Time to chill out?

The good news is it's sunny and the skies are blue. The bad news is the temperature is about -1℉ and the wind chill is about -21℉. The other good news is that a return to seasonable temperatures (~29℉) in a week or so (we hope) will feel much better than if we'd never experienced this cold spell. It's sort of like the fellow who beat his head on a brick wall because it felt so good when he stopped.

flocking to feeders in winter weather

Photo by J. Harrington

We understand birds piling into the feeders just before or during a snow storm and during the ongoing cold spell. We've read that a chickadee needs to eat its weight in sunflower seeds every 24 hours to maintain itself in the winter. What we can't reconcile is how both dogs are now, and have been for several weeks, shedding as if we were in mid-May, getting ready for summer. No matter home many times each of them gets combed out, there are more clumps and clusters of dog hairs all over the kitchen floor the next day. "Nature" can be very confused, or confusing, some days.

Today brings us 10 hours of daylight, for the first time since early last November. Soon we'll be looking forward to picking up our Spring Shares from this year's Community Supported Agriculture membership at Women's Environmental Institute Amadore Farm, but for now, with the really cold temperatures and windchills expected for the next week or ten days, we're going to slow down, settle in, drink coffee, read, and organize the tax info. This approach may also help limit exposure to COVID-19 infections, we hope, since we've yet to pick a winner in Minnesota's vaccine lottery.

Woods in Winter

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - 1807-1882

When winter winds are piercing chill,
  And through the hawthorn blows the gale,
With solemn feet I tread the hill,
  That overbrows the lonely vale. 

O'er the bare upland, and away
  Through the long reach of desert woods,
The embracing sunbeams chastely play,
  And gladden these deep solitudes. 

Where, twisted round the barren oak,
  The summer vine in beauty clung,
And summer winds the stillness broke,
  The crystal icicle is hung. 

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs
  Pour out the river's gradual tide,
Shrilly the skater's iron rings,
  And voices fill the woodland side. 

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,
  When birds sang out their mellow lay,
And winds were soft, and woods were green,
  And the song ceased not with the day! 

But still wild music is abroad,
  Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;
And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,
  Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.
 
Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear
  Has grown familiar with your song;
I hear it in the opening year,
  I listen, and it cheers me long.

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