas a year ago. They don't really count because they're native to South America and are associated with Christmas, not Springtime. While Narcissus aren't native to Minnesota, they've been grown here long enough that we consider them naturalized and they are among the earliest Spring-blooming flowers, which is what we are looking forward to, while trying to not, as our mother used to warn us, wish our life away.

last Christmas' amaryllis

Photo by J. Harrington

Between now and the end of meteorological and astronomical Winter, we expect to experience more Arctic blasts, possibly a blizzard, or two, or three, and come March and April we usually enter an extended mud season. No matter. As Shelley asks, as he concludes his Ode to the West Wind,

"... O Wind,
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?"

In enjoyment, if not celebration, of Winter, today the Better Half is making soup to accompany the artisan sourdough bread we baked yesterday. It's the rare July or August day when baking bread and making soup is timely. For now we're still trying to make the best of what's available to us. The more we practice that, the better we get at it and the happier we are.

Snow White

Katherine Riegel

I dreamt I woke in winter—
even the river
silent, its tongue caught mid-
sentence, like mine
when someone looks at me
too closely. It had been years

since I understood winter
so well I knew it to be inside
my own bone-cage, since I had
smelled that kind of white.

White of the frozen rabbit
my spaniel dragged in from the back
yard, white of horse-breath in the barn,
white of birds so desperate
for seed they pretend colorlessness—

except the cardinal, drop of heat,
too neat to be blood, too brave
to be symbol. I woke in winter

and almost-knew what I had always
almost-known, back in those dark
five o’clock walks home for dinner:

something about loneliness living
in the well of the throat, something
about fur and burrowing
and black eyes
waiting for the thaw.

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