one day

If you were told -- there will be one day this winter when the sun will shine brightly and the temperatures will soar, maybe ten whole degrees above freezing -- and if there is nothing holding you back, nothing that must be done, what would you do?

Well yes, eat breakfast. Sure. Me too.





And after?

I say to Ed -- let's not wait until the afternoon to ski. Let's go now, while the snow is still crisp!

Unusual for us. You'll have seen this park before. Many times. But I don't think ever before noon.











It's warm, even now, in the mornng. Just above freezing, so that when you're pushing on those skis, it can get quite toasty! Off come the hat, the scarf, down goes the zipper... free! I am free of winter for a while! Hills, give me those hills so I can fly!











And then we are home and we both look up at the porch roof and I say to Ed -- that thick layer of ice after the ice storm? (That same ice storm that has created ice dams for the first time ever at the farmhouse!) I don't think it's melting much. The sun only gets to the edges of this north facing roof.

And then it strikes me: maybe I could chip off at least a little bit of that ice around the edges? (Because if not today, during the one day thaw, then when?)

Maybe you are not the type to give in to projects that have no real purpose except that they have a beginning and a possible end. Maybe you can walk away from something that proves to be ridiculously hard. Slippery, thick ice, clinging to those roof beams, refusing to recognize that there is a thaw, damn it! You're supposed to melt!

I could not walk away from it. Once I understood that inch by inch, I could hack away at the roof ice and then sweep it off, I took on the project and stayed up there for several hours until my wet socks froze around my toes and my arms were too sore to do anymore of the chip and sweep motions.

But by that time I was done.

And it could be that neither of us will ever go up on that roof again, but it surely has been a fascinating study of the work of the seasons up there. It could be that by tomorrow, or the next day, all will be covered again, but at least today, it's clean and clear out there. Take a look out from the bathroom window (all farmette buildings accounted for!):






Even better, over p.b. and j. lunch sandwiches at the kitchen table, we see this:






Down on the ground again, I am not the only one loving this winter sunshine. Our resident opossum (who lives under the writer's shed) comes out to pick at the fallen crab apples.






He's used to our comings and goings and Isis is used to seeing him here. As Ed brings Isis to the farmhouse for an afternoon snack, I think how delightfully odd it is that we should be the four permanent residents here: Ed, myself, Isis and the opossum.





Dinner: I make buckwheat crepes, stuffed with salmon, cheese and egg. With asparagus on the side. And a huge spinach arugula salad. Was it grand? No, I prefer the buckwheat crepes I had at the Breizh Cafe earlier in December. But good enough. The day was grand -- I'm fine with the buckwheat crepes being just good enough.