typical

I would say that this day is as close to an average February day as they get. Frozen ground, a light cloud cover that eventually fades to give us that cornflower blue sky.

(Morning: still a tad cloudy, but with bright contours and a promise of better light)






You begin to imagine spring: what would it be like to have the crab apple in bloom, to see the willow fill out with its pale green leaves...






We aren't at the cusp of spring -- I'm not that easily deceived! -- but we are moving along at a good clip and that natural progression feels good. It's as it should be. A day of February calm.

(My morning animal feeding becomes more interesting as the kittens become increasingly used to the routines. They are beginning to understand who butters their bread.)






Breakfast. I call Ed down -- it's now or never! In a few minutes Sparrow will be here!

Ed -- are you done (with the photo) yet?






No... Let's try again.





Better.

Indeed, the little guy does come moments later. We've flipped the schedule somewhat and so this week, Tuesday is his farmhouse day. Is he happy about it?






He's Sparrow, isn't he?






Feeding: the smile lingers...






... at least until he finds himself confronted with carrots.






Sparrow is a quiet guy, but he has good control of his body. Still, wanting to go somewhere and getting there are, unfortunately, not the same thing!






In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop.

(Jacket on...)






(Jacket off...)






After our ritual reading time, we play.
She has an idea. She always has an idea: Gogs, we're taking a trip!






We'd just read a book where someone feels compelled to take a necessary journey, so I ask her -- Is it a necessary journey?
No, it's a fun and beautiful journey.
Okay then! Fasten your seat-belts! We will be flying over the ocean!
No, not over the ocean, over one hill and 16 pieces of grass.

And in a few minutes:
Holy smoke! We just landed in a beautiful place!






And in that beautiful place I lose her to a story which she spins now for herself. I retreat to sip a coffee with frothy milk while she tells her tale.





Later, I drive the little one home. And the icy mix comes down and we are in the middle of a winter storm once more. There will be another winter storm tomorrow. And the next day.

Perhaps there is no such thing as a typical February day. From calm to storm. From sunshine to ice. But just remember, after February comes March. And soon after, blossoms and willow leaves.

quiet before the return of winter

We're in this soppy messy impasse. March weather, Ed calls it. Except, it's not March. It's February -- the month most likeable for its brevity.

I go out to feed the animals.

The cats are nesting in the uppermost shelves of the garage. Sweet. What's not sweet is the melted snow right outside the garage. It reveals mountains of droppings -- this was the kitty bathroom at the time of the great freeze. Right now, it's just one great mess. I pick up the snow shovel and deal with it as best as I can. Three cats in one small space -- ufff!






In this warmer spell, the cheepers are restless. They want food. They probably want to be out and about.





But are they safe yet? When is a good time to release them?

In this turmoil of snow, hawks, and cold weather, we locked up the cheepers just as Stop Sign brought her babes to the garage. I wonder if the cats would have stayed had the cheepers been set loose. I know that we could not have left bowls of food out in the open for the ktties.

Today, Stop Sign followed me to the barn. Perhaps she had that aha moment -- oh, so that's what happened to all those chickens who pestered me before!






Breakfast.






And catch up time. I have a lot of paper work to do. The afternoon comes ever so quickly.

Time to pick up Snowdrop!

It's our usual fare: books, fruits, play.






Including a game of pretend ballet school. Snowdrop, being teacher extraordinaire, asks me to do leaps and twirls. Maybe she wonders why my leaps aren't terribly high and my twirls are a bit slow paced. Or maybe she thinks I'm pretending to be a really ancient person. Still, we make a good team. We teach her pretend children how to love to dance. Isn't that what counts?






Sometimes Snowdrop gets distracted by a sudden idea or opportunity. Today, right in the middle of ballet school, she veers off to the table of various Polish wood carvings and tiny Italian glass birds. I lose her to a story that she now creates with her new playmates. I retreat. She stays with her new game until her daddy comes to pick her up.






I make soup tonight. One of those hearty ones, with onion, beans, kale. I add carrots, corn and cabbage. A big pot, good for several days. The temperatures fall all evening long. Snow tomorrow night. A February mix of March and January.

in a fog

It's a wet and foggy day. You don't want to be outside: not at all! Even the walk to the barn in the morning seems sloppy and uninspiring.







The garage cats are a little reclusive today and I have to think it has something to do with yesterday's visit by the strange bird (likely that darn Cooper Hawk). Normally, Stop Sign comes out to greet me, or at least greet the dish of food I bring with me. Today, she hovers in the back, near her little ones.






Or am I imagining this more cautious behavior? Maybe she doesn't like the wet slush and the damp air any more than we do. I am terribly inept at reading cat expressions and behaviors.

Breakfast. Ed is a tad exasperated with my morning photo. Can you tell?






I had wanted to zip through farmhouse cleaning and go out for one last run on skis before the snow gets too soupy and thin, but as we drive out to the park, we decide against it. It's just so damp and unpleasant and there are plenty of bare spots along the trail.





Our next stop is very indoorsy: we are to work with my mom and her new cell phone. This is a bit of a leap for her. While she has been very comfortable with computers, smart phones or even mobile flip phones have not been part of her daily life. The learning curve is significant. You don't realize it until you break down the steps of usage. Strange screens appear on a regular basis. You have to figure out how to get yourself out of unintended pickles and perturbations. The finger motions - taps, swipes -- they're all new stuff.

She makes great progress. Indeed, unless something very strange happens (not impossible with smart phones), she should be set!

In our remaining time there, we put up countless framed pictures on her apartment walls. She loves looking at the kids and great grandkids and she has plenty of them now decorating her living space.






On our way home, Ed and I again consider our outdoor options. None of them seem grand. Not even slightly grand. It's so foggy! Slushy! Wet! Even the ice fishermen are on the retreat (from the lesser lake)!






No matter. We have stuff to do at the farmhouse. One dead car to recharge. One robot vacuum cleaner to set loose upstairs. One dinner to cook for the young family!






Winter Sunday dinners... Warm, comforting. People say there's a game on right now. I understand the lure of an exciting match in the thick of the winter season. But for me, that meal around a kitchen table is about as exciting as anything I'd want to watch on the big screen. One child tells a story, the other shows off his growing appreciation for mush -- what could be more thrilling than that?






"If my big sister gets two macarons for dessert, might I at least have one? No? Bummer..."






Maybe next year, Sparrow. Maybe next year.

no shadow

February 2nd: no groundhog here at the farmette saw his shadow. I mean, we didn't poke and prod our resident guy to come out -- he's a content little beast who minds his own business until spring, at which time he eats up some of my favorite flowers with a voracious appetite. But I can't say that I mind terribly. At least he only eats plants. Not chickens and kittens. (I say this after a dusk walk to the garage where our feral cat family has been seeking shelter: suddenly I heard the telltale flap of wings of a big bird in retreat. I know it was the hawk. I don't think he attacked any of the kittens, but it's very disconcerting to know that he is still here.)

After the bitter cold of last week, some would welcome today's above freezing temperature. You could linger outside for more than five minutes and not walk away with permanently damaged skin. But it is a foggy day, a very gray day. We miss the sunshine!

Still, there is a benefit to the warmup: after breakfast....







... Ed and I take out our skis. First time this season! One can only wish that it wasn't the last time. We're to get rain for the next day or two. That's not good news for the freshly groomed cross country trails.






Foggy...






Very foggy ...

 



We ski early...






... because we have a late morning meet up with some of Ed's old college era buds in Lake Geneva.

Do you know Lake Geneva? It's familiar turf for Chicagoans looking for a weekend retreat by a lake in "quaint Wisconsin." For us, it's a good meet up place when half your group hails from Chicago, as it's halfway between Madison and the windy city. Too, this weekend Lake Geneva is hosting the International Snow Sculpting Championships.

You would think that the town was hosting the Academy Awards! Lake Geneva is packed: sort of like Coney Island only in winter and without the rides.

We eat lunch at the Simple Cafe -- a quite nice "field to table" type of eatery. And from there, we walk to the Snow Sculptures.

They are, indeed, fine snow sculptures. I mean, lots of talent behind their execution. But the depicted characters are strange. Possibly everyone recognizes them from known fantasy flicks or comic strips. They seem mostly evil. This, to me, is the tamest (and therefore my favorite):






There is also an ice castle. None of us wants to pay money and wait in a mile-long line to go inside, so we have our photo taken out front and let it go at that.






With a little more time on our hands, we poke around some stores. The kind of stores you'd have if you knew your shoppers were mostly from the more affluent suburbs of Chicago. For instance, there is this one, with objects made from animal fur. Like this cap:






Or this teddy, made of (gulp) beautiful rabbit fur. ($265)





It's curious that anyone would think of this town as being a slice of Wisconsin. But of course, no state is without its outliers: towns that stand apart from the rest. Lake Geneva has an attractive lake and the usual undulating Wisconsin topography. You can't be surprised that big city people would come up to take in a little bit of its flavor.


So, no shadow. Now how many weeks until spring??

after the climb

Anyone living here will have experienced a monumental shift of mood today: good bye January, strange, long month, full of sniffles, unexpected temperatures and resultant shutdowns. Hello February. Good bye Polar Vortex, hello regular old winter. Reporters, looking for new and imaginative ways to describe this week's bitter cold, compared our temperatures to those at the base of Mt. Everest. Ours were colder. But the comparison led me thinking that it really did feel like we had climbed Mt. Everest (or some such formidable peak) and now it's just a question of getting down. Still challenging, but so much less draining than the trek up into the unknown.

We are back in business. Schools open, Ed's techie meeting is on the schedule, my grocery shopping will proceed as it always does on Fridays -- with awe and wonder at the incredible bounty in our stores and with images of the good meals that may come next week from stuff that I pack into the grocery cart.

But first, of course, there are the animals. Early, quite early, I step out into a blissfully mild 0F (-18C). Wow! So warm!






So much pretty snow...






(Looking toward the young orchard...)






We turn off the heater in the barn. The cheepers can manage this next week's temperatures on their own. Indeed, overheating them now is dangerous: they must stay acclimatized to the current winter conditions. As for the cats -- we'll keep the one bulb going in the buckets.

Jacket, the kitten that looks like the dad rather than like Stop Sign, is getting just a little bolder. He did not instantly run away when he saw me in the distance.






Yes, Jacket in my mind is a male cat and Dance is the girl. I have no basis for guessing this except my preconceptions on how boy cats and girl cats differ in their behavior.

At breakfast...






... I ask Ed -- do you think we need to worry about the snow pileup on the porch roof? If you recall, Ed and I built a roof of plates of glass. How much weight is too much?
Ed shrugs off my concerns. It's fine. If you stood in one spot on the glass, you'd place more weight in that spot than any amount of snow there now.

Still, after I return from grocery shopping, I look at the snow up there in dismay. In the past, I have always shoveled it all off. For one thing, it made the kitchen that much lighter. And this weekend we're to get lots of rain, followed by more cold. In my mind, that's a recipe for problems: once ice forms there, it wont be safe to be out shoveling. And what if more snow falls after? It's a northern exposure roof. Sunshine wont reach it until mid spring.

If you were me, would you go out and take on that foot (more?) of snow on the roof? Yes, I know I've complained of knee and back injuries. But I've been doing the exercises (more or less)! So, if you were me, would you shovel?

Well, of course, if you were me, you would, because I do shovel. And why not?! We have a gift of sunshine and it's just so pretty to be out there, what with my iPhone set to lovely folksy music and the temperatures reaching a gorgeous 16F(-9C) -- I can do a little and see how it goes, right?







There is a bit of hesitation: I really should wait for Ed to be home so that he can pick up any broken bones from a hypothetical fall, but honestly, falling from that roof into a pile of snow cannot be that terrible!

(Stop Sign, reminding me that it's time for lunch ...)






In the end, I clear the whole roof. It takes me 45 minutes and it makes me feel far far younger than my 65 years.

And after, I pick up Snowdrop.

By all accounts, it was an unusual school day. I don't know about the boys (seriously, there is a detectable gender difference in this among 3-4-5 year olds), but the girls, I'm told, were giving each other big bear hugs throughout the day. I witnessed this as I tried to disengage an enveloped Snowdrop. Parents may have been overjoyed to have their offspring sprung off to schools again, but it seems that the kids were equally glad to be among their own.

As I snap her into the car seat, she asks -- can we go to the coffee shop and get a croissant? 
The coffee shop doesn't have them, sweet one. We'd have to go to the bakery.
Which one?
Madison Sourdough. You've been there with me before. (But I had never before referred to it by name.)
Madison Sourdough? That's so funny!
It's the place where you park your car by the wall art.

Oh, indeed. She remembers.











Pain au chocolat! Like the old days!






As we walk back to the car, she asks -- you didn't park on stripes, did you?
I did not. How do you know about that? Did someone tell you?
No... I just grew up knowing.

I haven't ventured out with her beyond our usual orbit. I see that at age 4, she now has the geography of the place down pat. "Oh! This is the way to our old house!" " That's where we go to visit Mr. J and Ms M!" (Mommy's friends.) "And Sol lived here. But now he lives by the zoo."

The other thing I notice is that today, she rejects a cap or even mitts on her walk from car to farmhouse. Blessed warmup!

(I also see that her bangs are too long. First game at home: let's play hair salon!)







And we do. And I trim her bangs. And we play a little of the pretend games we've been playing all week long. But I notice a difference: she's not insatiable. She had a round of pretend with her friends. She's open to other ideas now.






Ed comes home. She gives him a full explanation of how we should go about catching the second mouse in the farmhouse. Because of course, there is a second mouse.

A day of change. Of relief. Ultimately of sunshine. Of happy thoughts about what's ahead.