January’s half gone!

Yesterday we left some of you in suspense about our bread in the oven. The best way to describe the outcome, after the Better Half [BH] and I taste tested the results, is to say we’ve found a different rye bread recipe that looks promising. That’s probably what I’ll try next.

Baking with rye flour is very different than with wheat. I hadn’t realized how much rye dough lacks oven spring. I think I over misted the dough and the crust turned out excessively crusty. So the end result was overly dense and moist with too firm a crust and a taste I found more okay than did the BH. My most significant “learning experience" in more than a decade of baking artisan bread reminds me of the ancient saying “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” That leaves me with six downs and seven ups to go.

Although we’ve passed the below zero high temperatures, single digit highs are barely better. When gassing the Jeep today, I sat in the vehicle instead of cleaning the windshield. We’ll tackle the cleaning chores next week when the temperatures are forecast to climb above freezing and we may get some rain mixed with snow. Does it seem to you it’s almost like someone has broken the climate?

winter evening: red bird

Photo by J. Harrington

Yesterday evening, after sunset, I got a glimpse of two cardinals perching in the trees behind the house. Since we’ve seen nary a sign of such birds for weeks, I was heartened by the sighting. It may be one of the  few good things to come out of our current cold spell.

Red Bird

By Mary Oliver

Red bird came all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else could.

Of course I love the sparrows,

Those dun-colored darlings,

So hungry and so many.

I am a God-fearing feeder of birds,

I know he has many children,

Not all of them bold in spirit.

Still, for whatever reason-

Perhaps because the winter is so long

And the sky so black-blue,

Or perhaps because the heart narrows

As often as it opens-

I am grateful

That red bird comes all winter

Firing up the landscape

As nothing else can do.

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

“Do or do not..."

 The scene in the back yard looks about like the picture below. I’ve crossed my fingers that the total accumulation will be at the lower end of the forecast range, currently at 4 to 8 inches locally. We won’t know ’til it’s over, will we?

today’s snow has begun

Photo by J. Harrington

A few minutes ago we had 3 male and two female cardinals at the feeders. I’d guess there may be  a third female sitting in a nearby tree. That’s a pleasant surprise for the new year, since we usually see only one pair at a time. The cardinals have been accompanied by the usual crew of chickadees, woodpeckers, nuthatches, etc. No purple or house finches have been observed so far this winter.

Christmas cookies are almost all gone. Christmas candy supplies are shrinking rapidly. Soon the holiday season will have passed for another year and I haven’t yet sat myself down to fantasize about some goals and objectives for 2023. I suppose one simple solution would be to start with those from last year on which I failed to make much or any progress.. That would include:

• go fishing more often
• practice and improve my fly casting
• improve my sourdough bread baking process
• write more poems

As I look at that short list, it becomes obvious that sitting on my duff reading about stuff is insufficient. I only practiced once or twice; we didn’t go fishing any more often than we had the prior year; I failed to maintain an adequate, accurate baking journal [the same would be true of a fishing journal if we had gone fishing more]; no poems emerged from my pen, pencil or keyboard. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? I am. It’s a classic all talk and no action scenario. So, perhaps my solution is to add Yoda’s dictum: “Do or do not. There is no try.” to my list and call it done.

Red Bird Explains Himself

“Yes, I was the brilliance floating over the snow
and I was the song in the summer leaves, but this was
only the first trick
I had hold of among my other mythologies,
for I also knew obedience: bringing sticks to the nest,
food to the young, kisses to my bride.

But don’t stop there, stay with me: listen.

If I was the song that entered your heart
then I was the music of your heart, that you wanted and needed,
and thus wilderness bloomed there, with all its
followers: gardeners, lovers, people who weep
for the death of rivers.

And this was my true task, to be the
music of the body.  Do you understand?  for truly the body needs
a song, a spirit, a soul.  And no less, to make this work,
the soul has need of a body,
and I am both of the earth and I am of the inexplicable
beauty of heaven
where I fly so easily, so welcome, yes,
and this is why I have been sent, to teach this to your heart.”

from Red Bird, Mary Oliver, Beacon Press, © 2008 by Mary Oliver

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

Countdown to Valentine’s Day

One week from today we all, if we’re lucky, get to tell our loved ones how much we love them (and vice versa). It will also mean we’re halfway through February, which, I choose to believe, is Mother Nature’s way of telling me she loves me.

a Valentine centerpiece

Photo by J. Harrington

It probably doesn’t count as an early Valentine, despite the splash of bright red at the feeder, but the strategy we mentioned a week or so ago, of returning a tray feeder to service and see if that worked to entice cardinals back to the feeder, seems to be paying off. At least it did once, a couple of days ago, we had a male cardinal at the tray feeder in the middle of the afternoon.

As of this morning, we’ve officially entered our own version of the 2021 taxes season. I’ve got the income piece mostly organized. Tomorrow we’ll begin organizing the charitable deductions part. My target is to be able to deliver our completed tax organizer to our preparer on or around Valentine’s Day, as a way  of proving to myself how much I love me by getting it done and gone.

If You Feel Sorry 

By Ted Kooser

If you feel sorry for yourself
this Valentine's Day, think of
the dozens of little paper poppies
left in the box when the last
of the candy is gone, how they
must feel, dried out and brown
in their sad old heart-shaped box,
without so much as a single finger
to scrabble around in their
crinkled petals, not even
one pimpled nose to root and snort
through their delicate pot pourri.
So before you make too much
of being neglected, I want you
to think how they feel.

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