With the exception of New Year's weekend, the temperature here has held below freezing for weeks and weeks, during which we've had multiple snow dumps adding up to 3+ feet. Most of that time has been overcast and often windy -- making, altogether, for a some serious winter.
It also makes for the best of winter, for two reasons.
First, the snow is powder, which is light to shovel and easy to plow (and a dream if you're a skier). One appreciates this after many winters spent scraping up the equivalent of wet cement, or skidding on ice as impenetrable as concrete.
Second, the snow remains crystalline, and that makes for breathtaking beauty when the sun -- and moon -- finally come out.
Two nights ago, the clouds parted to allow a half moon to bathe the white-robed landscape in silver gleam that thousands of snow bits caught and reflected like summer fireflies. The following morning, below cloudless blue, the sunrise caught more diamond points and lit the day with sparkle. When wind came up and lifted the powder, the very air glittered.
Conditions are right only a few days each winter, if at all. So it's hard to mind the season when it turns the world into a visual wonderland.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Sunday, January 16, 2011
Saturday, January 8, 2011
Here comes the sun
A new year is born -- both on the calendar and in the natural world. The dates fall about ten days apart but announce the same change.
For those of us in the northern hemisphere, and especially in the northerly climes, it's hard to think of birth in the middle of winter. But this is the point where gardens begin each year. As day length increases, plants and creatures begin to stir, or at least change their behavior in subtle ways. Under the ground, roots, corms, and bulbs are processing themselves for the upcoming growth season. Aboveground, birds change their songs -- for example, by New Year's Day I'd heard the chickadee's spring call for which it is named ("dee-deeee") -- and early breeders have started courtship. Meanwhile, the seed catalogues are rolling in, allowing humans to start planning this year's garden.
I am a daylight junkie, so I count the returning minutes of light after the solstice. It creeps in asymmetrically: for a week or two, daybreak comes later while sunset seems to stay the same. But then we start to see more light on both ends of the day, and its pace of return accelerates.
On the official winter solstice, we had 8 hours and 51 minutes of daylight. Since then, we've gained 10+ minutes. So few, yet already perceptible at dawn and dusk. This starts and ends each day with joy, and helps keep my chin up during the three months of cold, snow, and ice still to come.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
For those of us in the northern hemisphere, and especially in the northerly climes, it's hard to think of birth in the middle of winter. But this is the point where gardens begin each year. As day length increases, plants and creatures begin to stir, or at least change their behavior in subtle ways. Under the ground, roots, corms, and bulbs are processing themselves for the upcoming growth season. Aboveground, birds change their songs -- for example, by New Year's Day I'd heard the chickadee's spring call for which it is named ("dee-deeee") -- and early breeders have started courtship. Meanwhile, the seed catalogues are rolling in, allowing humans to start planning this year's garden.
I am a daylight junkie, so I count the returning minutes of light after the solstice. It creeps in asymmetrically: for a week or two, daybreak comes later while sunset seems to stay the same. But then we start to see more light on both ends of the day, and its pace of return accelerates.
On the official winter solstice, we had 8 hours and 51 minutes of daylight. Since then, we've gained 10+ minutes. So few, yet already perceptible at dawn and dusk. This starts and ends each day with joy, and helps keep my chin up during the three months of cold, snow, and ice still to come.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Silent night
Two aspects of living in the rural north give special poignancy to the winter holidays.
(1) Silence.
On the rare occasions when we have big snow -- just snow, no wind or sleet or any other variations of winter storm -- the world is embraced in a white velvet silence. It's a true silence, an utter silence; the only sounds come from your own clothes when you move. The surface of the world is smoothed into innocent beauty while life sleeps beneath. We get the silence for a few minutes or hours a year, maybe once every several years; two years ago, it came as a gift on the winter solstice.
(2) Darkness.
No streetlights. No neighbor's porch lights. Mostly, no headlights except your own, winding along the roads back from town. Then, suddenly, a star of Bethlehem floating in the blackness! Oh, it's somebody's holiday lights on a barn across the valley. Around a curve, a perfect Christmas tree illuminated in red, green, and white. Or perhaps a blue one. Then darkness. Around another bend, a deciduous tree's bare branches outlined in gold. Another mile of darkness, until the world leaps into blinding, blinking glow from an extravaganza of Santas and reindeers and trees and stars and snowmen and sleighs, all packed into somebody's tiny yard and so fully lit that you can almost hear the electric meter spinning. Then, back into darkness -- the opposite of snowfall, a rich, deep, inky blue that showcases every star in the heavens.
With this combination, it's hard to resist singing, "Silent night, holy night / All is calm, all is bright . . ."
Happy holidays!
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Mammals R Us
This time of year, I become acutely conscious of being a diurnal mammal. As winter descends, so do my energy and curiosity, so that all I want to do is eat large amounts of fatty foods and sleep. My cats do basically that, and I envy them the luxury. The rest of the year, they want to be outside all the time; now, they only bestir themselves for a brief change of scenery or a trip to the outdoor restroom. I content myself with looking out the windows and using indoor plumbing.
The happiest moment of every day is when I crawl beneath the electric blanket. The unhappiest moment of every day is when I wake up in the morning and it's still dark.
Some lucky critters get to bury themselves in the mud or a den, or migrate, or in other ways escape the season. The unlucky ones are out still there rooting desperately for food and shelter. I often wonder how our forebears endured life without houses and furnaces and electric blankets and supermarket-bought food stored in refrigerators, with electric lights and entertainment to beat back the darkness while wearing warm, comfy clothes and driving environmentally sealed cars. How brutal life must have been in earlier ages! How grateful I am to never know!
Just as often, I think about the advantage of this climate. Sure, winter is a drag, but it brings important pluses. In our neck of the woods, we don't have to worry about region-demolishing catastrophes such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, mudslides, and wildfires. I'll gladly take a few months of winter for all my life to avoid experiencing any one of those, even once! Likewise, having 3-4 months of deep freeze manages insect pests in a way that spares us from plagues in garden and body, as can happen in warmer regions.
So I'll resist that primeval urge to hibernate and hang on through another winter. Spring, like a rainbow after a storm, arrives at the end. Which is worth many months of cold and darkness.
The happiest moment of every day is when I crawl beneath the electric blanket. The unhappiest moment of every day is when I wake up in the morning and it's still dark.
Some lucky critters get to bury themselves in the mud or a den, or migrate, or in other ways escape the season. The unlucky ones are out still there rooting desperately for food and shelter. I often wonder how our forebears endured life without houses and furnaces and electric blankets and supermarket-bought food stored in refrigerators, with electric lights and entertainment to beat back the darkness while wearing warm, comfy clothes and driving environmentally sealed cars. How brutal life must have been in earlier ages! How grateful I am to never know!
Just as often, I think about the advantage of this climate. Sure, winter is a drag, but it brings important pluses. In our neck of the woods, we don't have to worry about region-demolishing catastrophes such as hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, floods, mudslides, and wildfires. I'll gladly take a few months of winter for all my life to avoid experiencing any one of those, even once! Likewise, having 3-4 months of deep freeze manages insect pests in a way that spares us from plagues in garden and body, as can happen in warmer regions.
So I'll resist that primeval urge to hibernate and hang on through another winter. Spring, like a rainbow after a storm, arrives at the end. Which is worth many months of cold and darkness.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
The annual giving of thanks
Every year at this time, people across America ritually gather to give thanks for what they have. I try to do the same thing mentally every day, counting my blessings -- difficult to do when times are tough, but always worth the effort because it revives appreciation of life and all that is good therein.
My personal thanksgiving ritual occurs at a different time of year. I wrote about it in the introduction to my book, Open Your Heart with Gardens:
"Each year, it happens afresh:
"After months of brown and gray and white . . . cold and hard and dark . . . the day comes when I step outside and behold a tip of green protruding from the ground.
"The first daffodil!
"The sight of it drops me to my knees, mentally chanting, Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Then I leap up into The Happy Dance because there at my feet lies proof that the world has kept turning, the invisible forces of the universe have kept churning, and Mother Nature has again fulfilled her promise despite everything I doubted and feared.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
No daffodils now, but the promise of rebirth associated with them is what I most give thanks for as the year draws down and cold and darkness pervade.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
My personal thanksgiving ritual occurs at a different time of year. I wrote about it in the introduction to my book, Open Your Heart with Gardens:
"Each year, it happens afresh:
"After months of brown and gray and white . . . cold and hard and dark . . . the day comes when I step outside and behold a tip of green protruding from the ground.
"The first daffodil!
"The sight of it drops me to my knees, mentally chanting, Thankyouthankyouthankyou! Then I leap up into The Happy Dance because there at my feet lies proof that the world has kept turning, the invisible forces of the universe have kept churning, and Mother Nature has again fulfilled her promise despite everything I doubted and feared.
"Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"
No daffodils now, but the promise of rebirth associated with them is what I most give thanks for as the year draws down and cold and darkness pervade.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Friday, November 5, 2010
Stick season
Here in the hilly section of Vermont, there are a lot of jokes (and complaints) about the weather. They're all true, by the way. It's the most weather-dominant place I've ever lived, which doesn't help with gardening!
Nevertheless, despite my own complaints, I like the weather here. It's dramatic and primal -- an Event, almost every day. And very rich with color. I've taken to determining seasons by color, since the calendar doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Right now, rolling into November, we've entered Stick Season.
Stick Season is primarily brown and gray. With all the leaves down (except coppery beech and rusty oak), the landscape is a mass of brown and gray vertical lines overlaying brown and gray undulations. The skies are myriad shades of gray, usually roiling, reflected back by gunmetal gray waters. This monotony is punctuated by the aptly named evergreens, and given contrast by beige and mustard grasses, plus the surprising gold of larches and even more surprising shafts of golden sunbeams slanting through holes in the gray clouds.
In all, starkly beautiful. Soon to be blanketed with white. But it's nice to see the bones of the land for a little while, and to glimpse homes and other features normally masked by dense foliage. We get Stick Season in reverse during April, when the white blanket retreats and reveals the world naked before greens reemerge to clothe it.
So Stick Season is brown and gray. Winter is white, blue, and lavender. Not-Winter is green with fiesta-colored accents. Foliage Season is just the party colors. Some folks add Mud Season to this roster, but I lump that under Stick Season. The spring and fall are always wet and yucky underfoot, and in our immediate area we don't get the dissolving, rutted roads that suck vehicles in up to their floor pans (for which Mud Season is named), so I'll stick with my nomenclature.
The only problem is, Winter is 5 months long, Not-Winter is 4, Stick Season is 3, and Foliage Season less than 1. According to the calendar, each season is supposed to be 3 months long. Hah!
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Nevertheless, despite my own complaints, I like the weather here. It's dramatic and primal -- an Event, almost every day. And very rich with color. I've taken to determining seasons by color, since the calendar doesn't seem to have anything to do with it. Right now, rolling into November, we've entered Stick Season.
Stick Season is primarily brown and gray. With all the leaves down (except coppery beech and rusty oak), the landscape is a mass of brown and gray vertical lines overlaying brown and gray undulations. The skies are myriad shades of gray, usually roiling, reflected back by gunmetal gray waters. This monotony is punctuated by the aptly named evergreens, and given contrast by beige and mustard grasses, plus the surprising gold of larches and even more surprising shafts of golden sunbeams slanting through holes in the gray clouds.
In all, starkly beautiful. Soon to be blanketed with white. But it's nice to see the bones of the land for a little while, and to glimpse homes and other features normally masked by dense foliage. We get Stick Season in reverse during April, when the white blanket retreats and reveals the world naked before greens reemerge to clothe it.
So Stick Season is brown and gray. Winter is white, blue, and lavender. Not-Winter is green with fiesta-colored accents. Foliage Season is just the party colors. Some folks add Mud Season to this roster, but I lump that under Stick Season. The spring and fall are always wet and yucky underfoot, and in our immediate area we don't get the dissolving, rutted roads that suck vehicles in up to their floor pans (for which Mud Season is named), so I'll stick with my nomenclature.
The only problem is, Winter is 5 months long, Not-Winter is 4, Stick Season is 3, and Foliage Season less than 1. According to the calendar, each season is supposed to be 3 months long. Hah!
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Thursday, October 14, 2010
The cycle continues
Since it snowed the other day, I guess that means gardening season is over!
Starting last spring, each season has kicked in two weeks early. Summer was strange this year, perhaps because the weather was, well, summery! Sunny, hot, dry for long periods, unlike our cool and often too-wet norm. The pond got so low we could almost walk across it, and we had to ration water from the well. (Not any longer: In the past 3 weeks, we've had 14 inches of rain!)
Thanks to rain barrels, I always had enough water for the veggie garden. It performed terrifically for a change, this year giving what I've aspired to for a decade: a crop of huge, bug-free, sweet red bell peppers. Low yield but great fruits. Similar results with tomatoes, but another plague set upon them by August so I lost some at the end. As well, I planted different varieties in different locations and got correspondingly different yields and quality. Best performers grew in the lasagna garden. So far, all my vegetables have done best in that location, save for carrots, which like a deeper, more uniform bed.
I tried a new variety of cucumber and got many salads worth of big ones. Also tried a single plant of brussels sprouts, which grew straight and tall and produced abundant heads. It's still going despite a week of frost and a nor'easter.
Broccoli, always a challenge, was mixed: the Goliath variety I cultivated under bug screen indeed was gigantic, both plants and heads. The Premium Crop, in assorted planters, was smaller and didn't deliver much in the way of side shoots after the main head was cut. Oh well. Try again next year. Note that insect-barrier fabric is worth the trouble -- no green worms anywhere on the plants.
We had a great crop of strawberries and raspberries, but almost no blueberries. Why? Who the heck knows. Other dud crops were zucchini and morning glories. The first, I think, resulted from the wrong variety in the wrong soil, inadequately fed and watered; the second, I have no idea. I gave those morning glories everything they are supposed to like, yet only 7 seeds from an entire pack germinated, and of those, only 3 produced blossoms, and the vines never grew more than 4 inches high. Huh?
Just another gardening mystery. I find every season completely different; and although I learn a lot every time, I'm stumped in revolving areas year after year. Despite all the variables, I always get food and flowers. They just might not grow or produce the way they're supposed to!
Already I'm planning next year's layout. The joy of gardening is how it keeps you looking forward with new ideas and hope.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
Starting last spring, each season has kicked in two weeks early. Summer was strange this year, perhaps because the weather was, well, summery! Sunny, hot, dry for long periods, unlike our cool and often too-wet norm. The pond got so low we could almost walk across it, and we had to ration water from the well. (Not any longer: In the past 3 weeks, we've had 14 inches of rain!)
Thanks to rain barrels, I always had enough water for the veggie garden. It performed terrifically for a change, this year giving what I've aspired to for a decade: a crop of huge, bug-free, sweet red bell peppers. Low yield but great fruits. Similar results with tomatoes, but another plague set upon them by August so I lost some at the end. As well, I planted different varieties in different locations and got correspondingly different yields and quality. Best performers grew in the lasagna garden. So far, all my vegetables have done best in that location, save for carrots, which like a deeper, more uniform bed.
I tried a new variety of cucumber and got many salads worth of big ones. Also tried a single plant of brussels sprouts, which grew straight and tall and produced abundant heads. It's still going despite a week of frost and a nor'easter.
Broccoli, always a challenge, was mixed: the Goliath variety I cultivated under bug screen indeed was gigantic, both plants and heads. The Premium Crop, in assorted planters, was smaller and didn't deliver much in the way of side shoots after the main head was cut. Oh well. Try again next year. Note that insect-barrier fabric is worth the trouble -- no green worms anywhere on the plants.
We had a great crop of strawberries and raspberries, but almost no blueberries. Why? Who the heck knows. Other dud crops were zucchini and morning glories. The first, I think, resulted from the wrong variety in the wrong soil, inadequately fed and watered; the second, I have no idea. I gave those morning glories everything they are supposed to like, yet only 7 seeds from an entire pack germinated, and of those, only 3 produced blossoms, and the vines never grew more than 4 inches high. Huh?
Just another gardening mystery. I find every season completely different; and although I learn a lot every time, I'm stumped in revolving areas year after year. Despite all the variables, I always get food and flowers. They just might not grow or produce the way they're supposed to!
Already I'm planning next year's layout. The joy of gardening is how it keeps you looking forward with new ideas and hope.
Carolyn Haley
Books at: http://carolynhaley.wordpress.com
Editing business at: www.documania.us
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