Hitting the winter jackpot

It’s no secret that winter is a trying time for humans, critters, and the land itself. Here in Vermont, winter dominates our lives—and in many cases, provides our livelihoods.

Certain elements can be relied on, year after year: Cold. Snow. Ice. Darkness. Within those parameters, every winter differs in what, how much, and when.

This year, we’ve had the most wintery season of recent times, starting early and promising to run late (though hopefully shorter than the whopper we had a decade ago, with snow on the ground from October into May!). It has presented the gamut of conditions, in rapid succession, hitting extremes. But that includes one of the rare happier moments, which came and went, appropriately, on Valentine’s Day.

It began with a nor’easter that dumped two-plus feet of powder over two days. Yikes! By nightfall the second day, the storm had moved on and clouds parted to present a full moon casting silver glow and sparkle across a flawless blanket of white. Objects on the ground were either buried or simplified into rounded contours. No tracks, no movement; all life in suspension.

By morning much of the landscape would be chewed up by plows and shovels and footprints, and stained by salt and sand. But this night, for a few hours, we had the most beautiful combination of light, shadow, color, and shape that the season can produce.

Calendar-wise, it’s just past the halfway point of the season. The forecast is for another subzero dip followed by days above freezing, beginning the long, sputtering, terminal thaw. So what I witnessed, I think, was the exact moment of the season’s pendulum swing to its farthest point: a pause before the backswing toward spring.

Perfect moonlight-on-snow is Nature’s apology for the suffering she must impose, a reward for her seasonal punishment. Although we may see the combination again before winter ends, it won’t be quite the same.

A piebald Christmas

Our corner of Vermont, like everywhere else, has been riding the weather rollercoaster in recent years, and especially the past two weeks. Here we have a winter theme rather than fire or typhoon.

A week ago Saturday morning, when I went to the dump (excuse me: “transfer station”), it was a balmy 6 degrees. The next night, we got a 15-inch dump of powder snow, onto which was added another 3-4 inches in as many days.

But by the next Saturday morning, my trip to the dump was 40 degrees warmer! And the next day brought the start of rains and unbroken above-freezing temps. (One exception: a morning of light glaze, which was gone by noon.)

Thus, by Christmas eve, a foot and a half of snow had vanished, leaving a landscape of white-splotched gray, brown, black, and mustard, even some spots of green. For days the yard was mucky down to the frost line, until yesterday it froze solid again. The whole reminded me of March.

It’s one thing to lose the snow cover in a week of sunshine and spring-approaching temperatures; quite another to lose it in the darkest week of the year, with calendar winter just beginning.

This was bad news for folks who depend on winter business for their livelihoods: ski areas, snowmobile services, plow operators. It’s good news for the low-budget towns who don’t have to clear and sand. Good news, too, for citizens like us who have to haul firewood across the yard and drive up and down angled driveways, and citizens unlike us who have to commute to work.

The forecast for the holiday was a high of 11, low of -1, and no precipitation for several days. Well, that’s good, I thought sadly, looking at the frigid, piebald landscape; at least people will be able to get around.

Then this morning I woke up to a flawless white vista. Some passing cloud overnight had brought a dusting—light enough for us to sweep off the walkways but heavy enough to coat the world. A white Christmas!

Better yet: Clear skies allowed sunrise almost an hour earlier than all week, with the moon still high in the west. Calm winds, temps several degrees above zero instead of below. Oh, what a wonderful gift!

Thank you, Santa! And happy holidays to all.

Tempus fugit

As a girl, I often heard my elders griping about how fast time flies. I couldn’t imagine what they were talking about. Time is time, I thought, and it passes as it passes; every day has 24 hours, and for me they were always full.

Now that I’m creeping toward 60, I know what my elders (all gone now) meant. For the past few years, time has flown by at an astonishing rate, leaving us wondering where the heck it went. And despairing over how little we accomplished on the ever-lengthening to-do list.

I used to post a blog entry every week. Now, more than two months have elapsed since last writing, and it feels like two weeks!

Here in the north country, summer is fleeting enough on the calendar; but when it whooshes by before you’ve registered its presence, it leaves a disturbing feeling. Where did the time go? What did we do wrong so that we missed it?

These days we forget how many years ago something occurred—it’s all starting to blur together. We speak in terms of decades not months. That alone makes me feel old and worried. Our lives aren’t boring; rather, they are rich and diverse, busy every day. So why is time seeming to go faster? Our general routine is the same. The seasons march by at the same tempo. What, exactly, has changed?

You’d think that as you physically slow down, the sense of time passing would decelerate with you. Instead, it’s the reverse. Huh?

Every look out the window to our neglected yard and fields underscores the point. We used to do so much. We don’t any more. We’re facing the need to size down because we can’t manage things properly, and the prospect doesn’t look good for reversing the trend.

Such thoughts echo the season change around us. It’s November now: Stick Season. The world is going gray and stark and dormant. So are we. Despite the fact that time passes faster, the dark season feels longer. I’ve already started my annual countdown to solstice, desperately awaiting the time when the days start getting longer again.

And now I’m starting to wonder how many seasons are left to me on the planet. I used to not think about that. But with so many loved ones dying off, the increasing darkness of the natural year, the terrifying prospects of a collapsing global society and economy. . . well, the need to experience spring again has become much stronger. And seems so far away.

Yet in six months when it’s here, I’ll be wondering where the heck the time went!

It's raining apples!

For someone who didn’t lift a finger to garden this season, I’ve got more natural food than I know what to do with!

Our weather pattern wasn’t great for crops, so I’m glad I didn’t go through the usual trouble. Everybody’s gardens produced, just not great, and caused a lot of worrying and griping.

But it was a superb year for wildflowers and fruits.

Our raspberry patch went crazy—we probably put 30+ pounds into the freezer. The blueberries were good, too, but at the time they peaked we were very busy and there was frequent rain so we missed the bulk of the harvest.

But apples!

Oh my. Only once before have we gotten this many, and I was at a loss for how to deal with them. Wouldn’t be a problem if I were a dedicated baker. But I’m not, and even if I were, our household diet has sugar and starch restrictions. So vast quantities of baked goodies are the wrong plan.

Happily, in the two years since the last bumper crop, I’ve acquired friends who both cook and have chickens. So in installments I’ve been handing off bags and bushel baskets instead of lobbing them into the field, dumping wheelbarrow loads in the woods, or taking bag loads to the dump and food shelf.

Why not just ignore them, you ask, or compost them in a heap?

First of all, they’re falling on the lawn in a path of regular travel, both foot and vehicle. We don’t mow zealously so the grass is tall enough to mask many of them. Stepping on one unawares is a fast way to get a sprained ankle.

Second, they start to stink after a while. And attract yellow jackets. And bears. For a few weeks, when the tree dropped only 5-10 a day, the neighborhood raccoon and deer would pass through overnight and clear them up. But that abruptly stopped, and suddenly I had dozens. Then the tree started throwing down 3-4 dozen more each day!

All this from one old scaggy thing that’s never pruned or sprayed or otherwise cultivated. It’s the last tree left anywhere near the house after our pine log-out, and the only place I can hang bird feeders any more.

Actually, this tree is two intertwined. I didn’t know that until the previous bumper crop, when half of it produced red McIntosh apples and the other half produced Golden Delicious. The Goldies don’t start falling until the Macs are about done, making for many weeks of daily pickup and weekly disposal dilemmas. At least this year they are providing more food than waste, instead of the other way around!

(Of course, acrobat kittens don’t help!)

The un-garden

For a laundry list of reasons starting last year, I knew that this summer would find us behind on projects and losing ground. So I decided to not do a vegetable garden, for the first time in 15 years.

It isn’t total withdrawal: I popped some carrot and lettuce seeds into the planters nearest to the house, and filled the rest of them with bright annual flowers. Then cover-cropped the veggie beds with buckwheat to avoid raising a fine crop of quack grass and milkweed. (Also to attract our scarily shrinking population of bees.)

This, in addition to the loss of my mother’s help (see “R.I.P. Garden Elf,” September 1, 2012), has meant a yard and garden scruffier than at any time during our residence. Since spring we’ve mowed only three times and I’ve trimmed only once.

Such neglect has created an interesting new environment . . . proving the adage “Nature abhors a vacuum.” Anywhere a spot was bare or unattended, plants moved in, creating a natural garden of delight.

Borders normally groomed have exploded in daisies and black-eyed Susans, asters (still to bloom), and campanula; plus the more weedy species such as lamb’s quarters, amaranth, pigweed, dandelions, thistle, yarrow, Queen Anne’s lace, and all varieties of clover. Not to mention every form of grass.

Wildflowers not seen in the yard before have grabbed corners and crevices between rocks: various mints, joe pye weed, and the indomitable burdock. Dropped bird seed from winter feeders has sprouted into mixed varieties of sunflower, over here and over there.

In areas where trees were harvested last fall, ferns and jewelweed have run rampant, as have the bee balm and phlox, overrunning the borders of abandoned perennial beds and popping up in areas far across the yard. I can no longer get to my compost pile, as it has been consumed by flowers.

My favorite surprises are the daisies and black-eyed Susans that took over the walk and terrace. For almost a month, we had to hitch up our legs and climb over them in order to get in the front door—I couldn’t bear to cut them back until after they bloomed. I also love the single, sentinel sunflowers that have appeared in the middle of the lawn, thumbing their petals at the cultivated ones struggling on the edge of the garden. Nothing I planted (galliardias, nasturtiums, marigolds, zinnias, morning glories) has done half as well as wild things that grabbed a molecule of dirt and grit between cracks or in disturbed soil.

This unconstrained growth proves something I talked about five years ago in my book Open Your Heart with Gardens. You don’t have to actively create and tend a garden in order to enjoy one; nature will take care of that herself. So even though I’m not actively cultivating this year, the yard is full of color and beauty and food in spite of me. Many of these wildflowers are edible, and of course there’s the berry patch. It, too, is going insane this season, overgrowing the firewood stacks despite pre-season cutbacks. In the past three weeks, we’ve harvested no less than 20 pounds of perfect, thumb-size red raspberries!

It is restful to step outside and just enjoy the bloom for a change, instead of having to haul watering cans and hoses and fertilizer, patrol for pests, set up and take down protection. I’m almost tempted to make a habit of it, though I’m sure by next spring I’ll be back to drawing plans and buying transplants and seeds.